Entomologist here; for farming I’d suggest drawing inspiration from real life cases: some ant species farm and protect aphids that feed on sap from live plants and release sugar which the ants feed on. Other interesting farming case is the renowned leaf cutter ants which cut fresh leaves and flowers and use them to feed a special fungus which in turn produces protein that the ants harvest. And there’s a family of Asian ants that deliberately cultivate a kind of plant that grows on trees and make shelter and food for the ants.
As an ant enthusiast, I love this!! 😂 Cultivation of leaves, flowers, and fungi could also add a lot of colour-and brings things back around to that original terrarium concept!
Oooh, going forward with that type of thing in mind, many membracids also have nymphs which ants facultatively farm for honeydew. In game, there could be some migrating membracid inspired animals that will have nymphs in an area which act as a temporary food source, disappearing as the nymphs grow into adults and fly away. This would be a fun way to have a temporary, energy rich food source players can attempt to take advantage of.
i think you should change the color of the pheromone trails based on what type of ant it is. Like archers have a different color pheromone trail than the basic ants.
Maybe a bit much if too many different colors are used. I would maybe suggest having a small quantity of categories. So for example, work/gathering related be one color, and combat based ants have their own color. Can help you identify your warriors path quickly which I figure is important for something like combat emergencies. Only way to know for sure is through trial and error.
My worry about this, is I'm going to add more terrain types like sand and mud. And the pheromones have to stand out against all backgrounds, so I'm not sure how much leeway I have for colors
This is starting to look so exciting! I recommend looking at both StarCraft and Pikmin for ideas. The campaign could have so many varied maps: - Conquer an enemy base - Hold out against a tide of enemies - Explore a cave and return some cool artifacts to your lair - Defend a weaker ant colony - Solve a tough fight with limited resources - Avoid special hazards unique to the map, like periodic floods, wind or unkillable anteaters - Capture the flag - Fight a boss with unique mechanics - Tower defense - Control both the overground and the underground - Get back before dark when the monsters come ... you are gonna make a campaign, right?
A campaign system has weirdly not yet been mentioned afaik! Pikmin has of course been one of the first sources discussed for the antlings and the enemies.
Lovely. A few suggestions on Victory condition? Maybe the win condition is to gather enough of specific items in order to grow a new Queen, which will eventually leave the nest to fly away and start a new colony somewhere else. It seems to me that the entire purpose of these adorable ant creatures is to expand their kingdom, and in order to do that they need to prepare the next generation; i.e. the next Queen Ant. And thus, imagine a "world map" where the player picks the location of the next colony, where the Queen Ant will travel to with a small group of workers; and of course, the map will feature biomes with special setbacks and benefits. It would also help if the global difficulty increases with each new colony built. It could also bring a small roguelike element to it, with the chance to unlock new features or improved bonuses as new colonies are built. The true game victory then happens when a global percentage of the "world map" is achieved, like, 90%. By the way, I keep saying "world map", but in fact I'm picturing a playground, or a garden. A very Pikmin thought, if you please. Anyway, adorable game concept so far. Keep it up!
kind of like in "Terra nil" where a zoom out into the world to reclaim. So an animation of a Queen finding a mate and starting a colony, would be a perfect addition to the game.
This honestly feels like it would make a great civilization like game with real time pvp and pve. Almost like clash of clans crossed with BTD and Polytopia.
The tomatoes and bread and stuff could have a reason to be there so something like the tomatoes fall from a tomato plant that grows there and sometimes passing people drop things, this could lead to further locations with different foods and enemies and other benefits/deficits. You could also include that in the day to day cycle so that every time a day passes a couple tomatoes fall or maybe have a random chance that a person drop some food or resources. edit: Another cool addition is the chance for raindrops to fall with some special use.
Maybe steer the game towards a age of empire like game, where other ant colonies exist and fight each other for ressources, so you have to expand and defend parts of your land against the others. And if you really want then you can make an all out attack to kill the queen.
I think it would be really cool if there were ants that couldn't do damage but instead they could carry a big leave over their heads as a sheild for the other ants. Maybe enimies could be programmed to target thise first. The ants could line up and when maybe 5 are ready they could get a leaf (You can experience with diffrent amounts of ants to balance the game) The leaf could have a visual representation of how much healt it has left. Very nice video!
You should add walls as an extra line of defense against large hoards of enemies, but also a burrowing enemy that can dig under them to keep players on their toes. Also a dung beetle that launches its ball like a trebuchet or ballista would also be cool.
This is looking great so far! I'm wary about the money system you mentioned - having a building system that just requires you to get money and then plop down new buildings seems uninspired and doesn't really dovetail into any of the existing systems. Perhaps you could connect buildings into the wood and clay resources instead - you place down a blueprint, which then requests a certain amount of wood and clay. If there are no woodhuts or potteries with the appropriate resources, its ants just try to gather those resources from the closest natural source instead. Thus you can build without specifically collecting those resources, but it's more efficient to actually collect them and stockpile them for when you want to slap down some buildings quickly. I also had the thought that you *could* add an extra step to the larvae production chain by having the Castle produce *eggs* instead of larvae, which then have to be incubated in a Castle or Nursery to become larvae. The Castle would produce eggs very quickly, up to a certain cap, but the rate at which it turns an egg into a larva is quite slow, meaning you'd need more nurseries to up your production of larvae. In practice this would be very similar, but it'd be a little bit more realistic, and would also mean you couldn't put down a nursery on the opposite side of the map and have it produce larvae out of nowhere - any larvae production has to have a secure logistic route to your castle, giving you more routes to worry about and forcing the player to keep their base relatively compact without placing an arbitrary limit on where they can build. One thing I will suggest for food is that you imitate how real ants have a "crop" - a sort of special food store in their gut - and when another ant is hungry any nearby ant will feed them from their crop. This means you don't have to make all the ants go eat individually, instead food can radiate out through the populace, being passed on from ant to ant, centred on your food production. Regardless, I'm interested in seeing how things progress from here!
These devlogs are extremely satisfying to watch. From the subtle music, to the crispy and cute visual style, to even your speaking voice. Really makes for a relaxing and entertaining video that I look forward to each time you post.
Im in love with this idea. Reminds me of one of my favorite youtubers AntCanada. This idea of indirectly controlling the ants by directly controlling the environment.
In my opinion, you are a true Indie Game Dev, with trully unique and original ideas and projects, in the contrary of a lot of content we see these days. As a biologist and ant lover, I always dreamed about a good ant-like game, there is so much potential for those little wonders ! I planned to make it myself since I have a bachelor degree in video game devlopement but I lack the time and the coding skills, so maybe I'll share my ideas with you instead !
Still need a victory to aim for, a goal, some purpose. That will inform your design choices. I really like the exploratory nature of ant colonies - maybe do migratory ants? Starting with one colony (castle) and looking for the next place to set up chop and protect your Queen while she is (slowly) migrating into the next colony from the old one. Sounds like a fun, ever-changing Tower Defense with additional mechanics to me!
When planning how to communicate enemy resistances and vulnerabilities, it might be useful to take inspiration from a game like Lobotomy Corporation. In Lobotomy Corporation, there are four damage types, and any creature in the game can have a range from 0-2 that represents how they react to that damage type. 1.0 means they react to it normally, 2.0 means they take double damage, 0.0 means their immune, and 0.6 means they only take 60% of the damage.(resist 40%) In Lobotomy Corporation, each enemy also has a dedicated page, sort of like a coded entry to communicate important things and story stuff. I think it would be cool, in this aspect, to have a codex, from an “adventurer ant” that allows you to right click on an enemy to open up their entry on the side of the screen that includes important information like their resistances and vulnerabilities, and a short text blurb about them as a creature. I think it would all go a long way to making the world feel more alive, and it’s pretty modular so it can expand as your project does.
Ideas for development of the game: 1. As the ammount of buildings grows the visual distonction is guing to get harder. Maybe try adding slight bits of other colours depending on building role for example red for military, darker brown for crafting etc. 2. Adding resource progresion Clay could be the most basic resource, then using clay bakery you could turn it into baked clay neded for more advanced crafting buildings. Clay mixed with red flowers(as it seems you will add more plants to the game) could give you red clay, and red clay then put into clay bakery would give you red baked clay used for military buildings. This would add nice simple chains of resources serving as currencies. Clay > baked clay Clay > red clay > red baked clay This would also add more resources without adding more building because bakery would make and store both types of baked clay. 3. I think it would look cooler if nurseries crafted ants the same way military building do. 4. Weapon: clay bombs that could be made of baked clay, wood and red flower. They would deal area damage with the drawback being that the bomb cap per building would be 3 (instead of other warrior type ants cap of 10) and their crafing being more advanced. Their role would be countering big crowds of weak enemies(perhaps oposing colony in the far future?) 5. Production buildings. Their recognisable colour could be slight blue, thus adding blue flower, blue clay and blue baked clay. Again expanding chain without addind too many buildings. As oposed to crafting buildings they would slowly produce specific resources after initial investment. So mines/ farms this would let you turn down resource respawn rates also the blue flowers could be really rare or even limited(not respanwning at all or doing so very slowly) thus pressuring players into expanding/exploring further in search of these blue flowers. 6. Obstacles, you already made the pathfinding so maybe add some sort of unbreakable walls to path around. These could have a brakable parts that would be possible to attack and break( bomb could deal bonus damage to them) 7. Have fun and good luck with the development!
You should make specialized buildings for enemy parts. Beetles would give upgrades to the (not honey)pot ants, lasting longer, and maybe even having a chance to not use a durability on hit. Not sure for flies and slugs, but having an enemy similar to your ants that fight as a colony(probably termites, a whiter version) to get their supplies and maybe some other rarer items as well.
I'm sure people have pointed this out to you already, but Microtopia released a demo on Steam recently. Quite different in some aspects, but they do pathing to manage your ants and some other elements in an interesting fashion.
Something I always like to see in city building games like these is leveling up the city hall or central building, unlocking more buildings, upgrades, or resources. That might also be a good way to ease players into the mechanics of the game and scale enemy difficulty.
From what I've understood, you have three main types of buildings, and I'm not sure what this separation serves: - The Castle and Nursery come with their own ants, and can be ordered to gather food along a path, which produces larvae, which they automatically distribute. - The Wood and Pottery stations must be provided larvae before they can operate, and can be ordered to gather one type of resource along a path, which they automatically distribute. - The Archery and Armory stations must be provided larvae before they can operate, and can be ordered to spend a resource along a path (i.e. spend ammo to defend an area) The one thing that seems odd to me is how worker ants are abstracted away, yet larvae are a resource. There also doesn't seem to be much of a point to the castle/nursery distinction. I'm curious to see where the design will go next, especially considering the shape of the colony will be influenced by the way resource gathering and pipelining of resources works.
The game is looking great so far! It's very pleasant to the eye and the mechanics so far are easy to understand and interesting to play around with. Can't wait to see how it turns out and eventually play it!
I do like the new bow color and I think it would be good to use the clay as a building resource so when you build it the ants grab the resources and haul it to the building location. Another unit that would be good is making a worker ant that specializes in building,harvesting, and hauling.
An additional mechanic for the enemies could be they attack nearby ants on their path to the castle. Ants who are killed would need to be replaced with more larva at their home building. This also could lead to more variety in enemy types by modifying how much they will prefer to attack nearby ants vs beelining to the castle
as someone who loves base building, i'd love leafcutter ants who add "fences" made of leaves so if there is a wave of enemies they can either be halted, slowed, or atleast funneled. I know that would end up making this a bit of a tower defense game but I don't think that is a particularly bad idea, i think if you have enough unique types of ants/buildings, and perhaps enough types of terrain or obstacles, perhaps even seasons? ocassional challenges? then itll keep the game dynamic enough to be more than just building and defending.
It looks like youre starting to hit your stride! Now that the base concept is decided, you have room to work on features and details. I love the change to the bow color. Im hoping maybe someday there will be multiple colonies with different colored houses! Like a pink flower petals colony vs a green vines colony vs a fall leaves colony.
A cool Idea for the enemies would be that they all target different things, for example the slugs could go straight for the castle but the flies would also attack your units.
I like the idea that the ant-people don't really need money to build things, it's just a nice happy little colony of ants building and defending. But if anyone can make ant-people use money in some way, it's you.
For victory conditions I think you could lean into the eta side of the game and have an enemy computer attack with an ant colony that you are fighting for territory. And in the future you can have multiple species of ants to choose from like fire ants, carpenter ants, weaver ants and more.
I love the idea but I wonder how this would look if you were to make the buildings and exploration more like Dungeon Keeper? Either way, can't wait to see more!
1. I think there should be small paths around or connecting the buildings, or a tint, where most of the buildings are, just visually, so that you can more clearly see where the city is. 2. There should be fire ants, or weaver ants as enemies, like they could start a town, and launch attacks at you, though it could be hard to code 3. You should be able to chose what kind of ant you want, like factions with different traits for example bulky ants, that are slower but hit harder, long ants, that carry more resources but have less HP... etc
You should add a carpenter and maybe a refinery that separates minerals from clay to make stone, but since stone is heavy a slight decrease in speed maybe?. An advancement system would be nice too. A cultural menu when (e) or a key is pressed opens showing resources, the colony level, and overall well-being.
regarding weapon types, I think having ranged and melee is best as a dichotomy unrelated to damage type/resistance. Then enemies like flies could have a flying type, that only ranged units can target. This is a very common trope, so I think it would both be intuitive, and increase the dimension space for combat and supply chains. Certain beetles could be phased to fly in, and 'land' near objectives, where they then lose their flying tag. Flying enemies that launch grounded ones, grounded ones that launch flying ones. Perhaps an enemy type walks in, then at an hp threshold it flies away for backup. Perhaps that's significantly too complex, but the point being it opens up a lot of design space for essentially nothing.
make another building that converts pots not to warriors, but use the pots as tools to improve hauling capacity. (which becomes more relevant over longer distances and gives a trade-off how to use the resource)
I have no idea how feasible this is - but adding brightly colored outlines as an accessibility option could be nice. In order to reduce visual clutter, you could even make it so when groups of the same type of ant are huddles together, it only outlines the outside of the group, not every ant individually.
I love watching this game develop! Also, i just realized that i wasnt subscribed to you, if anyone else is in my boat, save youself some time and hit the button now rather then later.
Just a funny suggestion. You should add fire as a damage type and have them throw molotov cocktails that are made from pots and oil from an olive like plant this could make managing resources more valuable as an item might have more than one use. Or for fire you could make them collect/mine coal to make torches with sticks and coal and they throw the torches. Or may just a farmable nut that explodes into shrapnel like a grenade. Basically AOE damage is on my mind, but also fire.
Also sling is a good idea for ranged blunt damage. You could collect rocks for ammo and have them farm rubber from trees for the sling. Slings are really powerful they are sometimes better than bows.
A lot of people seem to be suggesting some sort of acid attack for the ants But what about an acid trap, that is harvested from the enemies (I suggest slugs in particular) Then that might go into a general purpose “enemy bits” building, which would only store one type of enemy resource, but if it’s completely empty it can be stocked with a different type of resource Admittedly, this last part does sound a bit complicated
Idea: Bombardier beetle that fires ranged explosive attacks. They do area damage, but don't do much damage. Devastating for your groups of weak archers, but the durable melee ants, whose attack method causes a bit more spreading out, absolutely dominate these beetles. Just thought it would make for a good way to set up this sort of type-based favorability, without simply editing numbers. You know?
think it could be fun to have opposing ants as an enemy type, should be fairly simple to recolour buildings and ants to fit and have them do raiding parties to try and take over your nest. it would be repetative for the whole game but having it as one of multiple victory conditions would mix up the gameplay decently well.
I do like this new build that destroys the sources because the last time I played, my map got really crowded with sources and whatnot and I wouldn't be able to build many more if I kept it up. There wasn't any way to get rid of them unless I collapsed them into a bigger unit.
I hope some buildings have the option to be turned off or something. Or some way to say send larva to be workers instead of archers based on a pheromone trail. Or In a pinch make them all warriors for a big fight. Also making the damage hit change depending on if it’s normal, effective, weak/miss, or crits. Will help people figure out what’s effective quickly. Like the soft orange hits are normal, while the more bright orange ones are effective. But a crit could have sparkle effects on the hit or something, and could be on an orange or soft orange. While misses could be a little woosh like wind. Because as of now it’s hard to tell the pots are missing from afar.
You could have male ants fly in, which can sell you upgrades, maybe new ant types or some sort of meta upgrade like an overall speed boost or carry capacity.
It would be interesting to have building or units upgrades, for example that the ants can move faster or buldings have more resistance. I imagine this game as sort or a survival type of game
