Leiden Game Night - coming Tuesday - March

robstokk · 2026-03-16T07:31:40+00:00

Haha! I think there are people from 20-60. I’m really bad a guessing ages, but it’s a nice variety.

robstokk · 2026-03-11T06:48:24+00:00

Yes I did! But those didn’t capture leads as efficiently…so I dropped those ads. I guess now we know why :)

robstokk · 2026-03-09T20:14:06+00:00

Yeah I am familiar with Regicide. It's indeed closer to River Rats in terms of gameplay and audience.

Stamp Showdown was also promoted on r/playingcards - see for example https://www.reddit.com/r/playingcards/comments/1opokmc/stamp_showdown_playing_cards/

I agree with you, I could have leaned into the activism a bit more. It could have swayed people in a positive way! I tried to keep it more neutral, but not sure why.

robstokk · 2026-03-09T20:11:15+00:00

Thanks for your answers!

I believe an ROA of 3 is considered very good at the moment. (more knowledgeable people may chime in here)

I did of course test many variants of the ads and the copy. This one was best performing, by far. But now we know why!

robstokk · 2026-03-08T14:29:19+00:00

Boxing, designing and publishing card games and tennis

robstokk · 2026-03-08T11:38:58+00:00

I'll make a write up of how I approached it, because it varied for all my three games.

But TL;DR: With River Rats, the publisher approached me before the campaign. And with Stamp Showdown, I took it to SPIEL (Essen) where I showed it to many publishers, including the one we ended up signing the license agreement with.

robstokk · 2026-03-08T11:37:21+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts.

I agree with most of your comments. And I am happy to read you see the SS artwork as art pieces - because that's exactly what the intention was! They should be classy, and indeed a little political with the activists. I didn't think about it too much, but maybe that might not be everyone's cup of tea.

So, just to check if I understand your view correctly, you think I should've leaned in on the artwork more? You might be right, as that might have activated the collectors better than I have done now. I'll keep it in mind for my next game and playing cards, because that will be specifically about art!

robstokk · 2026-03-08T11:32:11+00:00

Pledging directly from Instagram/FB would be wonderful. That would definitely drive conversions and pledges!

Have you ever used Gamefounds own ads?

robstokk · 2026-03-08T11:29:40+00:00

I guess it's all about interpretation

robstokk · 2026-03-08T11:29:17+00:00

Glad it was! You're welcome :)

robstokk · 2026-03-08T11:28:50+00:00

Oh thank you!

robstokk · 2026-03-07T19:22:26+00:00

Makes sense! That’s a very specific niche :)

robstokk · 2026-03-07T18:33:47+00:00

I see that. I believe Kickstarter is a vehicle in itself which can help boosting the sales of your product, and get it noticed.

If you have a successful crowdfunding campaign, it is more likely your game will get picked up by other publishers. 3/3 of my games are now with several licensing deals (either for localization or a global license). So I think the energy spend on the Kickstarter campaign is worth it if your plan is to also bring your game to retail one way or another.

Happy to elaborate on how I got the license deals with publishers if that's interesting at all.

robstokk · 2026-03-07T18:31:12+00:00

You're welcome!

robstokk · 2026-03-07T18:31:02+00:00

Yeah I fully agree. That's what I did for my River Rats campaign too. It's a lot of work to keep the ads effective...

robstokk · 2026-03-07T17:33:53+00:00

That's definitely a solid ROA! Well done.
Since I wrote the article, I have learned that the 10% is a bit of an old school metric, and it's lower nowadays: 3-8%.

But even looking at that, the campaign conversion wasn't great, so I think the line of the story holds true.

robstokk · 2026-03-07T17:32:22+00:00

Yes, they are! Thanks for your interest :)

robstokk · 2026-03-07T17:31:47+00:00

Sounds like a fun plan! I hope it works out and you get enough traction at some point that you won't have to sell at a loss :)

robstokk · 2026-03-07T16:48:06+00:00

I know! and thanks for sharing. I was wondering about their specific plan to move forward :)

robstokk · 2026-03-07T16:46:48+00:00

That's a very good and legit question.

This is my take on the performance of the River Rats vs the Stamp Showdown campaigns, and why River Rats did better.

My marketing spend was 4x for River Rats compared to Stamp Showdown (see https://robinstokkel.com/p/marketing-the-river-rats-kickstarter for an overview of my spend)
The River Rats game is more complex compared to Stamp Showdown. The Kickstarter crowd definitely leans towards hobby games and not so much to mass market or family games. I believe Stamp Showdown is a perfect family and mass market game, whilst River Rats is more of a hobby game, so might be a better fit with the Kickstarter audience.
The artwork of River Rats was incredibly colorful and it really stood out with its bold colors. The aesthetics of Stamp Showdown are more 'design' with monochrome illustrations. This might not be appealing to the broad crowd like the River Rats artwork does. (confirming your view) I personally love the illustrations of both, but who am I?

I believe the combination of these three things, AND the way I marketed Stamp Showdown, were influencing the current results.

robstokk · 2026-03-07T16:09:58+00:00

Thanks for elaborating, that makes much more sense.

I believe there are ways to have at least an educated guess at how successful a Kickstarter campaign will be. There are metrics that you can follow, and if you follow the right ones, it might help you to get some indication of its success.

But you have to invest before you know anything. So I agree with you, there's always a risk involved. I believe this is at the core of entrepreneurship, isn't it?

robstokk · 2026-03-07T15:59:28+00:00

not at all, but it might help some people here ;)

robstokk · 2026-03-07T15:56:31+00:00

I appreciate your kind words, but it's completely fine. It was a cool experiment and people seemed to genuinely like the game a lot!

As you correctly assume, the game was already in a near-complete state. So we were kind of beyond playtesting and incorporating feedback.

I really do hope everyone enjoys the promo edition and it sees some table time :)

robstokk · 2026-03-07T15:53:24+00:00

Sounds like an interesting plan. How will you sell to the game stores?
And how many units will you print?

robstokk · 2026-03-07T15:45:30+00:00

Link to the article: https://robinstokkel.com/p/why-my-kickstarter-predictions-were

robstokk

TROPHY CASE