Deconstruction of The Ants: Underground Kingdom creatives!
Deconstruction of The Ants: Underground Kingdom Creatives reveals the secrets behind the success of this captivating base-building strategy game. Featuring an immersive underground ant kingdom, the game combines visually stunning 3D designs with innovative mechanics like ant breeding, alliance building, and event-driven engagement such as the Cave Exploration challenge.
The video advertisements for the ant-themed game employ a variety of creative themes, often focusing on the realistic life of ants, which appeals especially to insect enthusiasts in Japan. Initially, real acting videos featuring ants were used to draw attention through their uncommon nature. Later, the ads evolved to include controversial, short-form content similar to TikTok or IG Reels videos, using Amelia’s voice and sparking curiosity. These ads targeted players motivated by curiosity, power, expertise, and progression, highlighting themes like “weak winning over strong” and the ant breeding process in the game. The ads often tap into novelty, with gameplay inspired by popular games like Hero Wars, Top War, and Rise of Kingdoms, appealing to those seeking to build, manage, and improve in the game world.
This article examines the role of creatives—ranging from ad campaigns to storytelling techniques—in driving player motivation, user acquisition, and long-term retention. Perfect for mobile gamers, creative marketers, and game designers, this in-depth analysis offers actionable insights into how The Ants: Underground Kingdom has mastered the art of combining gameplay with strategic advertising to stand out in the competitive world of mobile games.
How did StarUnion’s region-specific advertising strategy contribute to the success of “The Ants: Underground Kingdom”?
StarUnion’s region-specific advertising strategy contributed to the success of “The Ants: Underground Kingdom” in following ways :
Behind all of the success, its promoting and advertising strategy.
StarUnion was very cautious when taking their first step. In the beginning, they flexibly change the advertisement target region. When the game was just published on Google Play Store The Ants were mainly advertised in Europe and the United States regions.
Time lapsed to June, when “The Ants: Underground Kingdom” was launched on iOS, and the main advertisement regions became more precise. Based on the results from the Android test, StarUnion selected Korea, Australia, Canada, the United States, and Japan as the key targets for future advertising.
Precise Ad format choice
In terms of the choice of Ad format, “The Ants: Underground Kingdom” is also mostly video-based, and the main methods used are also very characteristic of the game itself.
The video ads drive the whole performance of the game. They are also running some static images but it’s a negligible amount of ads in comparison with videos. Most of the inspiration is taken from games like Hero Wars, Kingdoms Guard, Top War, Evony, and others which also stole the inspiration from hypercasual games. But they also create their own creative ideas that are driven by motivations that cover most types of players and game genres like Progression, Power, Expertise, etc.
- Progression – Players who take pride in building, managing, and improving things.
- Power – Players who want the power that they don’t have in real life.
- Expertise – Players who want to develop an ability to do something exceptionally well.
Fun fact – they are using square, vertical, and horizontal creative formats 99% of the time and hardly use an Instagram format of videos. Creatives with a ratio: of 4:5 or 1080×1350 from our tests always beats the classic square format used in Instagram News Feed or even Facebook News Feed placement in terms of lower CPI and of course higher ROAS. But always make sure that the visuals are perfectly sized and cropped. It’s a simple process to ensure that your ads look perfect, and it can have a big and very profitable impact on your campaigns. z
What are the most effective video ad themes used by “The Ants: Underground Kingdom” to attract different types of players?
Realistic life of Ants
the most effective video ad themes used by “The Ants: Underground Kingdom” are as followed :
At the beginning of advertising, they used real acting videos by “Ants” a lot. They are still active in Japan where this kind of material is easier to attract insect lovers, especially Japanese players who are familiar with insect culture. Usually, people won’t understand the life habits of ants without research. Let’s think when you suddenly see this kind of uncommon video when you are online surfing on your phone, whether you are interested or not, more or less you will stay on this page for a while, sometimes the most uncommon thing is the most effective one.
Later on, they started producing a bit controversial type of ads that copied popular videos from IG shorts or TikTok in combination with Amelia’s voice (the woman behind the famous text-to-speech feature).
In this concrete case, the player’s motivation will be curiosity. There is no gameplay shown or some other cut from the game itself only the end cart which is the same as every other video from their production.
This type of video ad is tailored for TikTok or IG Reels where the best practice is to use real-life people and situations to look like naive content. Also, the creative length fits the ideal length up to 15s.
Leveling-up, win with weak
This type of method has been used in Chen Li’s previous work “Mafia City”, and in this ant game, the differences of identity is transformed into the size difference between the ants and lizards or other common ants opponent, which is even more immersive than the original version. Through hardworking to improve levels, and then instantly KO the opponents, this kind of weak ones winning the strong used here, the effect is particularly significant.
There also made Christmas version of this kind of video ad. In this ad the player motivation fits power. That means the ad is tailored Players who want the power that they cannot achieve outside of the game. Many gamers play with a focused purpose of defeating others and achieving victory.
Similar approach as the previous ad but it’s more tailored to the type of players that are motivated by expertise. Players who want to develop an ability to do something exceptionally well.
Also used method win with weak but focused on players that motivate progression. Players who take pride in building, managing, and improving things.
Also another example were used progression as an player motivation.
Unique theme: ant breeding
Most people don’t raise ants in their own homes, right? But we all know that the existence of the ant queen, so if we see this kind of content that you can build an ant kingdom in the game, users who seek novelty will probably try it. It is also one of the main tools of this game to show the reproduction process of ants through exaggeration.
Progression as an player motivation
Expertise as an player motivation
Power as an player motivation
Copy competitors
Also as we mentioned early, most of the inspiration is taken from games like Hero Wars, Kingdoms Guard, Top War, Evony, and others which also stole the inspiration from hypercasual games. Here is a couple of examples:
