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Don't forget about mushrooms! Specific mushrooms serve as food for the ants, and are cultivated using the live matter they find arround. As we know, some mushrooms do have bizarre and interesting properties so we could extrapolate on that and make a mushroom planting structure that would transport those resources to a mage training building!
what if the ants collect pigment from flowers or colorful beetles to make dye and then art? they could even decorate buildings to give them a culture bonus!
have you thought of linking enemies spawns to culture buildings? something like: if a weaver's hut is built, spiders start spawning and the ignore buildings but the weaver's hut. this way. since the goal of a game is producing culture, the more culture buildings you have, the stronger the enemy waves are. finally, a tiering system (S Rank, A rank and so on) depending on how fast (i.e how many days) did it take to finish the level. this way, players are choosing their own difficulty on how good they play, without even noticing
i think there should be other ant colonies u can conquer and fight to further expand. maybe open world of sorts. converting enemy ants could result in more culture too but is high risk high reward
Probably better to leave those for a little later, stuff like more in-depth resource and building interactions and QoL Still definitely support tho, the lil goobers going up and down on a seesaw would be hilarious and adorable
I just got the best idea, but a really big one: Once you're pretty far into the game, you'll be able to build a MINE. This mine will allow you to switch between two screens: The surface (what you've been playing on since the start), and the underground, which will be completely buried with just a little empty spot where your mine was built. There you can have your ants chisel away through the dirt making more space for stuff to build. You could get a new resource, stone-where the ants would bring it back up to the surface. There could different types of enemies that ambush you underground, so you'll need defenses there too. Maybe you could find special ores and set up minecarts 'n' stuff. I don't know, just an idea I suddenly got. I had to tell you, even if rejected it, it would add more stuff to do in the game for the late-game.
I think the culture system is a great idea! It would be really cool if there was some sort of museum building in which you can collect certain rare items (or at least ones you have to go very out of your way for) to get lots of culture points. I’d imagine you’d collect one of each requested item and some would have unique or obscure collection methods or low drop rates.
You could add alternate types of ants into the game that you unlock as you complete more levels, such as leaf cutter ants. Basically leaf cutters gain their food from cutting leaves and growing fungus gardens with the shredded leaves as fertilizer. This could give a use to the small reeds/ shrubs scattered around the map. This is pretty advanced but it would be cool to see some day in a variation of this. Edit: after writing this I see that The top comment says basically the same thing, although it would still be cool
Sounds like the over-arching game structure you're heading towards is something like Against the Storm, which seems like a good fit. Ants expand. You could have the opposing factor be rival ant nests as apposed to the AtS's titular storm. Ants IRL constantly are at war with other ants. Either way, cool stuff.
i very much agree with you that the game seems rich enough to focus on more than just military development. what could be super cool in regards to culture is if there's some buildings that don't produce "things". Maybe there's a building that takes a few ants and makes them into dancers, or communicators, or caretakers, etc. these could either just produce culture as individual ants, or they could help out in the smaller things, like renew scent trails, scout the map, or speed up ants around them. in any case I am super curious where you'll take the game. amazing work so far!
I was thinking along those lines where a buildings is a set of drums ants bounce back and forth on making culture but also giving a ninor boost to speed to ants moving past
One idea I think could be nice would be so the map is not just sorrounded by darkness, but when you level up a new biome with new resources and enemies opens up making the map bigger and more interesting the higher lever you are
I'm sure you've already thought about this, but I think level exploration should take an rts approach, since that seems to be the direction this is going. That is, most of the level will be darkened until ants move there or a building is placed there, which reveals an area of the level. So you have to actively choose to set out in a direction without knowing what's there and find out as you go, creating an element of discovery.
This game would be a good randomly generated world game, Not an infinite world like minecraft but just a bigger map that is randomly generated Maybe with fog on undiscovered locations = scout ants class which discover those locations And you could do like the civ games where the player starts with an ant (the queen maybe) And with that ant choose where to start your village
Buildings that produce culture could have their building icons be with light purple background or otherwise slightly altered so you could tell at a glance Thank you for your videos! You've done fantastic work and it's interesting to see game change so much as it develops
It would be cool if one of the buildings that gave you culture was underground, like an ant colony. It would be cool if you cool like look inside the colony from a 2D view, and there would be like shops and stuff inside the colony that produced culture. The colony would also be something that is important to protect.
Another way to gather culture could be Frescoes, ancient murals made of small pieces of glass and clay. They wouldn't serve any practical purpose, but would be a lot of culture, so it's like a pros and cons thing.
Along with gaining culture from unessential buildings, say, a brewery, you could passively gain ploop every day the building is intact. The more health the building has, the more passive culture and ploop.
You should add environmental barriers like rivers, logs, etc. then ants can build bridges. A procedurally generated world would be much cooler than an arcade style game
Since some people are suggesting farming ants, I would like to suggest ants being able to tame bugs. Like you can use resources to tame bugs that will help defend your base or create resources. For example, the aphid example is quite popular, but you could tame other animals like bombardier beetles that act as bombers or smaller types of spiders (like a jumping spider) to create passive silk production.
Having the enemies spawn in the same location every time could be a problem in the long run if players want to expand their colony, I think you should be able to raid enemy bases to stop them from spawning and maybe get some resources, this could then lead to enemy civilizations with whom you could go to war with or for alliances
I feel like at some point in this game’s future it could be fun to have random maps with a kind of fog effect only allowing you to see nearby things until you explore an area.
Maybe, when you add bigger maps, you should make it so every time your ants go up a tier, a piece of fog covering the area moves, giving you more space, but making more enemy spawns. So it gets harder each tier, which could differentiate the easy levels to the hard ones.
1: I think it would be really cool to work some form of agriculture into the game. IRL both cultivate crops and raise livestock. Maybe enemies (like the aforementioned spiders) could be tamed with enough work, and the right ants/buildings. 2: The idea of ant-people drinking coffee is pretty funny to me since plants evolved caffeine for the express purpose of pinioning insects that tried to eat them.
I would add events / missions. That happen every few days. These could serve as levels or survival mode just things that happen. Maybe there is a bird attack and it destroys 20 buildings so you want to create decoys to prevent your main buildings from being attacked. Or maybe one day it rains and changes the paths needed by creating puddles.
Here's an idea: (if anyone reads this) add ponds. You could have Water Carriers Ants bring water just like any resource. Then, you could add Builder Ants who can build canals (if their pheromone trail ends on water), bridges (if the trail crosses a canal), and walls (if it doesn't connect to water at all.
silk is another good example for something made from something ants could have domesticated, or it could be made from some fungus. and domestication could involve needing to find something in the level to bring back and use. which if enemy spawners could be defeated over time, allow gating luxury items behind progress.
In the HUD, when you have enough building resources, it should light up so the player can quickly navigate the HUD, knowing what they have enough resources for and what the don't at a glance.
This might not be that relevant, but if I were playing a game like this I would love to assemble some large army and attempt to attack the enemy hives, but that might not work with the actual gameplay loop.
Slugs are only basic enemies. In the future we could be attacked by whole colony of animals, like other ants, termites, beetles and even bees maybe, allowing us to have a physical colony to atack
I suggest adding more utility to the pottery and sticks since I still it would become very repetitive if item just had one usage, so here are some of my ideas: -Use the resource to create building, for example use the sticks to create spiked wall that damage any enemy near but in exchange it’s easily destroyable or a wall made with pottery that can take a lot of hits but doesn’t block flying enemies. -Make it so resource like sticks and pottery are used in creating buildings like pottery could reinforce building and stick would add a new properties or mechanics of set building like for example: a helmet building made with pottery and sticks could create spiked helmets buildings which instead of creating helmets that break in one hit. The spiked helmet would just attack normally instead of jumping with the an added bonus. Every time the ant is attacked the enemy would get damaged as well.
This is amazing, I cant wait to play it. Here are some suggestions for the end game. I see no reason not to go full coop and/or competetive, on larger maps. Some species of ants have an habit of stealing other colonies or even other species larvaes, in order to raise an army of slaves for free. That could even give the player a choice to raid all the colony's larvaes and let it die, or to raid only a percentage of the larvaes to cripple the colony and let it grow again in order to raid it again in the future. You could aslo consider to add a small percentage of ants iddling all day, or following other ants but not doing anything useful for the colony. That could give the player a reason to stay alert at any time for small benefits in productivity, by giving he/her the power to remove or punish the lazy ones. That remind me of a documentary I saw on bees, which showed that some bees seemed to work but actually never did anything productive and lived like parasites in the colony. Keep the good work :3
Suggestion: An endgame agriculture mechanic where the ants start cultivating food and plants for easy access. (It could have to be researched or something?)
you can keep the cards for buildings but without using them directly, you build up a deck on the side and cards cost resources to be placed. The new card selection could be every morning and it would push the player to chose different 'culture' type depending on what card shows up
I really wish there would be a mode where you play against other ant colonies or other bugs like in civilization. But the development looks to be going well! :)
You could explain the player going to different colonies each level as once you get enough culture the ants send off a princess to start a new colony just like real ants.
It would be cool if you added different elevations, and you would only be able to go up elevations through slopes. I feel like it would make the environment more unique.
When y0u said "tier up" i thought you meant "tear up" 😢 like the ants were so emotionally moved by the culture that they cry and that gives them a buff and denotes the milestone 😅
They grey background color in the menu of the icons rather gives me the feeling its locked and not just "unselected" Maybe a brighter grey would be a better joice to mark them unselected and grey to being locked? Otherwise really well made progress so far :) Looking forward to the prototype
Been waiting for this update! Here's a suggestion for Food Resources based on your proto games : Apple Bonsai for apples can be used to make cider, pastries, and apple seeds can be ground into powders to make poison for the arrows. Broccotree can be resourced for the edible leafs of the tree, the trunks can be turned into fibrous cloth after being soaked in water and ash. Carromel can be used as a food source, and the leaves can be boiled to make coffe from dried Carromel slices or perfume. Globall's can be sourced for their flowers to make blue dyes and the flowers can be turned into soap or perfume. The Great Potato used as a food source. Nectalure can be sourced for Honey Dew, and the leaves used to make tea. Orange is a citrus fruit used a both food and drink. These are just a few suggestions from playing your previous beta's.
could be cool to have some defensive buildings, like walls or archer towers edit: maybe you could use some of those new resoucrces to upgrade buildings, you say to the ants to upgrade the building next day. ex: silk to upgrade daycare and daycare ants require less food to exist and daycare gets more health
what about a Tamagotchi type game where it is a lax chill game and maybe some verticality by allowing you to control a colony in the trees like leaf cutter ants
I've seen it said, but just to have it simplified... Food buildings could include a mushroom farm as a crop and an aphid farm for a ranch. Aphids produce a substance called honeydew, which many ants farm from the aphids, so it could be a better ploop source that maybe you need the mushroom farm to get. Just a thought because ants are cool. I love the progress you're making so far :D
The game can be like spore, you start with a very small village but then you improve and colonize other villages, in tge case of the game this could be awesome, you have to kill the ants to expand the territory where you can build
I did like the card deck system for building, though I understand the design shift. Maybe the card deck could be saved for a challenge mode? Limit the player's choices as they re-face familiar challenges?
You should really consider making enemies that attack ants as well. It will make the helmet actually function as armour and introduce some more depht without too much complexity. A tech tree might be nice. The technology building would most likely produce culture as well.
It could be interesting to have an infinite mode, where tha amp oculd regenerate and maybe have a way of knowing how far you can build so that you must expand little by little, and have a way of destroying the spawns for the ennemies. The game is very interesting already and I can't wait to play it
With the culture tiering your colony up, I wonder if it could be best to give the culture generators tiers as well. So that to get to the end you need to engage with the more complex, difficult, and/or dangerous forms of culture generation. So that someone couldn't win simply by creating nothing but pots.
I dont know if this is what you envision but could you see the ants developing more advanced tech. For example researcher ants that could see the enimes maybe 2-3 waves into the future
From what you've shown in this video, I would make the cost for repairs much higher, so that there's an incentive for the player to really protect the buildings! If it's too low and doesn't really make a dent in my ploop-budget than I can imagine I'll just shrug it off as a player :D
I think it would be neat if you unlocked future building blueprints from either a new basic research building or if they dropped from a boss enemy or smth
What if you added like ant farms. They could things you unlock after so many levels. For instance level 3 you could unlock a desert with new enemy types, new background, new ant types (like lets say a green ant that poisons enemies), and new resources. Just an idea. P.S. good luck with making the game.
Great work! Been following your video series for this game and I gotta say you've developed this idea wonderfully. I'd love to try the game and give some feed back. I had a quick question tho. At first it seemed like there was a "Gardening" aspect to the game, where the world had a lot more interesting fruits and plants. Now that there's a win condition, and we start over. I guess the relaxing part of "watching them work" is also gone also with that?
I'm going to gradually bring back more plant types and related industries. For the vibe, I'm trying to get a balance between tactics and action, so there's an ebb and flow between relaxing and tense.
This culture win confition sounds super interesting! Would be interested to see whst upgrades you can unlock. Are you planning on an endless/survival/Sandbox mode? I think for these kind of games, just seeing how big of a civilisation you can get is always interesting
Using this opportunity, since I'm here very early this time. I shall propose again that you reconsider getting rid of mosslings, we would love to see those cute critters remain in game as some sort of specialised ant unit or perhaps allies of the ants!
i think thet it would be a good idea to add different tipes of culture, like if you make different tipes of food like meat and plants, your ants could either become vegetarians or carnivores, for example.
I like the culture system. In the beginning you can either do a snapshot of what it looks like at a max tiered kingdom, tasked to defend against ever increasing hordes of enemies. Small lore would be like, The “ants” were such a grand kingdom that other creatures were jealous, and banded together to attack. You would obviously lose the tutorial, but would learn the basics of all the buildings, minus the culture. By an advisor ant or something. You losing would catapult you into the lowest tier. Tasked to regain your former glory of the ant kingdom. While some creatures still wish to hunt your remnants down. This would give motivation for the player, and natural help you introduce new buildings as you tier up. You could even make some buildings like the main castle grow as you tier up. Gaining more purposeful greenery, statues or even pillars. When you lose your castle you could have a “queen” ant fly out. Which has a crown or something lol.
This would be a radical change. But what if you were not exclusively defending a settlement? What if this was like Pikmin or an RTS where you and your ants completed objectives and fended off enemies to slowly expand your territory?
I feel like the day night cycle is a little too fast. The ants don't seem to have time to do anything meaningful other than maybe collect a resource or two before time runs out.
Im not fan of the day/night cycle mecanic because I like a non stop play, like factorio and its tower defense mecanic, but it's really my personnal taste. Absolutly love the Ploop name, love the culture economy, love everything everything. Im just criticizing the rythms of gameplay. I don't like to rush or stress, but I like a "rolling machine in the background that you improve step by step" like factorio.
