Why contribute?

Ahoy is an independent game project being developed by a small team of developers passionate about history. By making a regular or one-off monetary donation to the project, you can help to fund the game's production and bring it closer to completion. This contribution scheme presents an opportunity for individuals to directly support the development of a creative and exciting project, and to be a part of its ongoing success.

For indie games like Ahoy, contributions from the community can be crucial to the game's success. Unlike larger studios with ample resources, indie developers often rely on support from their audience to bring the shared vision to life. Overall, the contribution scheme for Ahoy presents an exciting opportunity for individuals to get involved in a creative project, support independent game development, and receive unique rewards in return. By working together, the Ahoy community can help make this vision a reality.

What your contribution means for Ahoy

A financial contribution towards Ahoy, beyond simply providing us with an immense sense of purpose in what we are creating, will also enable us to better finance the development of the project.

Running Costs

The monthly running costs of the project includes development server hosting, service subscriptions (Github, Google Drive, etc.), software licensing (Adobe, 3D Software, etc.), keeping the website online, and even maintaining some of the functionality here on Discord through Nitro and other costs. Your contribution will help to offset some of these costs from the development team, and enable our personal finances to stretch further in enabling us to spend time on the project.

Contracted Overheads

In some cases, the project requires assistance in particular areas. It might be that the project is progressing on most fronts as expected, but that we're finding difficulty making progress in one specific area. Your contributions will enable us to possibly contract paid freelancers to come in and assist the project on a short-term basis to ensure the project is not held back in these areas.

The Community

We'd also like to return the favour, and run community initiatives which might otherwise cost the team. These might be in the form of giveaways or other initiatives that grow the community, such as marketing/advertising.

Largely, we will prioritise the funds available from your contributions towards DEVELOPING Ahoy. If there is an area that needs financial assistance, your contributions will go a long way towards ensuring we can make those decisions and maintain progress on the project.

What is active contributor status?

In order to provide the correct donation rewards but also enable flexibility for how you can choose to donate, we have implemented an 'active' contributor status. Active contributors will receive newly added rewards, whereas inactive contributors will maintain some of the rewards earned during their previously active contributor period.

To explain this with a hypothetical scenario - Imagine that one member of the community decides to donate one larger amount (previously via Paypal, or Lifetime Platinum, etc.), while another chooses to donate smaller amounts each month/year via Ko-fi or Patreon. Both members should in the end, receive the rewards appropriate to the amount they have donated. It is also important that those who continute to support the project receive new rewards as and when we are able to release them. This might be in the form of subsequent early access updates, physical merch, digital cosmetic rewards, and so on.

In order to preserve a sense of chronology within the reward system, we have decided to implement an activity status. This means that active contributors (those donating per month, or those who have donated a larger amount in recent months) unlock the newly released rewards, while past contributors can maintain the rewards that were earned during their active contribution period.

Patreon contribution history is tracked on the Ko-fi or Patreon website. We will be integrating the Ko-fi and Patreon contribution process more directly in the future.

Reward Tiers

All donations are presented with certain rewards based on the contribution amount. These are based on the donation tiers you choose.

All tiers receive these rewards:

Sea Trials Experience

(Releasing Soon™)

Priority Testing Access

(Bug testing access in order of Reward Tier)

Cosmetic In-game Medal

(Matching your Reward Tier metal/colour)

Early Access To Dev Updates

(Accessed via Discord. One week before public)

Mentioned In Game Credits

(At launch, in alphabetical order)

Contributor Discord Channel

(To discuss early progress reports and contributing)

What is "Lifetime Platinum"?

Platinum exists as a monthly recurring tier on Ko-fi or Patreon. Until now, it has represented the highest achievable tier we provide and as such is an incredibly generous contribution from our patrons should they choose to commit to this. However, as part of the Ahoy contributor initiative, we also want to reward long-standing contributors with a 'Lifetime' reward structure. Lifetime Platinum is something that is given to all patrons once their total lifetime contributions reach £400 (roughly $505.32 USD, or €467.60 EUR as of 03/02/2024)

Unfortunately for us, both Ko-fi and Patreon do not provide the functionality to provide a membership for free to our contributors, and so the "Lifetime Platinum" role is only actually provided via the Ahoy website and Discord server when your lifetime contribution reaches the required amount.

Larger Donations

If you would like to make a larger donation towards the development of Ahoy and the available Ko-fi or Patreon tiers will not work for you, you can contact us directly via email to determine the best course of action.

Larger donations can be made via PayPal or any other standard form of transfer.

Please email us at [email protected] for more information.

Have More Questions?

We understand that contributing towards a project in this way might bring up a number of questions that you'd like answered beforehand.

In an aim to simplify this this for you, we have added a section in our FAQ for contributors. Additionally, you might consider joining our Discord community and asking any additional questions there. We'll be happy to answer any questions regarding the project and the contribution scheme outlined above.