Back in March of this year it was announced that Weta Workshop would be creating a District 9 board game with the help of crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
Despite that campaign raking in a lot of money and fast approaching its funding goal, the campaign was cancelled so the game could be reworked to address the problems that early players and backers had found with it back then.
“…it’s become clear that there’s some important stuff we need to reshape in order to make District 9: The Boardgame a compelling, exciting product for you guys,” Weta Workshop said in a statement, “Your feedback and ideas will play an important role in informing where we go from here.”
The statement also linked to a survey which people could fill out to suggest what changes they’d like to make.
With that now months behind us, another campaign has been created and, at the time of writing, it is very near to its $60K goal.
You can see a broad overview of how the game works in the trailer below but, as far as we can see, this is the exact same trailer we saw in March. We assume that the changes made since then are more subtle, and some of them can be seen on the campaign page.
Aside from gameplay something new for this second campaign can be seen in the title of that trailer – “Kickstarter Exclusive”. There was no mention of that the first time around, and it’s a rather poor change for many buyers.
This means that anyone wanting to buy the game has to do so within the campaign’s running time – which ends 20 days from now. After that you won’t be able to buy this game from your local store or online, which is where most Kickstarted board games end up when they’re successful.
If that doesn’t deter you the cheapest tier to get the game is $99 for the core box set. Adding in money gets you expansions which add content to the game, and the highest tier even offer discounts on shipping.
And that may come in handy as District 9 – a film based on and made in South Africa – now has a board game that is extremely expensive to ship here. The campaign page quotes $130-$135 for the “rest of the world” which SA is included in. This is where that Kickstarter exclusivity really hurts.
We also have to give the obligatory warnings not to pledge any amount that you’re not entirely comfortable with losing. Crowdfunding is not a sure thing and you may not get what you pay for.
Click around the campaign page to see more of the project to make up your mind.
Should everything go as planned, District 9: The Boardgame has an estimated delivery of August 2020.
