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.