Why is Aftermath so cheap?

Once upon a time, Kickstarter board games were a good deal and comparatively cheap. Take for example Gloomhaven: If you had participated in the Kickstarter, the regular version with plastic miniatures would have cost you $79. If you buy Gloomhaven today on Amazon, you pay $116.99, and that is already discounted from a $139.99 MSRP. In 2021, I pledged €99 for a base copy of Agemonia without miniatures (except for the heroes), because I didn't want to pay €149 for the version with miniatures. Games that aren't crowdfunded aren't much cheaper, so I didn't pick up the new Descent for $175 MSRP (or about $140 discounted).

So I was watching a YouTube video about the best narrative games, and stumbled upon Aftermath from Plaid Hat Games. Now I did like their Forgotten Waters, so I checked some gameplay videos and really liked what I saw: You play a group of rodents in a post-apocalyptic world, with missions that involve stuff like getting a pack of snacks out of a vending machine. The game has various missions, variable encounters even if you revisit the same map, and a colony management system between missions. Reminded me of Kingdom Death: Monsters in the cute and more casual-friendly version. The game comes with 23 plastic figures of heroes and monsters (and cardboard tokens for less monsters), and those plastic figures are surprisingly large. And what does the whole thing cost? $85 MSRP, but discounted to under $50 on Amazon.com. As that would be a lot of delay and shipping cost from the USA to Europe, I ended up buying an English version on Amazon.de for €60, which is still a steal.

Why is this game so cheap, compared to games with similar amount of components and fewer / smaller miniatures? One possibility is that this is because the game is from 2019, before inflation and shipping cost exploded, and nobody has adjusted the price to the new reality yet. The other possibility is that some board game companies with games that aren't crowdfunded are still conservative with their pricing. While all the hype of some Kickstarter board game projects and an increased demand during lockdown periods has maybe persuaded some other companies that they could gouge their customers some more, pocketing the money while blaming inflation. I must admit that I backed some of those games at prices I wasn't sure were justified, even if I mostly limited myself to the basic versions of the core pledge. But with a growing collection, and rising prices, I might skip more crowdfunding campaigns next year.