The Kickstarter campaign for Pulse, the student game that developer Team Pixel Pi wants to turn pro with, successfully concluded yesterday after a wild final day that saw nearly $32,000 of contributions toward the $75,000 goal.
"We're feeling pretty awesome," said programmer Maxwell Hannaman in an email to Polygon.
With one day left, the situation was looking somewhat grim — Kickstarter contributions were sitting just below the $50,000 mark, less than two-thirds of the way toward the developers' goal. But Hannaman said they "definitely had not given up," although they were preparing for missing their target by "readying updates and mailing lists, looking at when [they] might start another Kickstarter, that kind of thing."
At approximately 6 p.m. ET yesterday, a few hours before the campaign was set to end, Team Pixel Pi posted a Kickstarter update about a "super-backer" who contributed $20,000, bringing the total to within $4,000 of the goal. Yet the highest funding tier on the studio's Kickstarter was $5,000 — a level that included a flight to the developers' hometown of Vancouver, Canada, along with dinner and a tour of the city.
"We actually knew the super-backer was coming before it happened — there was some back and forth," Hannaman explained. "The really interesting part is the explosion after that."
The campaign reached its $75,000 goal with about three hours left, and ended at $80,977. According to Kickstarter statistics site Kicktraq, 628 of Pulse's 2,129 backers — more than one-fourth — came on the last day.
Hannaman said Team Pixel Pi is "super excited" to begin development; it will "probably get started on pre-productiony stuff in the next couple weeks," once it deals with backer rewards. The studio will also post additional funding options on its website for those who missed the Kickstarter.
For more on Pulse, which was a finalist in the Student Showcase of the 2013 Independent Games Festival Awards, check out our interview with Hannaman and level designer Richard Harrison.