I like the idea, but the lack of instructions and text made it a bit confusing. Pathfinding would have been awesome for moving the ants simultaneously more but I understand that would have taken a lot of time up!

Congrats on the entry :)

I like the idea but I think it's a little buggy. The UI text is not rendering for me in the web version and I every time I go to the shop I end up in another area? (edit: I guess changing areas was part of the game!)

I really liked the idea and visually it is very nice, keep working on this, it is on the right track!

@zimonitrome Oh damn, it looks like fullscreening in the middle of the game causes the text on the UI to disappear. Fun...

As for the shop putting you in a different area, that's intentional. You're returning from your expedition to the colony, then setting out to explore again!

EDIT: The text UI bug has been fixed!

we had a very similar idea!
I couldn't see any text on the buttons, so it was a bit hard to understand, but overall quite fun :)

I really enjoyed playing this game. Stuck a little and accumulated 3 dozen leaves)

There are not enough control things like hotkeys or auto-attacks. So I can't control more than 4 ants, but it's enough to play almost endlessly.

Nice light strategic-econimic game)
Very rare see there genre, but you deal with that, and made it enjoyable!
Like to control ants, but sometimes they stucked into textures.

Nice entry! I could wish there was an easier way to select the ants so I could be faster. But that could also just be a skill issue. :joy:

Great work! For me, the text was mostly gone from the text boxes, but the game was intuitive enough to understand. Besides that, I think this gameplay loop could be a really great start for a more fleshed-out ant colony simulator!

@unloosed just fixed the text UI bug, so hopefully that doesn't bother anyone else!

Awesome Concept and execution. I really enjoyed this. Although the controls are a bit hard since sometimes when I want to command the ants to go back dragging the leaf, I click on the ants that are in the spot instead. The obstacles also adding a sense of pathfinding experience. I Love it :heartpulse:

I liked a lot! but some kind of multi-select would be nice esp. as i got my soldiers

I like idea and visual stile. Something like strategic-econimic game :thumbsup:

this game is so good for a RTS fan !!!! I spent a lot of time on this one to get more ants !! I really wish this game can add a box select sysyem and a fath finding system for green ants ,wish for more content and more kinds of ants ,that I am so glad to see more update of this game !!

I really like the premise but it absolutely needs some basic obstacle avoidance and pathing for the ants. The micro requirement as it stands right now makes it impossible to manage more than a few ants at a time.

Very cool game! I actually liked the lack of path finding and more advanced command features as it made it quite challenging and stretched my multi tasking ability :D Loved the music and overall mood!

Cool little idea! This tests your multitasking abilitites really well :D
Graphics are also nice and it has a good interactive tutorial which is really cool for a Game Jam game.

Great fun ! I could have used a little pathfinding, but it wasn't all the necessary. After a while having a lot of ants feels more like a challenge than an advantage, I guess you can choose your own difficulty this way.
I also made a game with little ants, it was fun to play little cousins of mine :))

It seems ants were the way to go this game jam. Your tutorial method was an idea me and my group should have thought of for our ant game :sweat_smile:.

Cool little game, I liked the tutorial. I found it a bit tedious to control each ant though, and I forgot which ants were which type at first.

Great concept and a decent entry for a game jam. It feels a bit too micromanagement heavy right now as you have to manually move all your ants between locations one at a time and when there is a beetle that can move through obstacles and move much faster than your ants it feels very unfair. Then on top of that being punished every three rounds with needing to spend food just to keep the colony going makes it extremely difficult to make progress in a meaningful way. I think there's a good game idea in here, maybe some automated pathfinding to allow ants who have found food to return to the nest without having to manually click on them would help a lot, or perhaps being able to select multiple ants at once like units in an rts game would make having to click on the tiny hitboxes easier. I liked the music though, really helped with the mood of the game.

cool idea, I sort of wish the ants had a bit more path finding so you could direct them to a leaf that is behind a branch.

pretty art and nice theme though. the idea feels like it has a lot of potential

Very fun!

I really liked this game! It's awesome!

btw thank you all for your feedback! There seems to be a consensus on wanting better pathfinding and ways to control the ants; I absolutely would've loved to implement all that but alas there is only so much I can do in 48 hours. Giving the ants a chance to automatically join in a nearby attack or move toward food was about all I had time for.

Keep sending your ideas for improvements my way, though, and I might just have to spend some time messing with the system later. It'd definitely be fun to add a multi-select or some pathfinding algorithms.

You would normally assume 'more soldiers' means 'more power' but it comes with a delightful challenge of microcontrol in this game. Really loved the music with some sort of SMD console vibes in it.

Here is my playtest:

https://youtu.be/JTXcUvbjqE8

really fun RTS style game! had a lot of fun with the micromanagement aspect and I think it's a pretty amazing entry!

@icxon recording a video of your playthrough is a great idea & very helpful for me; thank you!

@william-corrin @olddog @upint @kernon @dooskington @historymaker118 @diabolical-sloth and many others... I am excited to announce I've made a [**post-jam version**](https://ember44.itch.io/hive-mind-updated) of the game!

I tried to take all of your feedback into consideration (especially the resounding call for pathfinding!), and also made some quality of life changes that I think will make the game a lot more fun to play. Here are the main ones:

- Pathfinding for ants
- Pathfinding for beetles (can no longer climb over logs)
- Tracker for days survived and largest colony
- Ring around selected ant
- Big leaves that require 2 ants to carry (but give 3x as much food!)
- Balance changes to dynamically change difficulty as more days pass

I would love to hear your thoughts on this version! Do note that this is not intended to change your ratings (if you haven't played the original, do that now & come back!), but simply to provide you all with the best possible version of the game. I'm still adding features, too, so any feedback you have will be directly taken into the next update!

Here's the link again: https://ember44.itch.io/hive-mind-updated

One of my favorite entrys. I got some old school RTS vibes, and it is just fun to manage the ants as well as buying new ones with my resources.

@ember44 your updated version plays really well! It has a really fun tower defense vibe to it. My only remaining nitpick would be that when selecting an ant, that ant shouldn't immediately stop what it's doing. It should continue with its previously assigned task. Otherwise, this is a fantastic entry! Well done!