As many of you are aware, the Vacant Sky: Awakening Kickstarter concluded yesterday. Although we didn't reach our funding goal, the fundraising effort was an enormous success. We gained a huge amount of support as well as new friends and fans of the series. I was blown away by the helpfulness of everyone who contributed, and I especially thank everyone who gave us suggestions and helped get the word out.

I can't thank the users here at RMN enough. Even though the post about the Kickstarter was only up for a couple days, RMN still managed to be the single biggest source of donors of any one site. A total of 23 people from RMN pledged $2,471. Considering the negative backlash that the fundraising effort drew, I was really surprised that so many people here were still willing to contribute. I don't know who you are, but I'm really grateful for the help that you lent.

As for our future plans, we're not going to let this stand in the way of making the game that we dream of. Although only a day has passed, several backers have already encouraged us to relist the project and this support is really encouraging.

That said, we did learn a lot from these (insanely stressful) past 30 days. We plan to regroup, consider a new strategy, and relist in the near future. Before that, however, there are a few things that are going to take priority:

1) Finishing Vacant Sky Complete Edition.
It hasn't fallen by the wayside! The Kickstarter has brought in a lot of new fans of the series and they've made it clear that they really want to see the Complete Edition. Not only will it finally bring volume 1 to its long-awaited conclusion, but it should also rekindle interest in the series among old players as well as give us something to prove to potential new backers of our skills.

As of right now, Act I+ and Act II+ are pretty much done, pending the implementation of a few new skills. Act III is coming along - I just completed my first full playthrough of Return yesterday, so we're almost ready to move on from the implementation phase to the polish and debugging phase.

If anyone is interested in helping us beta test, then please let me know by a PM or post here!

2) Create a demo.
The problem with using Contention Complete as a demo to draw in new backers is that although it's updated, it's still outdated - since then, we've all improved as artists, game designers, writers, and developers in general. So, we've decided to produce a short demo using the new setting, the new engine, and the new characters in order to showcase just how far we've come since the original game.

We're still deciding on the exact details of the demo and what it will contain, so keep your eyes peeled for updates in the near future.

Thanks again to everyone for your support and I hope you all look forward to future news from us.