YXE videogame studio utilizes Creative Sask funding to market their latest game: Kaiju Wars

Kaiju Wars is the most recent digital strategy game developed by Foolish Mortals, a Saskatoon-based videogame company made up of an innovative gang of self-proclaimed ‘do-gooders’ to watch in the digital development world.

Play out a Kaiju movie as the (hopelessly) outclassed military in this stylish 2D turn-based strategy game. Construct buildings and defend your city with cannon-fodder tanks, jets and more as the devastating kaiju grow in power with every attack.

Earlier this year, Foolish Mortals received Creative Saskatchewan’s Market and Export Development – Micro Stream grant, to help them market their retro-Godzilla-Pacific Rim videogame to national and international gamers.

“A game’s trailer is its most important marketing asset. It’s what everyone sees when they go to the steam page to buy the game,” says Michael Long, Lead Developer of all Foolish Mortals projects, “…a game cannot be released with an excellent trailer.”

In addition to the trailer, movie-style game posters (available here) were made and strategically distributed, as well as a strong marketing campaign on Facebook and Twitter, resulting in a steady stream of ‘wishlists’ for the game, over 1,000 in just 3 months – and over 1,200 downloads.

How has this funding helped you expand your reach?

“Funding from Creative Sask has allowed us to greatly expand our marketing campaigns, primarily through the use of video trailers. I’ve always been a big fan of live-action films, and due to this funding was able to create several live-action trailers for my games ( KAIJU WARS | Trailer and TRAILER – Radio General). Live-action is fairly pricey, but I think it was worth the cost. We worked with a Saskatoon production company called Bamboo Shoots to make these trailers use all-Saskatchewan talent. I myself even got to act in the Radio General live-action trailer, and got to appreciate how much work live-action filming is (10 hours of filming for 2 minutes of footage, haha). For a videogame, the trailer is the most important marketing piece, and needs to be EXCELLENT. For Kaiju Wars, [we] were accepted into the prestigious MIX 2022 indie showcase, and also just presented the game at Dreamhack Dallas in Texas. Without our excellent trailers, we would not have gotten these opportunities.”

What was your experience working with Creative Sask like?

“Working with Creative Sask was straightforward and transparent. I look forward to applying to the newly revamped Digital Game Development Grant soon, and seeing the benefits it has on the grassroots Saskatchewan game development industry.”

What does engagement with your product look like so far?

“Thanks to the high quality of our Kaiju Wars trailer, we were able to garner critical reviews from prestigious game journalist websites such as Eurogamer and Cultured Vultures. Both user and critical reception has been good, with the game sitting at Very Positive (95{904cbb9f51ce1c629f07317e42a29faa77e413e9327da6f0e35d3c3cad978183}) on Steam and 82/100 on OpenCritic. It was also on OpenCritic’s top 12 videogames of 2022.”

“Due to the high quality of our game’s trailer, it was accepted into the MIX 2022 10th Anniversary indie game showcase. The trailer was livestreamed to over 20,000 viewers amongst other high quality indie games. Without the necessary budget to make such a high quality trailer, there’s no way our previous amateur trailer made by yours truly would have been admitted.” says Long.

It is Creative Saskatchewan’s mission to support local creative entrepreneurs in getting their product to market, and we could not be prouder of the Foolish Mortals team!

About Foolish Mortals

Foolish Mortals was founded in 2013, right after a game called ‘DoomBlenderCave’; was made (you delve into a cave fighting potato monsters… It was pretty cool). Fast-forward some amount of time and we’re now Saskatoon’s only non-mobile videogame studio. Not sure if that says more about Saskatoon, or us. Diversity is the spice of life, meaning we like releasing different genres. We’ve made a murder mystery, a lazer rope driving game and a game where you scream into a your microphone for Able company to respond GODDAMNIT!

,www.foolish-mortals.net/kaijuwars