Eight Minute Empire Designer Announces The Ancient World

JonB

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Sep 16, 2012
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Eight Minute Empire Designer Announces The Ancient World



The beautiful looking game will hybridize city building tableau with worker placement.

A new game from the creator of Eight Minute Empire, one of our 8 Best Board Games of 2013 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.839731-8-Best-Board-Games-of-2013], has recently been launched on Kickstarter. It's called The Ancient World, and so far seems to combine the same lovely art and design with the kind of slick mechanics we expect from Red Raven Games' Ryan Laukat. The game is about rival civlizations taking the fight to giant, Shadow of the Colossus-style monsters that terrorize their lands. Mechanically, it's a cross between worker placement ala Lords of Waterdeep and tableau building ala Race for the Galaxy, with the twist that you have to build up your workers' skills to access certain jobs. Which, to be fair, sounds very fun. One can expect that Laukat's design chops are up to snuff after miniaturizing the 4x empire building genre with Eight Minute Empire.

"I'm a big fan of ancient mythology, especially Greek mythology," said Laukat, speaking with The Escapist. "One of my favorite movies as a kid was the 1981 Clash of the Titans. I wanted to create a game with that basic feeling, but I was also excited about having it take place in a world where I could create different cultures and creatures."

The Ancient World is currently on Kickstarter, [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/953146955/the-ancient-world?ref=discovery] and is fully funded. Kickstarter backers will get the game for $50, while MSRP will be $60. Its funding campaign ends on April 3rd.

[Kickstarter=953146955/the-ancient-world]

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Shamanic Rhythm

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Dec 6, 2009
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As much as I think Kickstarter is a good way for board game developers to make sure there's a market for their game, I find the use of 'stretch goals' questionable. Shouldn't you publish a game where the exact makeup of pieces and mechanics is fully tested, rather than adding in additional ones near the end because you were given an arbitrary amount of money? It's not an RPG like Project Eternity where you can just tack on additional areas and not have to worry too much - this is a multiplayer game, after all.
 

JonB

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Sep 16, 2012
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Shamanic Rhythm said:
As much as I think Kickstarter is a good way for board game developers to make sure there's a market for their game, I find the use of 'stretch goals' questionable. Shouldn't you publish a game where the exact makeup of pieces and mechanics is fully tested, rather than adding in additional ones near the end because you were given an arbitrary amount of money? It's not an RPG like Project Eternity where you can just tack on additional areas and not have to worry too much - this is a multiplayer game, after all.
This is actually really interesting, because of economies of scale. Often, once they're printing 10,000 games instead of 1,000, they end up spending the same amount of money per box for a box with more things in it. Not always the case, but it can happen.