I don't necessarily need the funding. It was more just to help give some savings boost for future games or whatever. I definitely can finish the game without it.Probably the hardest thing is just not knowing how the game will do. Twisty Puzzle Simulator did great on PS4 yet flopped on Steam, which is the opposite of what I expected. Similarly I have done a lot of market research and have some sales expectations for Hapax, but I'm very aware I might end up making less than minimum wage.
That might be the best option. So I can focus on getting some good marketing materials and trailers for my steam page and get that up and just focus on sharing the game updates to social media and hopefully build my wishlists
But I was gonna use some of the funds to pay a couple people to help on some VFX and stuff. I have a guy who works at pipeworks in Oregon that offered some help.
Wishlists are imo a great pre-release metric to see how you're doing. They're not preorders and most never convert to sales, but you can at least start objectively analyzing performance. Game Hub followers are another helpful metric. For example The Entropy Centre was revealed a while ago yet had a very good trailer at the Future Games Show. Look at those numbers skyrocket! https://steamdb.info/app/1730590/graphs/
For your game specifically, I think you really need to sell the "adventure." It looks gorgeous and people will see that immediately in screenshots and videos, but that alone won't sell the game. Compare these video game trailers:
Both are from the same dev team and neither is great, but the later does a better job selling the emotional feeling of why players should play the game.
Meanwhile this new trailer from different devs is a million times better.
I'm kinda cheating with this example since it uses a lot of voice acting beyond your scope probably, but it gets the point across. The Witness trailers are also good examples.
On a similar note, I think you're pretty close to having enough content ready to make a trailer. I spent a few minutes using the footage you've shared and while my "fan trailer" isn't that good, I think it only needs a few more item interactions/gameplay teases to be a solid showing.
