In April of 2010, board game publisher Days of Wonder, released an iPad version of their popular game Small World (one year after the physical game was released to critical acclaim).
If you are unfamiliar with the game Small World, it features “a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs and even humans; who use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth.” To see the physical game in action, I highly recommend checking out this episode of Wil Wheaton’s Table Top webseries.
Despite the app’s popularity, save for a couple of updates in August and September of that year, the current Small World iOS app has been ignored for the last 2.5 years, while Days of Wonder focused their efforts on the Ticket to Ride mobile tiles (which are stellar!). This Small World app offered single player vs. AI and local multiplayer (using the same iPad) but features none of the rich multiplayer and Retina graphics of its locomotive siblings.
However, the company did not completely abandon Small World, in fact, they’ve had a small team working on the next generation of the game for quite some time, and it WILL be released sometime this year whether or not this $190,000 Kickstarter campaign is successful.
If the game is going to be released no matter what, then why is Days of Wonder bothering to launch a Kickstarter campaign?
The simple answer…”to take this new version of Small World to A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF AWESOMENESS”
The funding gained from this Kickstarter project will allow Days of Wonder to:
- Release many of the key features you told us you’d be happy to pay for (3-5 player maps, online play) as a FREE UPGRADE to all existing users, rather than nickel-and-diming everyone for these through in-app purchases
- Help us make Online play and 3-5 player maps a free upgrade!
- Produce a lot of INSANELY COOL SWAG and Board game supplements
- And by making the game a whole lot bigger, supporting MORE PLATFORMS and MORE EXPANSIONS than we could ever justify on our own
Backers will have the ability to participate in DoW’s private forums during the remainder of development of the game allowing them the unique opportunity to offer input and possibly help shape the direction of the Small World 2.
Small World 2 is being offered for the flat backer contribution of $15 (and free of charge to existing owners of Small World for iPad!).
Additional cool rewards are available at higher levels like original concept art, 3D printed figures and more, so make sure you check out the Kickstarter page for more details.
