Ants at War by magicspark
"Ants at War" is a 2D real-time strategy game, with a flavor of tower defense game.
Two different species of ants are fighting to protect their respective queen.
Gameplay:
- Your are the black ants and are fighting against the red ones.
- Queens drop automatically some ants from time to time.
- Additional units and "towers" can be bought in the sidebar.
- Left-Click on a unit to see the life remaining.
- Right-Click to hide the popup menu.
Units/Turrets:
- Worker ant: not so effective, but costs only 50.
- Soldier ant: very aggressive against other units, cost 120.
- Spider web: slow down units, damage a little bit units, and is not very robust.
- Rocks: obstacle, can be destructed.
- Antlion: if yours, will only eat enemy units.
There are two turrets that have not been fully implemented yet and are not available in the game: a golden ground beetle, and a cicindela larva. They might appear in a post-jam version of the game! The same goes for other variants of ants (acid-throwing ants, and others...).
POST-JAM UPDATE (version 1.2.4):
- Several bug fixes (path-finding, ants sometimes freezing, enemy queens were not spawning soldier units, queens were not checking spawning area and consequently stacked units...).
- Path-finding weights has been changed on each map.
- Multiple enemy queens on the third map.
- Buttons "play"/"stop" added in the pause screen.
- Units production can be queued.
- Costs of turrets/units has been balanced a bit.
- When clicking on an unit, a description has been added to the tooltip.
- Several code changes to ensure that the game runs fine on Wine (Linux).
- Rocks and spider-webs have now four different visuals.
- Destruction of rocks is now visually progressive.
- Multiple buildings can now be created by a single click (as if you were painting with the building).
Credits:
Olivier and Sylvain Wenger (@bigsylvain)
Two different species of ants are fighting to protect their respective queen.
Gameplay:
- Your are the black ants and are fighting against the red ones.
- Queens drop automatically some ants from time to time.
- Additional units and "towers" can be bought in the sidebar.
- Left-Click on a unit to see the life remaining.
- Right-Click to hide the popup menu.
Units/Turrets:
- Worker ant: not so effective, but costs only 50.
- Soldier ant: very aggressive against other units, cost 120.
- Spider web: slow down units, damage a little bit units, and is not very robust.
- Rocks: obstacle, can be destructed.
- Antlion: if yours, will only eat enemy units.
There are two turrets that have not been fully implemented yet and are not available in the game: a golden ground beetle, and a cicindela larva. They might appear in a post-jam version of the game! The same goes for other variants of ants (acid-throwing ants, and others...).
POST-JAM UPDATE (version 1.2.4):
- Several bug fixes (path-finding, ants sometimes freezing, enemy queens were not spawning soldier units, queens were not checking spawning area and consequently stacked units...).
- Path-finding weights has been changed on each map.
- Multiple enemy queens on the third map.
- Buttons "play"/"stop" added in the pause screen.
- Units production can be queued.
- Costs of turrets/units has been balanced a bit.
- When clicking on an unit, a description has been added to the tooltip.
- Several code changes to ensure that the game runs fine on Wine (Linux).
- Rocks and spider-webs have now four different visuals.
- Destruction of rocks is now visually progressive.
- Multiple buildings can now be created by a single click (as if you were painting with the building).
Credits:
Olivier and Sylvain Wenger (@bigsylvain)
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.45 | 211 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.53 | 162 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.91 | 428 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.53 | 28 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.45 | 414 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.02 | 370 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.32 | 253 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.33 | 281 |
It's extremely easy, you only need 2-3 ants to win because once they make it to the enemy queen the new enemy ants that spawn not defend it, they just come to attack your queen instead.
You can just get a couple ants attacking the enemy queen and block yours off with rocks.
I think it would be better if the rocks were a lot easier to break.
In the mushroom level is there two pathways going around your side of the map but nothing will ever go through the bottom side, even if you block the top off completely.
The music and art for this game is amazing, and I think the ants seem to dance to the soundtrack sometimes? That's awesome :)
@harleylaurie: the queens used to drop also soldiers ants, which enabled them to be more defended. However, we saw just after the deadline that a variable had changed and that the queens only drop workers ants all the time... I'll have to test for the mushroom level, maybe the weights on the map are not adapted.
@Clinthoney: we had planned to add a lot more stuff to the game, for example some text instead of just "victory" or "defeat". Basically, you can buy some additional units, or "plant" things in the ground to prevent the red ants to attack the queen.
The art style is top-notch though, and this could definitely become something great when completed.
Other than that it was good fun.
Excellent job! :D
Overall, this is a cool idea that I'd like to see fleshed out.
The first is that there should have been a cooldown on all the units this was kinda essential I feel because I would just keep spamming the soldier units.
The second thing is that the enemy ant queen should have used the soldier ants as well this would have added a bit of difficulty as well since they are a lot harder to kill.
There was a bug in the game I found though and that was in the third level where all the ants stopped moving. I'm not completely sure why but I have an idea that if one ant is stuck all the others stop moving. I came to this conclusion because I got one my ants stuck in rocks I placed and all the other ants stopped.
Again good job on the game and if you do continue this after the fact I hope it all goes well and turns into what you envisioned for it!
It has a lot of potential!
Polish & fun!
The only issues I ran into was so many ants getting caught in an ant lion pit crashing/freezing the game. So awesome job.
Also this was featured in a handy dandy Ludum Dare showcase ta boot. http://youtu.be/HB1A8GTxm5Q