Ants Assemble by LGK-Productions
Manage a newly created ant colony by gathering food and materials. But beware of nightfall, other tiny creatures might not be too fond of your colony... Defend your hive and extend it with various materials scattered around the map.
Your worker ants leave behind a pheromone trail when returning from a material source, so that idle workers start gathering from the corresponding source.
Your goal is to upgrade your hive 4 times, with the materials for each level being harder to obtain. For some you might need to explore some corners of the map.
Oh, and you better finish your hive before BRIAN shows up... :)
We recommend playing the windows version for an overall smoother experience, or the provided HTML5 link due to the embedded WebGL build struggling with performance. The Camera can be dragged by holding mouse wheel, or be moved with wasd and e/q for zooming in/out.
Important Notice: The itch.io page contains an updated version of the game based on some feedback given. These are mainly some QoL changes (better enemy interaction, feedback for targetting and persistent fog removal) as well as some bug fixes. Due to none of the bugs in the original version being gamebreaking, we ask you to play and rate either the here provided version or the other html5 link. You can check out the updated version if you want though ^^
| Itch.io page | https://lgk-productions.itch.io/ants-assemble |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/ants-assemble |
Ratings
| Overall | 211th | 3.912⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 307th | 3.676⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 217th | 3.712⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 97th | 4.235⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 501th | 3.727⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 212th | 3.75⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 749th | 2.638⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 366th | 3.727⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 48🗨️ |
If may suggest: it could be interesting to have task "explore" or "defend" to affect to ants
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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!
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 :)
Great job on this entry!
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!
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:
Perhaps the colony can be expanded with other defensive buildings etc.
I really liked the slow building and upgrade aspect of the game.