There is fun to be had here. Graphically, it's beautiful. The animations are great. The gameplay overall is fun. It's got a pretty good level of tactics and strategy. And, with the amount of time I've had so far, no bugs, glitches, or crashes. Simply, I like the game and I feel comfortable with the asking price.

*Disclaimer: The following is my own personal opinion and I hope the devs see and read this and hopefully implement some of my desired features.*

The game is basically an RTS top-down point and click strategy game that was turned into a 3rd person game. It has more in common with Empires of the Undergrowth. I say this because, unfortunately, you are nothing but a commander of sorts. Initially, I thought the game would be a type of RPG ant-roleplaying game, with a lot of inspiration from the Sim Ant game from 1991. Sadly, you (as an ant) cannot forage resources or battle enemies. You cannot freely enter your colony's ant hill and dig or excavate your underground city of tunnels. Your only purpose is to roam and command legions of ants and ally insects. You, yourself, cannot help gather food and resources or engage in combat. I really wish this wasn't the case and really hope the devs can patch this in.

I like this game, but it's not what I expected.

First, the game is total eye candy. I don't know how well it scales down, but on ultra settings in 4k on my 5700X3D + 7900XTX system I get 70-100FPS and it looks *really* good. Like stunning. Impressive for a gamer but a fun jaw-dropping thing to show non-gamers.

Secondly, this is a chill/cozy controller game. I thought I'd be sitting close to my screen clicking away in RTS mechanics, but I find myself sitting back on the couch with a controller admiring the graphics and sending my ant legions around without ever really feeling threatened.

So far I'm 3+ hours in on the main campaign and it's like an RTS but you control a single ant from a third person perspective and order around the legions from there. There was already a random platformer lever...

Yes... your ant can jump and they have you leaping from leaf to leaf. If you didn't realize it wasn't an actual simulation you will when you power hop across the map like a frog. Maybe you realized it wasn't a simulation when the ants talked to each other.

Most of the negative reviews I see are from people who wish it was either Sim Ant or a more traditional RTS. It is a relaxed 3rd person strategy genre mashup with eye candy nature graphics. If you're into that then this game is very much worth it.

As an ant game lover, I really can't give this game a thumbs down... but I'm still disappointed that it's not the same RTS style as "Empire of the Ants" from 2000 or "Empires of the Undergrowth" or even "SimAnt", where you actually take part in building a colony: gathering food, nursing brood, engaging in combat, etc. In this game, you play more like a scout and commander, with everything taking place above ground, which kind of loses that true ant colony vibe. There's no attacking the enemy queen in her protected lair…

So yes, I am a bit disappointed.

Becareful Its not a colony sim where you grow and manage an ant dynasty like i thought it was initially. So, no you cant start a colony, no you cant pick a type of ant to use with unique abilities and characteristics that could effect gameplay (fire ants, black ants, leaf cutter ants etc), its okay but it gets stale very quick...basically youre a fleet commander with eh ability to use perks you unlock to help give advantages like buffs,. You'll want to upgrade get the best resources you can so you can upgrade some more, capture locations and expand power on a instanced map with a recognized goal, simple tactics needed but its not overly complicated. Its like quicktime/strategy but you're on the ground commanding and you're not in a bird's eye view you're literally a ant on the ground. Also with some exploration and platforming type of missions bundled with a story. The graphics are top notch!! Good to play IMO i could see them adding better features in the future...its got potential its a keeper. ITS NOT A COLONY SIM....maybe they'll add that later **shruggs***

This is definitely not the game I thought it would be. Graphics are great, Soundtrack is tranquil and pleasing to hear. Overall the game play was lack luster for me personally you spend most of your time running an obstacle course on multiple maps hopping quite literally from mission to mission. I was hoping to be apart of a living world where you gathered resources and built satellite nests to help the colony grow. If you're looking for a simple commander type game where you send troops to fight and activate buffs from the rear this game is for you.

This is a hard review to write because I absolutely appreciate the devs for giving this concept life. However where the game falls short for me is the complete lack of colony management and having conversational dialogue between Ants to move the "story" forward which is extremely immersion breaking when set against realistic graphics.

For some odd reason in the back of my mind I had hoped it would have been a modern version of Sim Ant from SNES. A game where you could start a colony from scratch with a single queen and grow it into a sizable nest before the colony got so big that war with the red ants was unavoidable.

This just seems to focus on rock-paper-scissor instance wars that you enter by running around talking to different Ants. At the end of the day the game is beautiful and it's my fault for having high expectations. If they ever incorporate colony management in the future then this game will hands down be an unquestionable winner, but until then I can't really recommend this.

The game is Alright, may a bit monotone.

The only reason i do not recommend the game is because the Ant Theme is just on the surface present..

I am a Ant Lover and i was so happy to see a new ant Themed game just to realize it isnt really..
You could have replaced all the ants with Humands, design the map a bit diferent and no feature of the game would have felt odd.

No Aspect of the gameplay was made to fit to the ant Theme. You collect Food and Wood and spend them, Order a Blob of Ants called Legions around from afar. It Feels more like a Medieval Tactition game where you play as a Comander and Call out to your troops.

You wont see Ant Trails nor any Antspecific behaviour some Ant Colonys have like herding Lice, Growing Fungus or such.

So in Short:
Gameplay is ok,
Graphics are Stunning,
Ant Theme is not worked into the Gameplay / Feels replaceable

Pros :
- Great Graphic
Cons :
- Shallow tech tree
- Shallow Unit Selection
- No line of sight needed for ranged units
- No real balance between units , just spam a couple of types and you are good forever.
- Can't go into the anthill ... as an ant
- Incredibly unrealistic mercenary units when there are existing ant-counterparts (using beetles instead of majors , using hornets instead of flying ants , which also don't make sense but they make more sense than hornets)
- Some levels are just parkour walking simulator
- The control scheme is clearly intended for controller which means it's shallow at best , and just plain bad at worse
- You actually control an incredibly small squad of ants which the game tries not to make you not realize , but i did , and i hated it , when i think of ants i don't think of "small squad of elite units" i think of MASSIVE FLOOD OF ANTS.
- As far as i can tell , the only thing that changes when you upgrade a unit (only 2 upgrades available and they all do the same thing lol) is that the unit has better stats and it now has more balls next to its icon
- Due to the way your protagonist ant is coded , you are afk doing nothing for 90% of the battle just waiting for your small team of ants to finish without being able to get a cinematic look because of your inability to free cam.
- All you do other than tell the ant where to go , is occasionally click the power up buttons which the game hypes so much but in truth they are just "buff attack , buff defense , buff speed" and nothing more.
- The game is immersive until the ant start talking (not voice acted) about federations and politics , the game is immersive until you recruit hornets and beetles in your ANT ARMY , the game is immersive until you realize you CAN'T go into the ant hill , the game is immersive until you realize you are not a real ant colony just a hot pot of all ant colonies mixed together with random insects added as extra flavor.
- The healer class goes into melee if you tell them to heal making them completely useless , there is probably a way to avoid this but the control scheme is so horrid and the healer class has NO UPGRADES , so i didn't even bother checking.
- Oh and the healer class is just aphids because of course in the middle of the battle the ant goes and chugs down some aphids juice to heal , very realistic , very immersive.
- Resource management ? in your dreams , it's wood and food , as basic as it can get and it's not even balanced properly , you will need like 1 farm for every 4 woodcutters , your ants don't eat , i repeat , your ants don't eat you just use food to spawn them once and you are done.
- building ? you mean clicking on a png and watching a number change. There are no buildings except for the awfull stick wall , that's the only building that has an actual model , everything else is just a stat buff. Oh this anthill makes mushrooms ? this anthill makes wood? goodluck finding out , unless you walk all the way there and open the ui to see a "built" on top of a png.
- the maps are huge , which normally would be great , too bad you are an ant , walking at ant speed while having to hold Shift to run , which doesn't actually make you run , it makes you lose all attrition with the ground , lose the ability to climb and clip into every object making the speed of your "run" incredibly inconsistent , to the point i'm sure there is someone out there who is feels car sick playing this game.
- There are no difficulty sliders , i have seen a sea of people complaining they couldn't finish the game because it was too hard for them , watch out you might become one of them.

Conclusion/TLDR
Game's basic as heck for a RTS , you see everything there is in the first 10 minutes making the battle part of the game incredibly repetitive.
It's a glorified walking simulator , where you are a non-voice acted ant shaped person in medieval times.
This game has nothing of "ant" , it's not the ant game you are looking for , unless you are a super casual player who knows nothing about ants.
This game should not be sold at 40 euros (or 28, with how shallow it is , maybe 15 euros is a more correct pricing). I understand the devs put a lot of effort into it but they just put all their effort in the wrong place (graphics) and forgot the most important part, gameplay.

Fun but if you are looking for ant sim where you build you own giant colonies this isnt the game. This is more like a battle game where you have to defeat the other team. That said, it is still a lot of fun and an absolute beautiful game. It also loads stupid fast

As far as strategy games go, it's alright. But if you want a good ant game, this just isn't it.

Beautiful graphics, but it really saddens me that they didn't go harder into the ant aspect, you can't even go down into the actual anthill.