Projects

Dead End Job

Madcap ghostbustin' in this procedurally generated twin-stick shooter
Dead End Job merges the frantic fun action of a twin-stick shooter with the iconic look of a 90's cartoon. It even has its own theme song!

Break out the plasma blaster and vacuum pack, there's ghosts to clean out.

You take on the role of Hector Plasm, a worker at Ghoul-B-Gone – the #1 experts in paranormal pest control. Blast ghosts and then suck them up using your trusty vacuum pack, as every ghost you catch, citizen rescued, and job completed is added to the client’s bill.

Levels are procedurally generated couch co-op, and with Twitch and Mixer integration, Streamers can let their audience choose upgrades and pickups. For you, it’s just another day in the office.

Ant workshop brought us in from the early prototype stages on Dead End Job to help develop the positioning and explore the market opportunity for a game like this. We also did the initial PR announcements for Dead End Job and assisted with investment pitch writing, which resulted in Ant Workshop being awarded funds from the UK Games Fund in 2018.

We initially created a route to market document that outlined the core marketing platforms, audience size and customer journey for Dead End Job. This mapped out an initial marketing budget and roadmap which became the backbone of the full Global Marketing Plan that followed. The Global Marketing Plan was a complete powerpoint that detailed all aspects of the marketing campaign. This included: marketing objectives, full marketing timeline, the key communication pillars, a full SWOT analysis and audience profiling. Finally it detailed the core strategies for each marketing discipline so Ant Workshop had a complete picture of the entire campaign from start to finish.

Next we were tasked in coming up with straplines and positioning text for Dead End Job to use across PR, store pages and other external channels.

For the PC announcement we negotiated an exclusive with Eurogamer ahead of EGX Rezzed 2017 where is was compared to a “2D Luigi’s Mansion”, and followed up with the Nintendo Switch announcement the following summer; which resulted articles from the likes of Destructoid, Nintendo Life and DualShockers.

Dead End Job was subsequently picked up by games publisher, HeadUp Games, who then managed the launches on all platforms.

AboutAnt Workshop

Ants – tiny, strong, focused, good at working with others to achieve their goals and often with a nasty bite. Some of these characteristics (not so much the bitey ones) are also shared by Ant Workshop, a small independent game developer and game design consultancy based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Find out more at www.ant-workshop.com.