LudumData

FORMIDRILL by Revetoon

[raw]
made by Revetoon for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

:arrowdown: Go to the links section to Play in Browser :arrowdown:

Explore treacherous depths of the Earth!

Your anthill has just developped a new machine, the Formidrill! It is the most powerful excavator ever built by ants, and your Queen intends to use it to explore deep down! Come aboard with her and try to survive whatever is waiting for you down there!

A nervous narrative real-time tactical game where you must think fast to allocate your worker ants to the right functions of the drill to fight back against angry worms and prevent overheating!

ant_cleanworm.png.PNG

Check out our trailer!

How to play

Formidrill is a nervous narrative real-time tactical game. As you go down into the earth, you must fight against worms and control the drill's internal temperature. * Fighting worms: place ants in the gun rooms and shoot worms with your mouse. Be careful, the left cannon only shoots left, the right cannon only right! * Controlling temperature: the more you go, the faster the temperature will rise! Place ants in the cooler room to bring the temperature down. * Keeping your ants alive: more ants mean more actions. Remove your ants from a room before it is attacked by a worm so it is not eaten alive! If you loose one ant, that may happen, watch out for new eggs laid by the queen, they need your workers' attention to hatch! * Some more surprises arrive later in the game, no spoilers here!

ant_pump.png.PNG

​Remember: keep cool, be aware, look everywhere for signs of danger!

Assets

Everything in this game has been made in the course of Ludum Dare 57, including: * Gameplay mechanics * Graphics * All musics and sounds * Shaders

Exceptions : * Fonts * Our logo splashscreen (Taboulé Recipe)

Tools

  • Game engine: Unity
  • Pixel art: Krita
  • Music: FL Studio

ant_walk.png.PNG

Changelog

v1.4

Patch 1.4 after Ludum Dare: * Add beeping sound for gauges * Reduce weapin cooldown * Cap temperature increase rate

v1.3

Patch 1.3 after Ludum Dare: * Add a "Click here" icon to improve ergonomy * Fix endgame (bugs & balance) * Fix depth display on Game Over screen * Fix ant animations (weapons room & egg) * Fix text bubbles overlapping interaction

v1.2

Small fixes during Ludum Dare.

v1.1

Small fixes during Ludum Dare.

v1.0

Original game release during the Ludum Dare.

HTML5 (Web) https://revetoon.itch.io/formidrill
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/formidrill

Ratings

Overall 22th 4.35⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 62th 4.083⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 64th 4.083⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 11th 4.533⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 114th 4.333⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Audio 274th 3.583⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Humor 42th 4.19⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Mood 88th 4.155⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

Poshaus
08. Apr 2025 · 03:39 UTC
AMAZING! really loved it, liked everything about it specially the sassy queen! "yes my queen"
slow chaz
08. Apr 2025 · 18:02 UTC
whaa! This is awesome. Really creative gameplay, funny writing, and the art is great too of course. I didn't realize I needed to click the ant at first to move them, but became obvious after doing so. Well done!
grizeldi
08. Apr 2025 · 18:04 UTC
I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but my guns don't fire at a worm despite there being an ant manning them
ToKto
08. Apr 2025 · 18:06 UTC
It's a very cool game, I liked the idea and the drawing, I would like it to pick up the pace faster, but overall, "cool game?" - "Yes, my queen")
Pythorogus
08. Apr 2025 · 18:07 UTC
YES MY QUEEN
Could have been the name of this game lol
Good job, nice graphics, gaemplay is cool.
The game can be pretty tough, but the mechanics are really cool
vangrail
08. Apr 2025 · 18:08 UTC
Great game! Very unique concept. I was constantly managing my ants waiting for more. It was visually hard to see when I click an ant. The text of the queen needs to be clicked I didnt know. Though the game has a lot of potential and ways to expand! Very well fitting. At the end I finally read millimeter instead of meter :)
Flying Butter Studio
08. Apr 2025 · 18:13 UTC
Amazing work! A little bit to low for me at the beginning but all the rest is perfect! Great job I had a good time playing it! :smile:
JojoPalambas
08. Apr 2025 · 18:45 UTC
@grizeldi This is a not-so-intuitive mechanic, when an ant is in the gun you must click on incoming worms on the side of this gun :)
Jack Turpitt
09. Apr 2025 · 09:49 UTC
Such a sick game! It was beautifully tutorialised - I was immediately immersed in the gameplay and new mechanics were trickled at the perfect time. I love how the intensity begins to crank up as eggs, guns, cooler, etc are introduced. The animations, writing, and music, are all really charming and I think this is a great take on the theme. Incredible submission, thank you for making it!
ScoobySnacks
09. Apr 2025 · 09:53 UTC
Very solid game! Fun and intuitive.
Yes my queen!
gsoutz
09. Apr 2025 · 09:56 UTC
very nice, except you have to wait 2 minutes mindlessly pressing buttons waiting in wonder if they even work.
Riggen
09. Apr 2025 · 10:00 UTC
I loved this game! Absolutely charming
someone
09. Apr 2025 · 10:14 UTC
That was great. Love the concept.
Having to manually fire the guns was unclear, considering how well explained everything else was.
The selected character could be more clear, I found I was often clicking expecting a character to move and nothing would happen making it feel a bit unresponsive sometimes. Especially when it gets frantic.
Some audio cues would have helped for the warnings.
I got as far as unlocking the second engine after a few tries. The difficulty ramps up very quickly after the slow intro.
Tori
09. Apr 2025 · 10:25 UTC
it's a pretty great entry and you made everything in 3 days, great work really, everything work very well together, i love the mecanics, the graphism and the music well done to the team !
blacklyte
12. Apr 2025 · 16:01 UTC
Makes me think of Mini Metro/Motorway meets FTL. Really like how the mechanics get introduced slowly and conspire to make you run round panicking to survive, the embodiment of the "this is fine" meme :)

Perfect addition to the little genre I label "Tranquil Stress Simulators"!
jtap
12. Apr 2025 · 20:43 UTC
Great game, I really liked it, it was fun and interesting to play. Great graphics, nice music, it's great that there is progress. Thank you!
Defrag
13. Apr 2025 · 17:00 UTC
This was a fun ant-themed version of FTL. I like the gradual, well-explained ramp up in difficulty. I was always wishing I had just one more ant - that queen wasn't helping nearly as much as I wanted her to. My only critical feedback would be that it was a little difficult recognizing if I had an ant selected. Otherwise, the graphics were great. Nice work making music that doesn't end up outstaying its welcome like many other LD entries.

I only made it a little over 4m. What is the high score?![snipbo.PNG](///raw/7bd/83/z/6c25c.png)
JojoPalambas
13. Apr 2025 · 22:22 UTC
@defrag Thank you for your feedback! About the depth reached, it cannot really be used as a score because if you take more time in the dialogs you will go further (and some parts of the game can be endlessly extended to reach infinite depth). Displaying depth is used for the player to have a little more immersive experience and to understand how long they have to dig until next section of the game, but unfortunately that's it :sweat_smile:
ColeSlaughter
15. Apr 2025 · 03:21 UTC
Really neat little FTL-like! Things really started to ramp up once the second cooling station was added.

I actually started to get pretty overwhelmed once the engine room posed a risk to my little guys. :sweat_smile:

Great entry all-around!
Yuri Antonov
21. Apr 2025 · 03:43 UTC
+ idea and mechanics like a FTL underground
+ music
- art & animations (not expressive)

In general my favorite game on the jam. It can be growing to more complex and interesting player experience. I hope you will develop it. Add more stuff and mechanics. And maybe goal. Why we growing so deep? And where is the finish line?
Ammonit
21. Apr 2025 · 05:26 UTC
How did I miss such an awesome game? Mind-blowing!!! The graphics, music, everything is simple, clear, and perfectly balanced! The controls felt a bit clunky, and I didn’t fully get why the character selection cancels, so I had to click multiple times, but that’s minor! Really cool game!!! Best of luck to you!
Zettelkasten
21. Apr 2025 · 11:15 UTC
Very fun, very polished. I'm really impressed by this entry.
The small details (such as that all the ant workers speak at the same time) adds a lot, and overall, the concept just makes sense. Could also see myself playing this as a full fletched game, great job.
JamesGames1000
21. Apr 2025 · 15:15 UTC
Fun game but near 10000mm it's kind of the same also I have to stop my drill every 100 mm because the engines overheat a little too fast. It's one of the best games for this LD so good job :)
![FORMIDRILL by Revetoon - Google Chrome 4_21_2025 9_13_34 AM.png](///raw/c7e/36/z/6c601.png)
Also is there an end?
LeReveur
21. Apr 2025 · 20:26 UTC
Not the kind of games I'm good with, but it was fun to try. Nice realisation, I really like all the details, the humour and the gameplay as a whole. Well done!
MaxDrago
23. Apr 2025 · 15:36 UTC
An excellent and addictive game of speed and reaction. Sometimes I didn't hit the ant, but maybe that's my fault. Great game!
JojoPalambas
25. Apr 2025 · 07:19 UTC
Thank you all for the nice feedback :heart_eyes:

@jamesgames1000 Sorry to tell you that but there isn't really an end to the game; however by this screenshot I can tell that you have seen everything there is to see in the whole game, and I am truly wondering if I have ever been this far without tweaking the parameters to test it... At this point the game is supposed to become overwhelmingly difficult (because we hadn't time to make a scenarized end) so congrats for truly beating the game!
JamesGames1000
26. Apr 2025 · 00:25 UTC
@jojopalambas XD it was really hard, but even though it was a little repetitive near the end It was so fun, if you told me that the end was at 20'000 mm I probably would have gone there even if you didn't change anything. I would love to see your game get a high rating or even win!!