pachino55 2024-10-08 04:22
Cool!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Ants Assemble
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 211 | 3.91 | 36 | |
| Fun | 307 | 3.67 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 217 | 3.71 | 35 | |
| Theme | 97 | 4.23 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 501 | 3.72 | 35 | |
| Audio | 212 | 3.75 | 34 | |
| Humor | 749 | 2.63 | 31 | |
| Mood | 366 | 3.72 | 35 |
Cool!
cool ant colony sim
It's pretty good, I like it! Maybe a minor nitpick but I think the areas you discover should stay discovered forever and not slowly get 'undiscovered'
By far one of the best games i´ve played this LD. You start playing and then the next thing you notice is that you have played for 30 minutes. Well done!!
Interesting mechanics with the vision circles!
Really nice entry ! :smiley:
If may suggest: it could be interesting to have task "explore" or "defend" to affect to ants
Looks cute! Ant Nest Game!
I have come across several ant games and this game is the best among them. It is very pleasant to play, but at 12 minutes it seemed too monotonous. I also didn't like the way the ants cluster in one spot and can't be singled out for singularity
photo_2024-10-08_12-37-30.jpg
Really nice entry; the graphics, sound, and general feel all compliment each other and the whole experience feels really cohesive.
I did run into some performance issues on the HTML5 version as my colony grew, I'm not sure if it was the pathfinding or something else, but it became noticably slow and stuttery. However this isn't reflected in my scoring because I'm certain it wouldn't be an issue on the Windows version.
The gameplay loop is solid, however after an while it did get frustrating to have to keep sending out ants to reconnoitre areas I had already been shortly before and it started to feel like a bit of a chore.
I think this is a great execution of a RTS for a jam, a thematically it makes complete sense. The pheromone trail system is fantastic.
Overall I really enjoyed this, and it's a wonderful entry, thank you.
Nice little game! It reminds me of one of my favorite childhood game: [SimAnt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimAnt).
The only issue I had is that the corpse of the giant bad ants never disappeared. You can even see them on the ending screen.
Capture2.PNG
I would have been nice to add something to build some kind of outposts to clear the "fog of war" in some parts of the map.
Good job!
@kotolazer Yeah, agent avoidance was and still is a problem, which proved to be way more difficult than anticipated. You can still select single ants by only clicking once and then move them away, but thats obviously not very user friendly. Also I agree that the game loop from hive level 3 on could use some work, it can feel quite grindy due to the resources being far away. Glad that you enjoyed it though!
@slippers Performance does become an issue at 10+ workers, especially on web (im sure this could be optimized a lot, but time is merciless...). I agree that for the endgame some outposts for resource dispension would be nice, to minimize return time. In retrospect we should probably have increased worker speed on hive upgrade but it is what is... I'm glad that you noticed the pheremone system though, I also thought it was quite neat :)
@chocolat-endive Oh whoops, missed that in testing. Outposts would be a nice design choice, could have just spawned them in on a certain hive level. Good catch though, and congrats on finishing the game :)
Capture d’écran 2024-10-08 164600.png
Nice game, had fun playing it for more than 20mn!
Big ants doesn't disappear (see final screenshot). The only annoying thing I could tell is when I order them to stay in the center (clicking at the base), they still want to do something else after few seconds. Also would have been better to not have overlap, as we have to click on one ant to separate and dispatch the ants.
But nice game, I like it!
I honestly loved the game. I don't know why, but i just really enjoyed playing it. I love the graphics, the audio is fitting, it's very fun, and all around just a good game.
One thing that i would like is for the explored areas to stay explored, but thats it. Maybe also a better way to handle the ants, since it gets messy when they stack.
Really enjoyed playing this, felt like a proper RTS as I was balancing exploration with defence. One bug I noticed was that if you attack an enemy ant before it gets to the hive, and then run away, it seems to break the AI as it just sits there. Great entry!
cute sim. i like the mechanics and the atmosphere a lot. except maybe i would've liked if the areas stayed visible after i visited them. great game. good job.
Nice game you got there. It really felt like the ants were following each other via pheromones. :D
The game looked good and felt well polished, I wish we could unzoom more and leave the discovered areas discovered. Still fun well made game, congrats!
@schadocalex The pheromone system, while very interesting was a bit tough to integrate, because it should feel like the ants are following their trails, but you don't want to take to much control away from the user (basically the issue you described). Thats why the ants will only start following trails when they are in an idle state, which happens after they interact with their hive. After you command them to a specific point, they never switch back to idle and therefore never walk away. This is not extensively communicated in game as we didn't want to overload the user with too much information (so I'm doing it now :) ). Glad you enjoyed the rest of the game and had fun beating it!
One of the best games of this jam for me! I generally love RTS genre games, I also love ants, and in this game everything came together :)
I want to highlight the music separately and how it blends with the gameplay. It perfectly conveys the current mood of the game!
I completed the game entirely. It's very short and doesn't allow for boredom. In theory, this concept could be developed into a full-fledged game, where there would be scout ants, warriors, workers, and maybe something else.
Overall, my impressions of the game are only positive, thank you :)
@cliva Glad you enjoyed the music, there are 6 different (short) tracks split into 3 daytime and 3 nighttime, being triggered with a certain probability on day/night switch. Great to hear that you took the time to finish the entire game!
Impressive entry! I had a blast playing it. The art and audio are very relaxing and it is satisfying to explore the map. I've only struggled with fighting, the ants weren't automatically engaging nearby enemies so it required micro management.
Great job on this entry!
Had fun playing! Game looks quite nice and the game mechanics work well, there is no obvious problems that I could see. Ambiance is super nice, music is great and the bird sounds when the morning breaks is perfect!
Just couple of small things that I could see trying out: - I would have liked a a bit more feedback when I gave a command eg. attacking the other ants, many times it felt a bit unclear if a command went through or did I misclick and had to try again. - Graphics wise maybe a little shadow on the ants and items might pop them out a bit more.
Good job!
Cool project fitting the theme nicely! Congrats :)
Wow great work on creating a whole ant colony simulation this is such a calming game. I didn't bump into any rival ants unfortunately, but had fun eating apple cores, leaves and stuff! Lovely stuff.
The game is really addictive! I really like the vision mechanics.
First I want to say this was good entry. Graphics were simple but consistent. Music was great and fit the games theme.
Things I liked: * Controls made sense and it was quite nice to send ants out * Music really fit with the game and was good * Enemy ants were clearly visible and their threat obvious by their sizing
Things that I wish were different: * I would have made the night time much less dark, felt sometime difficult to see * More feedback on selecting ants (cleaner highlight or white border) * Wish the controls were tightened. Sometimes I thought I had selected ants but actually had not so was controlling a different ant or ants. Goes hand in hand with above. * Wish the ants didn't overlap so perfectly when moving. It seems like I would get a bundle or 8-10 ants all in the same place making splitting them a pain. * I would like to have a fog of war system whereby the map stays but is darkened like classic RTS games. Rather than disappear entirely. * I got screwed by a random difficult spike with a giant ant, when most of my ants were further away. Felt a little annoying seeing as other ants did a lot less damage if hitting the base.
Overall was a really good entry and I hope you make more games for later Jams :thumbsup:
Hi @surfa, thanks for the extensive feedback. I agree that some of the controls feel a bit janky, due to a mixture of ants overlapping, the selection not being clear and some targets being hard to see. Agent avoidance was a bit of a problem during the jam, so we sadly had to replace it with a system that at least kind of seperates them upon reaching a target. We uploaded an updated version to itch.io which improves some of the enemy interactions (mainly ants being able to attack them automatically) and some of the target highlighting (no outline for selected ants though...). Glad you enjoyed the game in general!
Cool!It's really fun to control an ant colony.
Really appreciate the cohesive art and sound design. The tutorial was very impressive under the time limits, and gave me a clear understanding of how to play. A very impressive entry, congrats!
I liked it! It's a cool concept, and the music reminds me of a game called Earthworms for some reason lol
Cool game! I liked the relaxing atmosphere, what the game has! Nice game for ludum, I like the ludum games with minimalism and imagination. Your game is simple, but it has an interesting game design, what makes it a nice game for playing! Great job, good luck in next events!
Relaxing RTS game, controls are quite fluid, I would love a bit more feedback. The art is clean and the ambient sounds were a nice touch.
Perhaps the colony can be expanded with other defensive buildings etc. I really liked the slow building and upgrade aspect of the game.
I am super impressed that you were able to make such a polished RTS in the limited time you get during ludumdare! Everything felt crispy clean, usually when i play "gamejam RTS'es" they are super barebones, but here you could zoom out, press the buildings and the units (even drag the box to indicate what you are selecting) and UI would show who was selected etc. I salute the skills and effort that must have gone into making this! 🫡