We've never experienced anything like the Kickstarter for The Glass Ceiling Games. It has been A LOT of emotions and the overriding feeling now is one of pride at what we’ve achieved. 🤘

We've gone from a small community of followers to being featured on an internationally renowned and respected radio show in the final days of the campaign. Our outspoken, funny and anarchic feminist punk game is part of an important cultural conversation and driving behaviour change in relation to misogyny and sexism. This is exactly where we wanted to be. ✊

In a spirit of celebration and to thank everyone who has come on this journey with us — from boosting our morale with messages of encouragement, to telling friends, to backing with funds, to reaching out to press on our behalf; here are our campaign highlights! 🎉

1) Friday 13th pre-launch

We loved rebranding Friday 13th May 'a nightmare for sexists.' Our period de-shaming river of blood parody of an original Friday 13th movie poster, which turned a bikini-clad woman from a classic horror victim into a queen with a tampon crown, drowning euphemisms for periods in the river (along with the mansplain troll head from our game), was a strong start, right? 💪

2) A sprint start

The campaign got off to a sprint start with £1,000 pledged in the first hour – thank you to all those backers who boosted our spirits early! 🏃‍♀️

3) Playtest feedback

Opportunities to playtest the latest game build in our hometown of Plymouth had a profound impact on our understanding of what the game does.

Previous playtesting showed women and diverse genders found it cathartic and men found it overwhelming being in the first-person perspective of being catcalled, but we’ve massively developed that level and it’s now more varied and intense. This time they were horrified and grossed out by it. Even the allies who know it happens, have never witnessed it or experienced it from an embodied perspective, which generated a new understanding and urge to speak out. This is the unique power of games as a storytelling medium that can generate empathy.

They also expressed how how frustrating it is to be bombarded by unsolicited pix you have no control over popping up all around you, and how satisfying and empowering it is to slice them away.

4) Backed by Jane Friedhoff

After we published a video paying tribute to the influence of brilliant developer Jane Friedhoff on the game, Jane reached out in support and jumped in as an early backer, which made our day! ✨

5) Our first campaign troll

The super talented singer and lyricist for game band Go Fallopian!, Anna Wheatley, had one of her reels hilariously trolled by a guy who said: ‘you would never be catcalled or get any dick pics, carpet muncher’, accidentally depicting a feminist utopia! We also enjoyed that pixelating his profile pic made him look like a penis. 🤣

6) Backed by those we respect

We were stoked to be backed and supported by:

• Lead writer of the Tomb Raider reboot, Rhianna Pratchett, whose work replaced the automatically confident, comicbook sex object, Lara Croft, with a layered, complex, vulnerable and flawed human being we could relate to. The guiding story concept for Rise of the Tomb Raider was 'you become who you're meant to be when you let go of who you're supposed to be,' which is a lesson for life. ✌️
• Activist and gamer Patsy Stevenson who got behind our inclusive approach to feminism and game design and shared our updates throughout.
• The powerful Code Coven, Women In Games and UKIE's #RaiseTheGame Diversity Pledge communities who are changing the constitution of the games industry for the better daily and we're privileged to be part of.

7) Community feedback

The community reached out and told us they wanted a closer look at the augmented reality gameplay, so we produced a walkthrough video of the current build:

8) Local paper feature

A friend reached out to the local paper who got in touch and interviewed us, giving us a chance to express the why of this game in a way we haven’t elsewhere and that’s summed up by this pull quote:

A few people in the social media comments had something to say about where Hannah ‘belonged’ but we enjoyed laughing at the toxic logic. Check out some of these comments on the piece:

As one friend said: "Every lady knows it's totally ok to be catcalled and harassed if the person is hot." There's definitely a fundamental misunderstanding of the Harry Styles brand going on here, isn't there!? #bringbackmanlymen 😂

9) 10k pledged

We didn’t realise this would feel like such a big deal and were able to celebrate the milestone at the inaugural Creative UK Female Founders conference in Bristol, where we met our fellow female founders who've participated in the business scale-up programme to support female founders of screen-based companies.

10) Our team blogs and vlogs

One of our priorities throughout has been to provide value to our community by sharing our expertise and perspectives through blogs and vlogs from our brilliant team. We hope they're useful to you!

• Game band Go Fallopian! talk airing vaginas and razing the patriarchy!
• Writer Dawn's 5 tips for breaking into games
• UI artist Miles celebrates the inclusivity at the heart of the game and studio
• Actor Anna talks feminism, sexism and why this project appealed
• Our developer Leah shares top tips for networking in the games industry
• 4 tips for immersive and interactive storytelling from creative director Hannah
• How to show AR gameplay in a trailer? Behind-the-scenes of our Kickstarter film
• Nethi's 5 tips to help you break into the games industry as an artist
• Morgan's top 5 programming tips and perception change from working on the game
• Filmmaker Jake Cauty's top 5 shooting and editing tips
• Environment artist Max's tips for kickstarting your career in games
• Film director Amanda talks feminism and sexism in a male-dominated industry
• Character artist Bree shares tips for getting your foot in the door of game art
• Go behind-the-scenes of our game art process
• Standing on the shoulders of Riot Grrrl: Story Juice and punk feminism (an interview in gamesindustry.biz)

11) BBC Woman's Hour!

TURN IT UP TO 11! 🚀 It was an absolute thrill in the final days of our campaign to be invited onto BBC Woman's Hour to chat to Emma Barnett about the game as part of a broader discussion about women in games. This was also the result of a friend reaching out to them. You can listen again here, we're at 36:45: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00187qv

The games team at Kickstarter has also been supportive and said how strong the game, content and campaign is, but added that we really needed a community of 5,000 dedicated gamers ahead of it to drive pledges (we only had a couple of hundred on social media). But our network has come out swinging for us and we really couldn’t have worked harder. This experience has shown us the power of working together, with people who share your values, to help create a future you want to live in.

Thank you so much to all of you for supporting us! 🙌 You can view our archived Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

With all our best, The Glass Ceiling Games Team!