The market is probably not burned out per se, but definitely a lot more saturated than a couple of years ago. And people having already a bunch of huge mini heavy games may become more picky. The somewhat shaky Trudvang campaign seems to be of CMON's own making however:
- Subjective, but the game frankly doesn't feel "exciting". Even less so, since a large part is story telling and there's practically no info on the actual story. Not a huge focus on individual mechanics other than the token pulling dice replacement mechanic and the game board inserts to store game state. Being story driven, it may also have lower replayability, which nobody can know for sure until the actual content is playable/shown.
- While I think most minis are awesome, especially the base game ones and early stretch goal ones weren't exciting, either. The Trudvan universe's artwork seems to have a very unique asthetic I quite love, but it's very fantasy cliche with a nordic/celltic twist. You got a bunch of cliche hereos, a bunch of Goblin archers... err forest trolls, a fat Dragon and an ogre. It's only in the last couple of days that a bunch of amazing looking dragon sculpts, trolls etc. were piled onto the base pledge.
- It starts at 100$, with 30$-40$+ shipping. And until later in the campaign, in terms of content it didn't look like there was anything to justify that price tag. The price tag was obviously chosen to cover a bunch of stretch goals, which are then not true "stretch goals" added because the campaign was so successful, but piecemeal goodie reveals to keep backers engaged. In short: Marketing bullshit. Unfortunately, that content wasn't being added to the pledge...
- ...because CMON spaced stretch goals quite far apart and did not adapt after the initial "early bird" deal rush had died down to the point there were days without a single stretch goal being unlocked. Days in which the game looked overpriced and unexciting.
- There was Etherfields running alongside it. Its aesthetics don't appeal to me, but it fills a similar game niche and there's no denying that it generated much, much more excitement. Not least because they didn't do above mistakes apparently and its imo utterly oversculpted and oversized statue-esque miniatures at the very least don't look like just another fantasy cliche.
- CMON took their precious time to address any of above issues. They did in the end by adding a bunch of "stretch goals" at once and introducing daily unlocked stretch goals, but that was after the campaign was half over and was bleeding backers. Turns out, you shouldn't hope to fuel a campaign with marketing bullshit and "no gameplay because we can't spoil the story" platitudes and run it on autopilot, while the competition makes you look like a bunch of fools.
- Unexpectedly exploding shipping costs of CMON's last mini heavy campaign left a very bad taste.
All things considered, the campaign hasn't nearly tanked as hard as it could have, approaching 1.35$Mio. atm. But CMON has also added daily unlocks, which I believe was unprecedented for them? Even though I'd consider the game concept not "exciting" in temr of novelty factor, I like it quite a bit and have hopes for it to turn out to be a great cozy story telling engine. And in the end, it's an amazing assortment of fantasy themed minis for me, with a severe bias towards trolls and dragons. 😂
Had I previously backed something like Joan of Arc however, my tolerance for Trudvang would be a lot lower. That game's pile of minis alone would fill the appartment more than I could justify. These mini heavy Kickstarter are getting insane, when you need a whole wall of shelves to store something like Joan of Arc's minis.
