Anthill

eerongal 2024-10-07 23:19

Interesting little game. Even the easy mode is kinda hard, though, and it's a little tough to get it to work exactly how you want it to at times. That said, great game, nice work!

thesand 2024-10-08 08:06

Great entry and fun for this ludum dare round! I liked that you included a sandbox without the rain, cause at the start i had some trouble understanding how to build a good base. But after practising in sandbox, i went straight to try and beat the hard mode, but feel like the 15min is a bit long. Felt that after 7-10 i felt a bit of eye strain of all the rain and moving pixels. But overall a really good game! well done :)

mal 2024-10-08 08:16

I could see myself spending way too much time trying to beat this game

pachino55 2024-10-10 23:39

I like the sandbox component of this game, nice job!

recher 2024-10-12 15:31

I trained myself in the sandbox mode, then I tested the normal mode. I tried numerous times to survive more than one minute, I never made it and it was really frustrating.

Some water falls immediatly at the beginning, you have very little time to move your queen in a safer place.

... safer place which is never really safe, because water flows in the earth.

The few grubs I managed to create were instantly destroyed, because any little drop of humidity instantly kill them.

Anyway, even if I managed to protect them more, they take too long to transform into an ant.

The ants dies very quickly too. Because they are always going up to evacuate dirt, and they die in the rain.

I tried to dig a hole, then block it with dirt to protect me. But then, all the other dirt I ordered to dig were not done, for some obscure reason. I ordered to put dirt in an accessible place, so that the ants would finally dig the ordered holes. Nothing happened (and I still had ants).

The UI really doesn't help to understand what is happening. You can't make the difference between an immobile dirt square and a dirt square currently moved by an ant. You can't really predict what the rain will do when it goes in the earth.

I started with a very good intention, because I love these sort of building games with creatures you don't directly control. But at the end it was very frustrating.

Maybe, just with some little more time before the rain starts to fall, it could help.

tesseract 2024-10-12 21:49

@recher Thanks for the detailed feedback, it's really helpful to hear this.

You're right about the difficulty, we were unreasonably worried about the fact that it's possible to survive indefinitely, and hard mode was the only mode that existed until pretty close to the end of the contest.

Strategy recommendations (possibly useful for other players):

- You don't need to move your queen much initially - dig up enough dirt below her (and let them build tunnel wall wherever they want) , and she'll spawn grubs and won't drown. - Don't ask your ants to dig at the bottom of a pit during the first rainfall or they will drown. They can dig a bit on the surface, but leaving them safely in the air until rain eases off is also fine. - Don't worry about your earliest grubs dying. Once the first rain begins to ease off, build a 3 tile roof a bit above the queen, and some grubs should live long enough to hatch. - More layers of roof directly above the queen will keep more grubs alive. Walls on the side of the pit beneath her, and drainage tunnels going diagonally down to the sides of it will keep the pit dry, allowing you to keep digging during rainfall (although extending the drainage tunnels gets difficult).

Sorry that the UI wasn't clear enough.

When your ants weren't doing anything, it was probably because they couldn't find valid targets (if they try to dig something and can't find a path to a "place dirt" order or empty air, then they cancel the dig order. after you ordered placing dirt, they probably couldn't find a path to any dig orders because the reachable ones had all been cancelled).

> You can’t make the difference between an immobile dirt square and a dirt square currently moved by an ant. You can’t really predict what the rain will do when it goes in the earth.

We could have added something to indicate when dirt was being dragged. In general but if a dirt square is being moved by an ant, it's probably moving. If it's not moving, they probably dropped it (although there might be a hidden delayed order). Right-clicking a square will cancel any orders and stop it being dragged, so is a good way to reset the state.

The random behavior of rain is intentional - it's impossible to keep a base completely dry, but with enough layers of appropriately shaped rooves, you can give grubs a 99% chance of hatching.

Thanks again for the feedback, there are some things we should have just done (like highlighting things being dragged, and less rain at the start on the easier difficulty), and some things we wanted to do but didn't have time to get right (like keeping the ants out of the rain). Sorry it was so frustrating.

recher 2024-10-13 11:46

@tesseract thank you very much for the strategy tips.

I may retry the game in some days, if I find time to do it.

ditam 2024-10-13 19:15

Wow, the hints and the strategy recommendations in the comments made me realize I didn't even scratch the surface of this game yet. [This is me reading them.](https://i.imgflip.com/96kiyn.jpg)

I'd love to see some screenshots (or playthrough videos) of how other people build their anthills, I couldn't get very far without drowning my ants :(

I kinda love the minimalistic UI in contrast with the complex systems, makes you think of Dwarf Fortress. It'd be cool if a post-jam update added a version with a less steep learning curve. Maybe the mechanics could be introduced one by one, or there could be levels with simple progressive goals like "generate 3 grub" or "make your workers survive the next rainfall". But I guess having the different difficulties and modes available is pretty good for a jam submission already!

drludos 2024-10-13 21:13

Woaw, this is an interesting entry! I love the minimalistic UI + insane gameplay depth combo! It took me some times to get a hold of the game, but reading help (and comments here :p) did help. The game fits very well the theme, both graphically and gameplay wise with the ant colony development.

I hope you keep working on it, for example by adding an interactive tutorial at the beginning of the game :).

Great work.

weine 2024-10-20 17:20

I think there's some heavy mechanics under the surface (pun intended) here. I think it could become interesting with a bit more polish on the difficulty and presentation.