HAIL ANTS
May 19, 2022 6:42 AM Subscribe
Ant Game! Place anthills and see how much food your ants can collect before time runs out. Make your own maps in Sandbox mode. Compete against the world in Daily Challenges.
This is way fun. Seems like ants travel randomly, but gravitate toward scent trails of other ants, and prefer green food-having trails to red trails. Trying to decide if its better to put my anthills in a corner so they eat the hard-to-find food or in the center so they are assured to get the biggest masses.
posted by Wulfhere at 8:11 AM on May 19, 2022
posted by Wulfhere at 8:11 AM on May 19, 2022
SimAnt was one of those games that came out in the early 1990s that had me going, 'why didn't I make that??' along with Civ, MtG etc . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:43 AM on May 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:43 AM on May 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Wow, this triggers some serious phobia in me at a deep level. Just hitting play for a bit makes me really freaked out.
Thank you for posting this! I had no idea such a basic set of graphics showing ants would make me react this way.
I'm curious if anyone else gets that reaction.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 9:11 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thank you for posting this! I had no idea such a basic set of graphics showing ants would make me react this way.
I'm curious if anyone else gets that reaction.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 9:11 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Excellent.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 9:54 AM on May 19, 2022
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 9:54 AM on May 19, 2022
No freak outs for me; just enjoying this low stress game - trying to optimize placements is quite fun, and watching the random search behaviour turn into intense activity when food is found is enjoyable.
posted by nubs at 9:59 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by nubs at 9:59 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's sad when a few brave scouts find food but then can't make their way back to the nest. I had a small group of 10 well-fed ants leading each other in a tight circle for a while.
posted by Wulfhere at 10:11 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Wulfhere at 10:11 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
This is fantastic, ants are one of my favourite animals, even though that's like a bazillion different animals. This is a fun mix of sand game and simant, would love some more active tools to mess with these lil gals but this fun as is.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:31 AM on May 19, 2022
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:31 AM on May 19, 2022
I love the explosion of frantic activity once they exhaust a food source.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:06 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hydrophonic at 11:06 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I love this, but I'm finding myself near the bottom of the rankings in every level. "Put the nests close to the most food" seems like the obvious strategy... but apparently not. Anyone got any hints?
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:34 PM on May 19, 2022
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:34 PM on May 19, 2022
BuddhaInABucket
Taking the 5/19/2022 map as an example, some of the small isolated clumps will be fully harvested before the timer runs out. You can put those hives somewhere else and harvest more food.
It looks like ants don't need to return to their original homes.
Ants are bad at digging for food. They'll only do an okay job at it if there is no food near them. So put the hives near the dirt if you want them to definitely dig through something.
At the end of a round you'll see how much each hive harvested, press reset and move the hives using right click and see how that changes the numbers.
posted by Ziabatsu at 2:48 PM on May 19, 2022
Taking the 5/19/2022 map as an example, some of the small isolated clumps will be fully harvested before the timer runs out. You can put those hives somewhere else and harvest more food.
It looks like ants don't need to return to their original homes.
Ants are bad at digging for food. They'll only do an okay job at it if there is no food near them. So put the hives near the dirt if you want them to definitely dig through something.
At the end of a round you'll see how much each hive harvested, press reset and move the hives using right click and see how that changes the numbers.
posted by Ziabatsu at 2:48 PM on May 19, 2022
I am here
posted by anthill at 7:40 PM on May 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by anthill at 7:40 PM on May 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
I am so happy to have this game--SimAnt is the only computer game I have ever loved.
posted by assenav at 8:19 PM on May 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by assenav at 8:19 PM on May 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
SimAnt is the only computer game I have ever loved.
Good to hear this because I have a copy (in box) that I have never played. I was just thinking about it recently. I can probably get it to run on the iMac G3 that I just inherited.
posted by neuron at 10:01 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Good to hear this because I have a copy (in box) that I have never played. I was just thinking about it recently. I can probably get it to run on the iMac G3 that I just inherited.
posted by neuron at 10:01 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Play as if your life depended upon it.
"If all of humanity were to disappear, the remainder of life would spring back and flourish. The mass extinctions now under way would cease, the damaged ecosystems heal and expand outward. If all the ants somehow disappeared, the effect would be exactly the opposite, and catastrophic. Species extinction would increase even more over the present rate, and the land ecosystems would shrivel more rapidly as the considerable services provided by these insects were pulled away."posted by fairmettle at 10:32 PM on May 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
- E.O. Wilson & Bert Hölldobler in Journey To The Ants (intro version of their Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece: The Ants)
The eddies. Around and around, eating up the seconds, slowly turning from green to red. Whyyyyy... The hive is RIGHT THERE! Go back to the hive, mesdames!
Sometimes this game feels like it's about more than ants. Sometimes it's more like, what is there, more than ants?
posted by Don Pepino at 5:38 AM on May 20, 2022
Sometimes this game feels like it's about more than ants. Sometimes it's more like, what is there, more than ants?
posted by Don Pepino at 5:38 AM on May 20, 2022
Feynman would've loved this!
posted by Eideteker at 8:07 AM on May 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Eideteker at 8:07 AM on May 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
The random chance element of this is fascinating to me - sometimes, even if I leave a hive in the same place game to game, what the ants find or don't find is really intriguing.
posted by nubs at 2:49 PM on May 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by nubs at 2:49 PM on May 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by dominik at 7:56 AM on May 19, 2022