Antwork by Thoastbot
A Network! Uhm, no... wait... Antwork! Thats what i wanted to say, thanks ants!
In this little simulator like game you can control your colony of ants by using specialized pheromone ants, that can direct other ants. Setup your network of ants, collect resources upgrade your colony and enjoy the complex designs you will come up with!
These ants need your help! They are running around like headless chicken!
But with these specialized pheromone ants you can send them signals where to go:
You can also upgrade your ants to make them stronger:
Word from the developer
Thanks for looking at my little game, i really enjoyed this Ludum Dare - and hope you like the gameplay i came up with as much as i do. What i'm especially proud about this ld is first of all that i finally got time to create an ingame tutorial - and that i created a game that can handle tons of little ants, that was the part i was most scared about in the beginning but it turned out great (at least at my end) - since i dont use an engine for my games it happens every other ld that people complain that the game runs "slow", has to do with framerates.
So, if you happen to feel the game is too slow, please let me know <3
What i used
- Code written in core JS (and a bit of html, css) in Visual Studio Code
- Sprites are made in paint.net
- Music is made with a guitar and fl studio
- Sounds are made with fl studio
| Link | https://ld59.kimrubendavid.com/LD59.zip |
| Link | https://ld59.kimrubendavid.com |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/antwork |
Ratings
| Overall | 94th | 3.643⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 101th | 3.524⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 55th | 3.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 84th | 4.024⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 129th | 3.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 50th | 3.786⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 133th | 2.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 109th | 3.595⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
Really happy to see someone is making an RTS like game which is very chill and about building up a network. The tutorial is good although I didn't realise the three ants together in the nest were an interactive button at first, perhaps having them a different colour from the inactive buttons could have helped.
The layered music is very nice and gave a reason to unlock all the ant types. The signalling mechanic is neat with you having to adapt your network for each additional ant colour unless you are lucky and get an ant of a single colour. Actually once you've branched off one colour pheromone ants with only one band of that colour are useful.
The mouse zoom was executed perfectly and there are just so many ants on screen with no slowdown. It might have been nice to have a minimap or more variation in the terrain to make it easier to tell where the camera was. The stat page is very indepth and could be used to get highscores.
Again it is amazing that this was made in such a short amount of time and is so fully featured, congrats :D
parroting Alex above, super impressive work. and your english is great!
I wasn’t able to direct my ants no matter what I tried. The most I managed was choosing a direction using the queen, but my ants still couldn’t reach the nearest mushroom.
The music is pleasant. I’d really like to be able to play this game.
There is actually a tutorial at the top right that one can follow to learn the whole gameplay - with it you unlock special pheromone ants and those you can use to direct your swarm of ants to collect food.
In the gifs i posted about this game you can see how the ants are getting directed as well as a gif with the whole ui - can you see any of that ui?
@hammeredzombie thanks! One question, could you see the tutorial and it was just that it wasn't enough to explain the gameplay, or did you also not see the ui?
@helslo yeah, looking at it now i should have added a status window like the one i got for the pheromone ants for the resources (and maybe even normal ants) aswell. Initially the idea for the limited resources was a system where you have to gather a set amount of ants of different colors to pick those up and bring them back to the anthill, but time made me cut it short and made them like mushrooms with a timer on top x) And yes, the mushrooms do indeed give way less than the limited resources.
i think an easy fix to help people like me is during the tutorial make the thing you want me to click pulse or glow. im the kind of person that can only learn a board game by playing it for example, so reading the text only gets me half way there, unless you tell me to go look in the left corner for the symbol and click it ill be guessing and spamming
And you ahve a good point, giving some indication like a highlight or an arrow that shows stuff could help, gonna keep that in mind for the next time. Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Pixelart was mostly nice. The upgrade ui looked a little rushed compared to other art in the game. I liked the dynamic music that kept my mind on flow as I managed my ants around.
All in all, good game. Expanding this could get interesting. If there were enemies, it could become great in the same lines as Creeper World or Particle Fleet: Emergence.
I like that you included a proper tutorial, thank you
Great music.