My Virtual Ants now grow from Larvae

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.

5:01 mom im on tv

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.

I think a fire ant would be a great way of introducing a little bit of magic in the game, and have more rock paper scissors for the combat

I like that the attacks are just less effective, rather than the enemies being immune to certain attacks.

I love the visual of Chucking a bay into an archery range to make them into archers lmao

Slow but steady we're getting Age of Antpire

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?

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!

1) Have you tought about adding drops from enemies? 2) Will you add enemies with ranged atacks?

Ants should also have a "chemical" or "acid" damage type. I mean, they're ants...

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.

i really adore the style you draw the buildings in, theyre so charming and cozy looking!!

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.

Absolutely loving thoose devlogs of yours! I can't wait to try out this game 😊

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.

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!

The little pot helmets make me want to cry? This game has amazing vibes, cant wait til it comes out.

The little clay helmets are adorable!

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!