Kolony by sknoslo

[raw]
made by sknoslo for LD29 (COMPO)
Kolony is an ant colony simulator, with some natural selection.

How to Play:
Just click the end of a path to draw new paths. Drawing paths to the surface allows ants to eat. Press escape to return to the menu so you can start over.

Ants can die from starvation and overpopulation.

HINTS: I realize that most people won't bother to try again after losing all their ants so I'd like to give some 'strategy' tips.

Basically all you have to do is keep your number of ants close to the max population. If you draw to many paths right away your ants will almost certainly starve to death. If you don't have enough paths and your colony becomes overpopulated a portion of your ants will die. This isn't a huge problem when your population is small but can destroy your colony if you have, say 1000 ants and 100 of them die because of overpopulation.

Technical Details:
Written in Lua using the awesome [LOVE](http://love2d.org) framework. Also using [hump](http://vrld.github.io/hump/).

If you have LOVE 0.9.x installed you can download the Linux (Generic) version. Otherwise download the version for your platform. It was developed on Linux, but tested on Win8. If you have any troubles running it let me know.

Ratings

Coolness 50% 3
Overall 2.97 754
Fun 2.54 955
Graphics 2.04 1182
Innovation 3.32 384
Mood 2.42 1024
Theme 3.71 178

Feedback

abrie
28. Apr 2014 路 04:11 UTC
OSX 10.9.2 verified as working.
馃帳 sknoslo
28. Apr 2014 路 04:16 UTC
Thanks for letting me know!
Joe Williamson
28. Apr 2014 路 04:29 UTC
I keep killing all my ants! xD
shuanDang
28. Apr 2014 路 04:59 UTC
Yeah I lost all my ants too :( Drawing lines is so fun but it kills them..
Idkfawin32
28. Apr 2014 路 05:00 UTC
Actually quite challenging
jtpup0
28. Apr 2014 路 05:08 UTC
Pretty awesome, ants seem to die way too fast though even if given ample destination to the surface
UltimateWalrus
28. Apr 2014 路 05:29 UTC
It's an interesting prototype, but it's not exactly clear what I'm supposed to be doing, and the ants are very hard to see.
Dreii
28. Apr 2014 路 07:13 UTC
Nice! reminds me of SimAnt, loved that game when i was a kid!
Oddly Shaped Pixels
28. Apr 2014 路 10:53 UTC
Really nice entry, super interesting! Drawing lines is fun but I haven't quite yet figured out how to go higher than 50 :)
Ludonaut
28. Apr 2014 路 15:34 UTC
Interesting. I really like this idea a lot. I also killed all my ants.
MrBlade
28. Apr 2014 路 21:18 UTC
At first, I thought this game was rather boring, the ants are meh, meh graphics, but, after playing for a little while, I fell oddly in love with this game.

I really enjoy building little paths for my ants and watch them discover it, making routes up to the surface, and seeing them come up for food. Somethin' magical about ants, man. Keep up the good work.
pancakecity
29. Apr 2014 路 02:13 UTC
Maintaining an increasing population is a delicate balancing act!
Linus Lindberg
29. Apr 2014 路 19:19 UTC
Great game for an LD!
Very fun to play, but after getting the hang of it it was a little too easy.. I'd love to play a full version with maybe floods, birds or other insects to disturb your colony. :)
馃帳 sknoslo
30. Apr 2014 路 00:35 UTC
@Linus Lindberg I had plans for "natural disasters" such as rain and magnifying glasses, but I had some other plans on the weekend to work around so I didn't get around to it. Thanks for the feedback!
Thorig
30. Apr 2014 路 09:55 UTC
I just keep losing my ants after the population start to grow and make 1 small path for them.
Anti
30. Apr 2014 路 20:41 UTC
A very hard and challenging game. I like it. In short, a good game.
CheeseyBob
30. Apr 2014 路 20:47 UTC
I'm not seeing any of my ants :( kinda ruins the point of the game, so I'll hold off rating it.
@sknoslo any ideas on how to fix this? I'm running windows 8 btw :/
馃帳 sknoslo
30. Apr 2014 路 21:40 UTC
@CheeseyBob, what is your screen resolution? The ants are drawn as a single pixel... and I only got around to testing it on a 1080p monitor, so I'm guessing it could be hard to see if you had a really high pixel density display. I'd like to see a screenshot though if you have the time.
ninjacharlie
01. May 2014 路 18:33 UTC
Interesting gameplay. I really like the tunnel drawing mechanic. I could see this being one of those faux simulation games kinda like Pandemic II or something. Good job :)
CheeseyBob
01. May 2014 路 20:45 UTC
@sknoslo, my screen res is 1920x1080, but the game runs in an 800x600 window. I can see the ants in your screenshots though, but not at all when I run the game. It may be because I'm on a 64-bit system? I tried a bunch of compatability things to no avail.
Here's the screenshot:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/qybvincj8602vhp/screenshot.png
minibutmany
03. May 2014 路 23:19 UTC
Interesting concept and fun. I would have liked to see a menu and sound though.
馃帳 sknoslo
04. May 2014 路 19:20 UTC
@CheeseyBob, that is very strange. Thanks for the screenshot. I also tried it on 64 bit Win8 and it worked fine. Not really sure what could be happening...
romandtom
08. May 2014 路 05:37 UTC
Its cool, but I dont feel like controling anything :S