I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching ants. They’re interesting creatures, always hard at work taking care of their homes and their queen. Ants: the Board Game, by Steve Zhuo takes the fun of watching ants hard at work and puts you in the middle of the action, selecting your ant race, and building your ant empire.
Basic Information
Players: 2 – 4
Ages: 10+
Time: 90 – 120 minutes
Estimated Delivery: March 2015
Location: Queens, NY
Game overview
In Ants: the Board Game, you can choose between four different races of ants: Ninja, Kunfu, Ranger, and Shaman. The goal is to have four ant nests or be the last colony which still has its queen.
From the Campaign
You’re the leader of the ants, and your ultimate goal is to take your little army to the total domination. There are several ways to your victory: to build the biggest ant colony ever seen on earth, or to crush every opponent without mercy, the choice is yours to make.
Campaign Specifics
Goal: $20,000
Pledge Tiers: 18 tiers ranging from $1 to $360
End Date: Mon, Jul 28 2014 4:36 AM EDT
Funding Type: Fixed
Chances of success
Overall the chances of this campaign succeeding are mixed. The game itself looks interesting and the artwork is fair. There campaign page layout is more or less easy to understand. There are no overly confusing reward tiers and Zhuo made sure to put up info-graphics.
The one caveat would be related to shipping. While Zhuo made sure to include a reminder to add the shipping cost to the pledge, I can almost guarantee that people are going to forget. Because most of the backers are going to be coming from the United States—Kickstarter is still US centric—just adding the $10 shipping to the reward tiers to begin with might have been the better move.
** Note: Shipping prices have changed a little bit. Shipping to the United States is now included.
The main issue, right now, seems to be a lack of promotion. From what I can see, there’s no website yet, and there are no public social media accounts related to the game. Both are important and social media should be used long before the campaign starts to drum up support. One suggestion would be to convert to personal Facebook account to a business page (Make sure to back up your info). There’s also no activity on the Kickstarter page, either on the discussion page or in regard to updates. This is concerning.