Play now!

I like your take on the theme. Well done! You created a working game that kept me entertained, especially when things got more involved. The music supported the game well.

One thing I did not like was, that most of the time I found myself fighting the mechanics rather than the enemy. The difficulty came mostly from the way the mechanics work, for instance acid not having any noticeable area of effect or wings obstructing the target when aiming down.

Very unique game, it's rare to see action RTS hybrids during an LD. I did find it difficult to aim with the acid though, wasn't sure if I had to hit multiple times or I was missing. Other than that, great game!

It was fun and i agree what @psychead said. You made a game that could keep me entertained but the mechanics where odd.
Overall a great start ^^

Great job on the entry! I only managed 57% on my first play-through but once i got the hang of it, it was much better. I enjoyed the game, it was an interesting concept and use of the theme - i think you did a great job.

**Things i thought were done well:** General mechanics, enemy spawning, pathing of ants/beetles, ease of play.
**Things i thought could use improvement:** Acid attack is difficult to aim/know where to hit and could possibly be an Area-Effect attack (not a big deal though). Looking around felt clunky, which made adjusting the camera to attack close up beetles difficult.

Overall a very good entry - be proud :)

Since we both made a game about insects (and you don't believe me I made Colorfly as my first game in 48h :smile:) I thought I'd review yours as well.

For starters I really like the idea. The graphics are also really good and I like the song. Reminds me of Spyro for some reason.

The gameplay is cool as well. I've noticed two things though that didn't quite work for me:

1) I think the right wing is really distracting. It feels like something's flashing in front of my eyes the whole time. Maybe it needs a bit more transparency.

2) I really couldn't tell where I was aiming, so I didn't really hit much. I got up to 52%, but I'm not sure if that would've also happened if I didn't try to shoot at the enemies. Also when turning something felt a little bit off at times. It quickly got back to normal, but for a second it felt like I was moving in the wrong direction.

Other than that I liked it. The tutorial was also quite good at explaining the game. I've played quite a few games today that I didn't even understand, so this was refreshing. Good work overall!

P.S.: I wish the messaging feature worked, because I would've liked to talk to you a bit more about our games. You're welcome to download my source code of course. You can kind of see my progression by looking at the modification date of the files if you're interested.

Fun entry! An area of attack feature like Nathan mentioned would improve this a lot! It was nicely paced I thought. Nice work on the music!

Very interesting game, smart combining of fps and tower shooter mechanics, and definitly very unique.
As others have said, main problem is with aiming.
Alse balancing is very good.
I managed to get to 43% percents.

Quite enjoyed this one! A crosshair would help a lot though, for aiming. I think the camera is a bit too close to your queen as well. Great entry though!

Thanks a million for the feedback, everyone!

You think the aiming is strange now, you should have seen it an hour before deadline! I haven't made a first/third person controller for several years now and had to blow the cobwebs outta my brain to get this far ;) I added a dot crosshair at one point, but pulled it for immersion reasons.

The acid blob does have an AOE on it (more by accident than design), it is just pretty rare to get it connect on more than one baddie. I'll definitely consider adding real AOE logic if I use this sort of projectile in the future.

The wings were a constant struggle on how to implement graphically. I just hope they're not giving anyone seizures ;)

Nice little tower defence game with a twist. Very polished with sound and nice graphics, all round a good job. I liked that friendly fire is switched on - made me second guess whether I should help my little ant buddies or not

Very interesting game, I enjoyed it a lot! Most things I could say have already been said, but I'll just reiterate: aiming needs improvement (an indicator on screen or on the ground, perhaps?), and I'd also like an indication of when I hit. I love the models though, and it's a great take on the theme!

Quite fun this game! A nice take on a tower defense!

Pretty cool, tower defense/third person shooter concept. I may have started by assuming the bright red ants were an enemy colony. Derp!

The epileptic wings weren't very pleasant to look at. Overall the art felt very Unity, which isn't necessarily bad but it doesn't add real character. Audio and music were simple but pretty effective. More audio cues when a beetle eats hamburger would've helped me. One of those bastards was hiding out of sight from me for a while.

I don't know if it was because I was using a trackpad or not but the movement was extremely spastic and difficult to control but overall a good interpretation of the theme and a well made game in all aspects!

Cool game, I'm a big fan of ant themed games so I was very excited to try yours. Good job on creating all the gameplay in 48 hours. It was fun but got a bit repetitive after a while, it didn't seem to get more difficult as time went on. I thought the perspective with the ant so close to the camera was a bit strange too, and it was a little hard to aim.

I guess that adds vomiting acid onto bugs to my list of guilty pleasures :D Wish the aiming was easier, if you really want to keep this weird shooting angle then having a crosshair that intersects with the ground would be nice. Other than that gj, kept me busy for over 10 minutes.

Like others have already pointed out, the aiming feels a little bit clunky. It's also hard to know when you've hit your target. A different sound effect, a particle effect, or something to indicate the hit would be a good addition I think.

The "incoming enemies from direction" messages are a good idea, but you have no way of knowing which direction is which. This could be fixed with a mini map or a compass. Other than that, it's a cool game and I enjoyed playing it! Funny sound effects!

Great game! Yeah, the aiming is not very predictable, and it would have been super useful to know which directions are which. Just like a big N in the north would have done the trick. The simple resource management was simple and made for interesting choices. Good job!

Nice compo entry. I did find some sections a little slow after killing the beetles and waiting for my resources to grow I was flying around just waiting. That being said, killing stuff was pretty fun.

Good camera and attack system. I wasn't really intrigued after the first wave. It'd be nice there if there were upgrades. It'd be nice if there were instructions too.

@ryan-rose Unless there's something horribly botched in one of the builds, there's a lengthy series of instructions that plays at the beginning of the game. Could you elaborate?

Decent game, I enjoyed it.

I liked the third person perspective not being right behind the ant, it was a pretty interesting experience. As others have mentioned, the aiming felt a little bit off at first but I stopped noticing as I got used to it. The gameplay was alright, but it did start to feel a little bit empty after a while.

I think the sound is the game's strongest suit, especially the music. It felt like it was at a level way above the graphics, almost out of place even. If the graphics, mostly the environment, had looked less quickly done, I think the overall aesthetic impression could improve a lot.

But hey, one person can't be good at everything, so all things considered it's a solid compo entry. Good job!

Interesting approach to this ludum theme!
I played it until the very end and I had a funny time here.
The main improvements I would add is a better angle for looking the player and change the shot sound (it can get a bit disgusting when shooting a lot).
God save the queen's lunch!

Okay @mars, I'll let you in on a little secret if you promise not to take my Audio points away. Promise? Good. Alright, here it is: The music is procedurally generated. Worse, its a 15 second loop. Granted, I had to wade through a lot of crap that probably shouldn't even be called music to get it, and then I remasted the MIDI with a nice soundfont, but compared to the hours spent modeling the insects, it was nothing. As for the rest of the audio, that's just me and a microphone.

Its funny what clicks with people, eh?

Fun to see a RTS game on that theme, nicely done and fun interesting to play. Only thing i didn't really like is the look of the grass, to be picky. Overall nice entry thanks :)

Very fun game, i liked how the hamburger got smaller as it got eaten or collected as well as the limited number of eggs that can be used. I think that you move a bit too slow, also it might be quite useful to have a compass as it would say enemies are coming for a certain direction, but its not immediately clear which way that is.

Not much to say that hasn't been said already, but I really liked this one! One of my favourites in this compo so far :)

@ryte2byte what tools/software did you use for generating the music? I'm definitely interested in that since procedurally generated such a nice loop!

@ryte2byte Oh believe me, I know. I'd never touched FL Studio before, but I downloaded it and spent 2 hours with it during the compo, and came out feeling like I'd created the most annoying thing ever. Yet for some reason, I keep getting feedback that people like the music. Doesn't make sense to me at all!

I am impressed by the quality of the game. The best points are the characters / animation and the gameplay. I think the level design could have been improved despite the visible efforts. I think I found a bug because I unfortunatly killed all my units and I could'nt get any other until the end. The "to improve" point is the sound design, the music was too few noticable and the fire noice a bit annoying after some time.
Overall, I enjoyed to fight for the safety of my precious burger :)

Nice little game. It was hard to hit enemies that were close bellow me. Also the hints saying Enemies coming from X direction are less helpful when there is no compass or much to orientate yourself with. Like maybe something like a soda can or something in the background would help with that. Like beetles coming in from the coke can. I had fun playing it though good job.

nice tower defence mini game but suggest to improve mechanics

*44% may be a dismal failure in your book, but did you see the size of those beetles?!*

Burger Defense at its finest. My favorite part is the spit sounds, but I'm a weirdo. The ant mounds weren't as powerful as I'd like - spend 3 seconds deploying them, and 3 seconds to watch them torn down. Nice models, particularly your main character. The enemy compass indicators weren't that helpful without anything to gauge direction.

Ultimately I feel it's the Queen's fault for leaving her hamburger on the ground.

I can't believe the amount of work you did in such little time! There were so many different elements to the game! I had a bit of trouble playing in WebGL as it was a bit hard to aim, but other than that it was a really fun and interesting game. And it was pretty much complete gameplay-wise, which is amazing considering it was made just in 48 hours. Well done!!

This was a fun game was I understood what to do. I felt the controls and camera were fine. I only managed to obtain 44% of the food, but only because of my incompetence (I spent most of my eggs on workers rather than warriors so I got overwhelmed).

Having a compass or landmarks would help, because at the moment just saying the enemies are coming from the east isn't helpful when I don't know which way is east.

Good job on the visuals, I also liked the way the hamburger shrunk as the beetles attacked it.

Good job!

This was quite fun and enjoyable. I tend to agree about the other comments regarding the aiming of the acid attack - at the very least it would be good to have some indication of a hit or miss. I'm not sure that making it an AOE as suggested is the right solution, as that would increase friendly-fire damage significantly. Also I found it difficult to judge at times whether a lone large beetle in the field was the 4-hit kind or the 10-hit kind, so maybe some other distinction like markings on the shell would be good.

The graphics were good, and the sounds were entertaining, and the gameplay was engaging.

My winning strategy:
I managed to take 95% of the burger with about a 60%-40% mix of warriors and workers early, moving to more like 75%-25% later in the skirmish. My mounds were stationed radially around the burger, with the earliest ones built closest to the workers' path. My thought behind this was the quicker I could get the burger out of there, the less my overall defense would cost. I took care of all of the early targets myself, but then trusted my warriors to handle the light work that started to get through later while I concentrated my fire on the easier-to-hit big targets and larger groups, providing air support to warriors when those targets were down. Only one beetle got through to the burger as far as I saw.

Pretty interesting! I also only saved 44% of the burger. I liked how the hamburger got smaller and smaller and the silly sound effects when the bugs exploded. The UI was functional but may have worked better as hot keys, I wasn't sure if there was a big benefit of building mounds that could have more warriors and I could just have two mounds with two warriors and then I would also have more obstacles for the beetles to deal with. I would have also liked to know what percentage of the burger I had verses what the beetles had. Overall aiming was a bit difficult too but you got a bunch of feedback on that already. Overall good job!

An interesting idea! I got a 67% burger salvaged score! :D

I really like the art style here, and the autonomous ant units were pretty impressive! You seem to have the technical aspects of developing a game down pat.

A few things I would suggest from a design perspective though. Currently there's no way to really orient what direction you're facing. So when the game says "Enemies coming from the West," because every direction looks identical, there's no way the player can use that information effectively. Perhaps having a setting sun in the background, or even just a simple compass in the corner would help tremendously.

Also, I can't say I really knew what making mounds did, or what the numbers represented when I was making them. And I think that can be attributed to the fact that the tutorial was front-loaded with text (that progressed on its own without player input) before anything started happening. I would suggest that you maybe distribute tutorial sections piecemeal, and give the player the opportunity to experiment with the ability you explained to them in order to ensure that they understand and can apply what they were just taught.

Other than that, I felt this was a very unique idea that I can see developing into a full project in the future. :)

Nice work, the flying perspective, number of insects and 3rd person model all really added to the character of the game. I think the player is a little too powerful, I mostly created workers to collect the food and just focused on shooting down all the incoming enemies myself- and as an ant I've no idea which direction north/east/west is ;) Some flying enemies which also shot back at the player would have helped distract my focus from the battle and increased the utility of the soldiers for me.

I'm proud to witness the birth of the burger defense genre. Seriously tho, nice game with a lot of potential in the idea (mix of the genre with the aesthetics). Well jammed!

Nice entry! Very ambitious for 48h and you nailed it. I had a hard time playing because of the camera and also because I use the mouse on my left hand, so I couldn't fly faster without losing the aim. Keep rocking!

THIS IS SO INCREDIBLE
How did you do this in 48 hours?! This is so complex and creative - and dude bonus points for the mouth sound sound effects. I LOVE doing that. Oh my goodness. GREAT job!!
Sniping an enemy from a distance was SO satisfying.
My biggest want was either a compass or landmarks by which I can memorize which direction is which.
Wow, though. WELL freaking done.

While I was not able to salvage this tasty burger for my queen :) I really liked the setup with the enemy ants and beetles coming in - and the sound effects.. very nice, and quite detailed for 48hrs work.
Great job!

That's a lot of work, well done ! Not sure I understood everything, the tutorial at the beginning is quite long and annoying. Graphics are nice, and the music too. I'm not fan of the genre but this is really well done, good job !

@hbocao OMG, I hard-coded the 'run' button! Geez, I am so very, very sorry! I don't usually make 1st/3rd person action games and LD's time limit can make you do horrible things to your code. I never should've let this happen with Unity's input manager at my disposal. This is easily one of the most important pieces of feedback I've gotten. Thank you!!!

I played this on Livestream Today at the request of the Developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zCqO_O0iIo

Really great time hanging out in stream with the developer. I already told you my thoughts in stream, but my big one was not feeling like I could trust my ally AI to assist me in battle. Maybe making them more combat effective so I could spend less time having to fight all sides at once. Also, a compass!

I enjoyed the little things about this game the most, the way the beetles walked, in particular, made me chuckle. and i absolutely loved the way the target reticle would move with the body of the target. That was a particularly nice touch. Well done.

I really like the combination of a real-time shooter with a tower defense strategy sort of game! I always find tower defense games a little tedious with having to just passively wait, so I definitely appreciate giving me something to do in the mean time!

I felt like I played it a lot more as a shooter than as a strategy game though. Sometimes I'd even forget I could place mounds or hatch workers. I didn't immediately get what the advantage was of workers (I skimmed through the text at the beginning because I was really excited about just playing). I assume it helped you get the hamburger down faster?

I think it would have been cool to see more of everything: More enemies, more defenders, and more bullets. It could definitely get really hectic and chaotic and that would be really awesome! I think the ideal thing for this sort of game is for it to be impossible to win just by strategy, and similarly impossible just by being a really good shooter. So having to combine these two skills makes this really interesting!

Very nice! The one thing I think is a bit lacking is the art. This game would look really cool in [low poly](https://www.google.com/search?q=low+poly+art&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA5svN2evTAhXB6oMKHYHvAWAQ_AUICigB&biw=1812&bih=996)!

Oh man. It was a nice game! Manage to take 98% if the burger on first try :D

Honestly, there not much I can say to contribute as everything is already said in the earlier comments.

Though I dont think the continuous chain of chat at the start was necessary. Ended up not reading most of it. Perhaps either shorten it, paced it out throughout the game or make it so we can hit a button to skip to the next line.

Pretty entertaining, but could use a bit of tweaking if it weren't for Ludum Dare. Feedback on whether you hit an enemy when you shoot them, and a tutorial that's a bit more interactive (I missed like half of the text because I was distracted). But overall, an enjoyable experience.

Great game! Great concept and a skillful execution. It took me a round to master the mechanics, and then I got around to fending off the hordes of beetles/tanks.

The "military" theme of the introduction set an cool mood, and I did feel like I was holding a fort.

I couldn't quite get oriented on the directions (north? west? what?) so I had to rely on finding my stream of worker ants. Not the best way to find directions...

God save the queen's lunch!

hey man rad game! i really like your take on the theme. i thought the view was cool, i liked the 1st/3rd person mash. i also enjoyed the sound design, particularly the acid spit sound. the music wasnt my favorite, but thats hugely subjective, and i must say it did fit the game well. im impressed with how much game balance you were able to achieve in such a short amount of time and in a RTS game no less!! bravo, my friend! i had fun playing, and thats no small thing.

i have a few notes of critique that will hopefully help if you keep developing this game, or simply just for future reference. i think a skip tutorial button would be useful for players who have already played the game a few times. also, i noticed that the game starts when the tutorial does, and so enemies are approaching while players may be reading the tutorial. after my first time playing, i realized that i too could start spawning eggs and placing mounds even while the tutorial is going. so its fair in that sense, but not so much for the first time player. i would love to see more variety in the enemies and more ways for the player to engage with them. obviously this is not possible during LD, but if you continue development i think that perhaps flying enemies could add an interesting dynamic. ways to control the warrior ants would be fun too. i feel like you probably already know these things though and have your own ideas about it, so ill move on. i wasnt sure what exactly happened once an enemy destroyed one of my mounds. do the warrior ants spawned from that mound disappear or do they stay? i think some sort of feedback would be helpful the the player. in general i think there could be a little bit more feedback to the player in other parts of the game too, like when acid hits an enemy for example. some people have mentioned difficulty with aiming, but i found if you just anticipate movement and aim in front of your target you are able to be very accurate. i think that maybe some sort of powerups for the queen ant would be very satisfying. i understand that the slow acid spit contributes to the balance of the game, but if you were able to find some way to incorporate powerups, it could be super satisfying to go HAAMMM for a minute and blast acid or what have you at enemies! in a larger version of this game, perhaps you could take over multiple hills and have different terrain. anyway, i think the overall point is that there is a LOT of potential for expanding this game, its a really great idea to work with. nice job!

btw i got up to 97% of the burger, that was my best score!

Congratulations, @xxDOOMbox ! You're the top score on Antagonistic for LD38! My Mrs. may come gunning for you though. She used to be the best at 82%. 100% is definitely possible!

And, just of the off-chance that someone who's commented wanders back in, HUGE thanks to all of you! Designing this peculiar little hybrid in such a short time was a very daunting challenge and I'm thrilled so many folks gave it a chance (and some of you even understood it!).

Interesting burger defense game lol - Biggest complaint about the gameplay is felt like it needed something to indicate which direction is north/south/east/west - when it said enemies coming from those directions it may have well just said enemies incoming instead. A little less elaborate instructions at the beginning would be good too, some of the controls were easy to figure out without a tutorial but also could possibly make the tutorial optional or skip-able. But overall had fun! Good submission! :smile:

-----------------------------------------

Please check out ours:
- https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus

Pretty nice!

Looked pretty good and the controls were pretty straightforward, though I would have liked the build menu to go away if i clicked "out" of it.

I didn't like the acid puke sound by the end of it and I managed to only get 46% of the food haha. Turned around and 3 of the big guys were chomping away at the queens lunch. Oh well ;D

Really interesting take on an "ant" game. Who knew it was so hard to eat a burger in peace? The two things that were most challenging were figuring out which direction I was facing -- maybe some form of compass would help -- and losing the targeting reticle when it got too far from me. I think making sure the reticle stands out on top of the grass would help, possibly also with a set minimum size for it, since its possible that the reticle got so small that it just stopped getting rendered at longer distances.

This was really fun and enjoyable. The sound effects were great and the controls felt very comfortable and easy to use. I only managed to get 48% of my burger though :sob:

Really well executed !

Effects and sounds reminds me Conker's Bad Fur Day.

But hamburger isn't good food, please give them an apple.