Just a quick bit of news that Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire has achieved the improbable and hit No. 1 in Indiegogo's Gaming category.

What's more, the project has gained the attention of the Indiegogo team themselves and is currently Featured on their home page.

The game has now received more than 10% of its target from its backers so, with 30 days, yet to go, the campaign seems to be on-track for success and...

...we have the awesome community here on TacComs to thank for it.

So a sincere and heartfelt THANK YOU! And we very much hope you'll continue to support us.

Hi everyone!

So we're currently sitting at 99 backers and we're approaching $5,000, which is of course a great position to be in with a month to go in our campaign.

Even better, though, is that we've already had almost 9,000 people visit our campaign page, so there are a lot of people out there who are now aware of what we're trying to do and who are hopefully considering backing us—our task is to get those people off the fence and supporting us, of course, and we’re doing everything we can think of to achieve that.

To that end, we're going to start running some competitions to get those peeps on the fence fully engaged, and one of those has just kicked-off:

Our 100th backer will receive a free upgrade to the $300 perk!

To those of you who have already supported us (either financially or by telling your friends about us), thank you! and please keep up the great work! We remain incredibly grateful to our community for all the support you've given us thus far.

And to any others reading this message, thanks for your interest and we very much hope you will consider joining our campaign.

http://www.indiegogo.com/EWFracturedEmpire

Well that was quick—we've just hit our 100th backer with dylan_ddog_847, who will be formally notified shortly of the win!

WOW! Sorry to post again, but wanted to let you all know that Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire has been featured on Rock Paper Shotgun's "Kickstarter Katchup" column!!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/23/kickstarter-katchup-23rd-june-2012/#more-113419

Getting air-time with the major games media players and engaging with the wider gaming public was always going to be pivotal, so it's awesome to see this starting to happen now.

Please head on over to the RPS column via the link above and add your voice to the discussion.

And by all means...feel free to talk up Fractured Empire and let everyone know there is a market for games like this.

Hi everyone. Another update.

We've been humbled by the almost unanimously positive feedback we've received for Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire.

We do hear that many people want an iOS version alongside the PC and Mac releases, though, rather than a few months later.

Josh, Glenn and I have spent the last couple of days creating alternative project schedules to see what is possible, and we have some great news for you:

If we meet our target of $35,000, we will be releasing the iPad version of Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire alongside the PC and Mac versions.

There is a small caveat in that Apple's App Store review process can take a while, so we can’t promise the iOS release will be a same-day release alongside the PC and Mac versions, but it will be very, very close!

To everyone who has supported us so far, thank you again—it means the world to us.

To everyone else, we hope the above news demonstrates our commitment to this game and to the wargaming community, and we very much hope you will support us by contributing to our Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire campaign.

Hi everyone!

So it's been some time since my last update. We're pretty stoked here at Membraine HQ, and I thought I'd share with you why that is.


iPAD AND LINUX SUPPORT ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO
Our community members already know from an earlier update, but here it is again: Fractured Empire, is now targeting Windows PC, Apple Mac and iPad, and Linux all on Day 1. (When Day 1 will be is still undecided, of course, as our crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo.com still has around 20 days left to run, but we remain quietly optimistic.)

We're ready to share the news that we'll now be shipping iPad and Linux versions of Fractured Empire alongside the PC and Mac versions with the wider gaming public, so we're doing a press release to iPad-related gaming sites. To that end, we've also put together a little vignette explaining why we're announcing iPad support.

We think you'll like it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEe_RvEIeY0

We look forward to reading your reactions.


WE'RE EXCITED!!
Rock Paper Shotgun's mention of us today called out the fact that we seem to have stalled this week, seeing just $600 in contributions. While we'd of course much rather see lots of contributions each week, and the obvious math is that we need to see about $1,500 a day roll in from here on in, we're nonetheless very excited because the media response has really been pretty phenomenal, especially considering the "vibe" in the games media around crowd funding right now that we were discussing.

Getting a mention on Rock Paper Shotgun (even in the context of negativity about a Flexible Funding campaign) was HUGE for us—and they put up one of our vids! And then we got mentioned by Rock Paper Shotgun again this weekend! That the guys at RPS are watching us is HUGE, and (as you can probably tell) that's got us pretty pumped.

We're helped a lot by the fact the gaming community really does want this game—that much is clear now. So, at the very least, we know there is a market for this game, which was one of the major reasons for running this campaign.

We've just passed the $5,000 milestone with just under 20 days to go, but it seems to be the case with crowd funding campaigns that most of "the action", as such, happens in the last 10 days, so we remain hopeful.

It seems to go like this:

* You either have a big burst of enthusiasm from the crowd (probably applies only if you already have an established fan-base, which we didn’t) or you start slowly, like we have.
* Then you see a lull in contributions as non-fans join and watch/wait.
* And then you either see a surge in the last week as the watchers get into the game...or you fizzle out.

We're doing everything we can to ensure we get a surge and not a fizzle.


SOME VERY POSITIVE NEWS
Now let me give you some VERY positive news, which is that, whatever happens with our campaign, we’ve been shown that the market really does want this game—so, come hell or high water, WE ARE MAKING IT. It will just take us longer if we don’t achieve the funding levels we need. So the crowd funding campaign has become all about when we can get it to you, not if. I hope those words are as good to read as they were to type.

If the campaign is successful, we’ll be able to focus our efforts 100% on completing the game. If not, it just means we’ll need to continue focussing on our consulting work and casual games in order to fund EW:FE’s development—which is what we’re doing now and, as you can see, the game's coming together...it’s just been coming together vvveeerrryyy sssllloooooooooowwwllllyyy to this point (because we keep getting distracted by needing money for frivolous things like food and heat).

So that's where we are now; while things are going pretty well, we of course still have a lot of work to do to show the community that we're worthy of their support.

Hopefully, you think we're doing just that, you're reaching for your wallet to buy a perk and back us, and you're telling your friends about us. (I am The Eternal Optimist.)

Cheers!
Mark (GR00V3R)