This was pretty cool! It started to freeze up after 350 ants. I love the simplistic pixel art and the natural filling of the map. I think it could be more fun and less of a simulation if you made it a little harder for the colony to survive.

I really enjoy games where you don't have to give orders to your "minions" and they just live by themself, but I think you could tweak some things to make it harder(like guy above me said) or maybe even add another anthill and you have to defeat it. Anyway I think it's worth your few minutes.

I love games like this. i had fun playing it. I only wish there was some sort of music.

Even though there's no real objective, I did manage to lose. Didn't realize my ants needed upkeep and accidentally starved to death. I don't know how the simulation works under the hood, but it would be cool if things like pheremone trails to food were implemented (and visible to player). As it is, the workers are frustratingly incompetent at finding food.

I agree with everything the two people above me said, except the freezing part that didn't happen.

It would be a good idea to have different colors between the different ant types so its a little easier to tell what the fudge is going on.

Cool little sim, would love to see it more fleshed out! Both music and some performance improvements would be nice, and the ability to set a target population for each type of ant instead of having to click every single time.
Good job!

Well, I'm about to die :P I had fun! Very soothing. I liked the part at the beginning where the scout ants were uncovering the map. It might be more fun (and more in theme?) if there was more rapid downward exploration, too, but I still liked this. Good job!

this thing is so great
the ants are so derpy fallin off trees'n'shit


i got carried away and made 250 workers
i never financially recovered from this
*sobs*

fantastic little game
really loved it
wall done there :-D

So I really like your game and I'm streaming Ludum Dare 48 games on saturday with my friend Teauorent on his Twitch channel - https://www.twitch.tv/teauorent - Saturday May 1st 4PM CET
First of all - that cool with you? This may redirect some traffic to your page for more people to try your LD48 game :smile:
If you'd like, please e-mails us anecdotes and sneak peeks of your creative process (photos, screenshots, beta/WIP asset renders, mood boards, concept Art, etc.) so we can present them alongside and illustrate your LD48 adventure to our audience :slight_smile:
Here's our e-mail to send all that good stuff to --> TeamChooChoo.GameJams@gmail.com [we will confirm receiving your e-mail(s) upon reception]
The show will be in french but I'm bilingual so you can totally submit in english, we'll take care of the rest :slight_smile:

Have a great day, I hope to hear from you soon - thanks for that great moment I spent testing your little nugget of a game, and see you in the chat on saturday I hope :heart: :smile:

Good little simulation! I enjoyed seening something so different to everything else ! Agreed with the others, just some sounds and maybe some tooltips about what the different ants do exactaly would really improve it! But good stuff :)

Interesting little simulator. Nice to just watch the ants do their own thing. Would've been nice to have a slider to change how many ants you want to spawn at once, having to spam the left mouse until you get to a nice number is tiring and takes a while. It would've also helped to know what the different ants do. Fighters obviously fight, but do workers dig deeper and scouts move around more? Or do the workers go above ground to get food? It's a little unclear.

That's an interesting mechanic :) Is it pixel color based? Like, the color dictates the AI behavior, leading to some very organic "life"-type simulation? Or did you use other approach?

Nice simulator, although some sound and differentiation between workers/fighters/scouts would've been great.

my game had a few bugs in it

like 600+ haha lmao

Thanks everyone for playing and rating! And thanks for your suggestions as well.
To answer some of your questions:
- AI indeed use pixels color to make decisions, and only have knowledge of neighbor pixels and where they are relative to queen
- Workers dig, bring food, and flee enemies. Fighters kill enemies. And scouts move around with a bigger vision range. Most of it is random decision making, giving a somehow organic result
- There's no game over condition, except for when the game freezes due to performance