Cute visuals and beautiful music I was really impressed by this give the engine that was used. However for a management game it was extremely difficult, I was losing ants for some reason and wasn't getting the resources quick enough for any impact to the colony-I found it very confusing!
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Antis's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Engagement | #7 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Gameplay | #12 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #12 | 4.188 | 4.188 |
| Presentation | #19 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Theme | #32 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Hoo Roo!
I'm one of the judges of this game jam and was assigned your game! As such, I've been tasked with scoring your entry based on the five criteria of Theme, Gameplay, Presentation, Engagement and Polish. While I can talk about these aspects, I cannot showcase the scores given, so please don't expect to see any numerical number tied to your entry in this post.
I chose to record my gameplay of each game I judged and post up both the video (after it goes live) and a small write-up I've done for your game. Hopefully both will help your continued growth as a developer in some way! Thank you for sharing your creativity, drive and experience with us, as every game has something wonderful to share with the world.
To start, the video (which I believe you already saw, but hey, makes it easy for others to see)!
Antis
Theme
I didn't find the theme touched on much, if at all, during the time I spent with Antis, but if there was an attempt to communicate it, it was not done in a way that is recognizable.
Gameplay
The gameplay consists of building up your ant nest in order to take on various predators who attack, while keeping your queen and colony alive and thriving. To do this you assign various workers to tasks around the colony, then build on your progress while trying not to overwhelm the colony too much. It’s a careful balancing act.
To aid your colony you can create new and upgraded rooms that serve various functions and boost your ants in various ways – from increasing the amount of forage you can hold, to adding extra health to your army, to adding more ants born every day.
The loop is pretty quick to pick up and doesn’t deviate much – eggs are birthed, then hatch after a day to become your work force, which you can then assign various roles to. Alternatively you may sacrifice ants for various goods in order to help maintain the lives of the current colony, though it's best not to do that unless it's absolutely necessary. Hard to grow a thriving nest if you keep killing off the possible workforce, after all. ;p
Engagement
The game is pretty chill – you go through the gameplay loop and slowly build up your colony. Over time you learn how to balance your workers, harvesters and soldiers so that you’re not losing more resources than you’re bringing in.
That said, you can expect to die from either overstressing the colony or under-protecting it. The game requires a very careful balancing act which doesn’t allow for much exploration of systems early on - your need to keep enough food coming in vs other ants in the colony who aren't contributing to that side can make it hard to deal with, especially if you haven't built rooms to hold the many resources required. You will want to prioritize specific roles over others just to get to the next level of the game, which discourages exploration of the systems until you can easily hold off various threats and hold enough food to allow for expansion.
I did find the slow build up (and pacing) to be a bit on the boring side, but I also fully intend to play more of this game after I’ve finished judging the others, so the loop is pretty addictive despite that, especially when you finally figure out how to balance properly, which admittedly did take me a little while, but once I understood and it clicked, it became a lot more engaging to play.
Presentation
The graphics are all custom and look great, working well together. The music is a little jarring in places but mostly fits the chill vibe that the game has, too. The UI is mostly good – the Soldier text is a bit hard to read with the green used blending into the darker background the text is on, and there were a few areas where extra explanation would be appreciated in the descriptions of what things do, especially highlighting the amount of food going out (the fact the queen isn't added into the nest total did trip me up once or twice, but I also got confused by the descriptions for the different ant types as I found them a little unclear as to whether harvesters brought in or cost an amount of food specified).
Overall, though, the game is well presented and looks very good!
Polish
No problems here! The game is very nicely polished.
Summary
A well-polished game with a pretty chill vibe that expects you to learn how to balance and follow directions. While it doesn't really present the theme from what I played of it, it is still a very solid game with an addictive gameplay loop that is worth checking out by anyone that likes a good simulation.
ENG:
Yo Satsume! I really enjoyed the game: I kept playing it for about twenty minutes even after the stream.
Definitely a very different approach for an RPG Maker game. The system is really addictive and flows very well at the beginning. However, I would have really appreciated a way to speed things up, because after the first half, once you understand how it works, it becomes a game where you mostly wait for the eggs to hatch.
Also, the builder ants seemed much less important than the other two types, so having builder ant requirements to build certain rooms felt a bit forced.
But in the end, it’s a really cute and chill game, I liked it!
ITA:
Yo Satsume! Ho apprezzato molto il gioco che ho continuato a giocare anche dopo la live, per una ventina di minuti.
Sicuramente un approccio molto differente per un gioco RPG Maker, il sistema è molto addictive e fluisce molto bene verso l'inizio. Avrei però molto gradito un modo per velocizzare visto che dopo la prima metà, quando si comprende come funziona, diventa un gioco dove bisogna attendere lo schiudere delle uova.
Inoltre le formiche costruttrici mi sono sembrate molto meno importanti delle altre due, e quindi avere dei requisiti di formiche costruttrici per costruire certe stanze mi è sembrato un po' forzato.
Ma alla fine è un gioco chill veramente molto carino, mi è piaciuto!
Here's the VOD:
Submitted
Dodge at NOWGrazie per averlo giocato prima di tutto, poi ti ringrazio anche per l'apprezzamento, alla fine era proprio quello che volevo, fare qualcosa di diverso che andasse "oltre le aspettative" (lol) dei classici giochi di rpgmaker, in ogni caso c'è sicuramente bisogno di qualche ribilanciamento, anche se bene o male non posso lamentarmi, per il tempo, diciamo che ci sono due punti di vista, essendo che un giorno dura circa 1 minuto, e che in quel minuto bisogna fare delle scelte, o anche il calcolo del costo del cibo, che spesso (soprattutto all'inizio) ti ha fregato, velocizzare il gioco diciamo che può essere un arma a doppio taglio, quindi piuttosto preferisco che il giocatore faccia check continui (se l'assalto non è vicino e non può costruire) in modo che comunque si possa organizzare per bene, alla fine essendo comunque una sorta di city-buider/relax game, mi sta bene che ci sia anche dell'inattività, anche se posso capire che ad alcuni possa annoiare, in ogni caso trattandosi di una jam, questo è quello che son riuscito a fare in quei giorni.
Per la questione delle workers, è vero che possano sembrare delle formiche che hanno peso solo come costo (il che sarebbe comunque un motivo valido per inserirle, visto il loro scopo) ma in realtà avrai notato quanto le costruzioni si velocizzino, e quindi far si che ne so, che un upgrade importante come una taskroom finisca prima di un assalto, o un food storage prima della spedizione, è comunque un vantaggio no? :P
In ogni caso grazie del feedback, può essere utile in caso di futuri aggiornamenti!
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ENG:
Thanks for playing, first of all! And also, thanks a lot for the nice words. That was exactly what I was aiming for—something a bit different, something that goes “beyond expectations” (lol) compared to the usual RPG Maker games.
Of course, some things still need to be balanced better, but overall I’m happy with how it turned out. About the timing: there are two ways to look at it. A day lasts about a minute, and in that time you have to make choices—like managing food costs, which probably caught you off guard at the start. Speeding up the game could be risky, so I’d rather players take time to check things (if there’s no raid coming and nothing to build) so they can plan properly. Since the game is a bit like a city-builder or a chill game, I don’t mind if there are some slower moments. I get that it might feel boring to some, but for a jam game, this is what I could make in those few days.
As for the workers, yeah, they might seem like ants that just cost resources (which is already a valid reason to have them, since that’s part of the challenge), but they actually help a lot with building speed. So getting something important done—like a taskroom before a raid, or food storage before an expedition—is a real advantage, right? :P
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback—it could be really helpful for future updates!
This was certainly something different! Nice presentation, but I wish there was an option to change the music from time to time. Also, why auto-skip message in tutorial, it went too fast. I had to start another game after failing the first time. It seems I kept losing more food than 1/ant? Does something else spend that resource? For the way I was playing it took quite long to get enough resources to build anything, but yeah maybe it's a game that's supposed to be played longer than just the amount of time I played it for reviewing. Anyway, nice job!
Submitted
Cokaine Polar BearThanks for playing Antis, first of all!
About the tutorial — you're right, I probably should've given players a bit more time to read it, I just didn't want it to feel too long, since I see it more as a little extra to help understand the game before it really starts.
As for the other questions about food and ants, it's pretty simple:
Each day, every ant eats 1 food, and the queen eats 5.
So if you have 10 ants, you'll lose 15 food per day (10 + 5).
You need harvester ants to gather more food than they consume!
But if you made it to the end, that means you figured the system out!
Either way, if you enjoyed it, I'm really glad!
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