The Kickstarter campaign for Silicone Heart recently concluded. The developers managed to raise $64,000, while initially they had hoped to receive $100,000.
Developer Evgeny Grishakov published a video and said that a decision was made to part ways with the publisher. He explained that if you combine the Kickstarter results with the marketing campaign that was conducted with the (now former) publisher, "we literally had $10,000 in hand" and 6-7 thousand wishlists:
To be honest: for the development of a full-fledged indie game of this scale, like Silicone Heart, $10,000 is simply nothing. It's zero. Our contract with the creator stipulated an amount of $120,000. And I personally kept in mind that we would collect at least $100,000 and we would have $40-50,000 left, which we would invest in getting the game into early access. But we clearly didn't reach that threshold. What's the conclusion from this? In the end, we realized that no one can do for us what we must do – sell the game well, gather an audience, and so on. And that's why we parted ways with the publisher.
The developers previously conducted a playtest of Silicone Heart. They conceived their project as a cozy simulator in the spirit of Stardew Valley with an emphasis on robots and mechanisms, but after reviewing feedback, they realized that the audience had a completely different request. Their project was praised for its unconventional absurd humor and jokes that "balance on the edge of impropriety."
Garden of Dreams studio decided to "repackage the project" and focus on humor. Work is also underway to lower the entry barrier: overloaded elements are being simplified, and the interface and tutorial are being refined.
You can add Silicone Heart to your Steam wishlist at the following link.