The Ants: Underground Kingdom, the seasoned simulated life game (SLG), which has been online for over three years, experienced a surge of popularity upon its initial release with Lucas the Spider collaboration. Remarkably, this veteran of the global market continues to demonstrate impressive resilience, with estimated revenues exceeding 24 million RMB ($3.3 million) in October of this year.
Recently,The Ants: Underground Kingdom has introduced some new developments. According to SocialPeta, starting in early October, it indicates a noticeable peak in the number of creative ads. Additionally, the game’s icon has been updated, replacing the ant with an adorable, wide-eyed spider.
Differentiated Themes: The Key to Breaking Through
Unlike most SLGs on the market, The Ants: Underground Kingdom does not revolve around strategic conflicts between human civilizations. Instead, it adopts a niche theme centered on ants, breaking new ground in the SLG subcategory by innovating within the animal genre. This unique approach allowed the game to stand out, earning it the 2021 GameLook Awards for Best Strategy Game. Its publisher, StarUnion, quickly rose to prominence as a result.
In contrast to the human civilization armies typical of most SLGs, The Ants: Underground Kingdom cleverly transforms these into ant colonies. Different ant species possess unique strengths, mirroring the roles of worker ants, soldier ants, and others in the real world. Combined with the game’s realistic, lifelike art style, this approach has effectively captured the interest of insect enthusiasts.
Given the already well-established and refined SLG gameplay mechanics, making significant changes to core gameplay is challenging. The Ants: Underground Kingdom has a clear sense of its niche, with both its game design and marketing strategy focused entirely on the ant theme. By fully embracing its niche subject, the game secures a loyal following among this specialized audience.
The Secret to Staying Vibrant: Continuous Innovation
As a high-barrier game genre, SLGs have long been associated with a sense of inaccessibility, often featuring fewer collaborations compared to other game types. However, crossovers with animated series have produced several notable success stories.
For example, IGG’s Lords Mobile has previously partnered with Saint Seiya and How to Train Your Dragon. Both the game and these animated series share a common theme of fantasy adventure, making such collaborations a natural fit.
The crossover between The Ants: Underground Kingdom and Lucas the Spider is undoubtedly an innovative endeavor. As a U.S.-based animated series, it aligns well with the game’s primary target market, attracting hesitant potential players and encouraging them to take the first step. Lucas the Spider, a lighthearted show centered on the heartwarming daily life of a jumping spider, contrasts sharply with the highly strategic nature of an SLG.
However, this clever pairing has unexpectedly resulted in a more approachable and “player-friendly” appeal.
Based on the latest creatives, ants and spiders coexist harmoniously in the game visuals. The collaborative CG even introduces a new character—a cartoon ant scientist—that feels more like watching an episode of an animated series than typical user acquisition content.
This approach makes the advertising more engaging and easier for audiences to embrace. On a deeper level, both protagonists are insects, and the charming Lucas the Spider helps dispel viewers’ fear of spiders. Similarly, the ants aim to break free from the stereotypical perception of SLGs as overly demanding, brain-draining, and overly complex.
StarUnion appears to have a penchant for creating these seemingly perplexing crossovers. Last year, the Chinese version of The Ants: Underground Kingdom collaborated with Godzilla. Ants and Godzilla—two characters that starkly contrast in size and power—somehow coexisted within the same game. It’s precisely this kind of unexpected crossover that piques curiosity, enticing even non-players to click in and explore further.
How SLG Marketing Reinvents Classic Strategies
According to SocialPeta, over the past 30 days, the total number of creative ads across both platforms exceeded 7,000. Beyond the recent upward trend driven by the crossover event, The Ants: Underground Kingdom has consistently maintained a balanced distribution of creative ads. While occasional bursts of novelty help combat player fatigue, it is the foundation of long-term operational strategies that has been the key to the game’s sustained vitality.
Apart from the collaboration-related content, the regular creatives primarily lean towards a casual approach. As gameplay continues to evolve and integrate, many SLGs have adopted models combining core gameplay with secondary mechanics or expanded onto mini-game platforms.
The Ants: Underground Kingdom is no exception, as it can be found on the WeChat mini-game platform. Many of its ad creatives showcase classic arithmetic-based gameplay, aligning with the broader trend of SLG casualization and helping to reduce the pressure on players.
In the fiercely competitive SLG market, innovation is not only highly anticipated but also a critical driver for advancing the industry to new heights. Given the dual nature of new themes—balancing effectiveness and risk—successfully introducing entirely new concepts is relatively rare. Against this backdrop, the long-term operation of established games becomes particularly significant. By staying true to their core essence while infusing fresh elements, these games offer players a sense of familiarity with unexpected delights.
