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The community has shown their interest in this game. Valve has reached out to this developer to start moving things toward release on Steam.

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Formicarium

Description Discussions0 Comments102

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Genre: Strategy, Simulation

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux

Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese

Players: Single-player

Posted

Updated

Nov 18, 2014 @ 11:19am

Apr 16, 2015 @ 12:59pm

Description

Release date: Summer 2015

What is Formicarium?
Formicarium is a strategic simulation game for mobile devices, Mac and PC. Players become the invisible mind guiding an ant-hive through difficulties and dangers, such as starvation, predators, infestation and invasion. Every organism in the Formicarium microcosm, from plants to insects, lives and perishes according to the biological rules governing the natural world.

What is game-play like?
The casual game-play option allows you to interact with creatures at a comfortable pace. You get to care for your natural world through experimentation, observing how different actions produce different results. This is a mode for exploring, learning, discovering and experiencing the environment of Formicarium, without worrying about relentless attacks.

You can also enter Formicarium’s competitive mode, where the adventure intensifies. Here, your carnivorous ants are racing to secure sufficient sustenance in the form of earthworms and beetles. At the same time, predatory arachnids seek to search and destroy, pregnant wasps are desperate to lay their eggs in your ants’ bodies and uncontrollable infestations of mites or fungi threaten sweep the colony.

What makes it unique?
Far more complex than a simple platform game, Formicarium is strategy-based and tactically-driven. A bit like a chess player who must think several moves in advance, players must anticipate how their interventions will affect the complex, fragile and beautiful ecosystem. Formicarium utilizes the power of modern computers not just for stunning graphics, but also for the procedural creation of an environment in a state of constant evolution, according to a biologically-faithful genetic imprint.

Who’s it for?
If you love challenging cult-classics like Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress, or watching a world unfold under your care and influence, as in the Sims and SimCity, then Formicarium is exactly the sort of game that will delight and engage you.

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102 Comments

susan.x Dec 2, 2017 @ 9:03am

also, contact ants Canada a youtube channel on ant keepers with over 1.2 million followers.I'm sure he would love the idea of an ant game and would be happy to help advertise people to donate money to help

susan.x Dec 2, 2017 @ 9:01am

please make a patreon page to generate money for your app development, I need this game in my life :D

Bersaelor [author] Jul 19, 2017 @ 1:17pm

@Lucy: Camera should still be mostly top down, when going underground I imagine a Dungeon-Keeper like interface would work well.

I agree it would look nice 2D and 3D, but with the failed Kickstarter Campaign I was concerned people are not valuing the 2D graphics as much as they would 3D.

The vectorized style of the 2D graphics so far would lend themselves well to a sort of low-poly geometric 3D environment that will still allow for a multitude of active units on one screen.

Lucy Jul 14, 2017 @ 9:23am

Part 2/2

Also sometimes 3D will look worse than a beatifully painted 2d. Like what I've seen from the pics/vids Formicarium looks really beautiful. It would look even better with HD grafics. Would it look like that aswell in 3D? You said you could keep the artistic style - but does that really work in 3D?

But in the end I will be happy to support anything you come up with as long as it doesn't change the game too much, cause I'm sure you can make a beautiful game with or without 3d! And maybe it has some great advantages and it will be even better? :)

Cheers,
L

Lucy Jul 14, 2017 @ 9:23am

Personally I'm sceptical with 3D, because it >can< make navigating complicated and controlling units very clumsy. I've had bad experiences with 3d.

I guess it totally depends on how you want to use it. When you look at Empires of the Undergrowth, they use 3D but the environment is essentially 2d, so it's easy to navigate. Building tunnels underground is very easy in 2d when you see it from the side, or from the top, whereas if you had a real 3D environment, you would be able to build tunnels up/ down/ left/ right/ forward/ backward - how would you visualise that?

Part 1/2

sehrgut42 Jul 13, 2017 @ 11:10am

Please don't add 3D . . . getting the game as originally specced will be big enough of a project without throwing away the existing work just for 3D. Maybe a sequel, once the 2D game is finished?

Bersaelor [author] Jun 11, 2017 @ 12:18am

I'm also experimenting with 3D engines, what do you guys think about keeping the artistic style but going 3D?

With usually >10k sprites per scene it was already challenging to get FPS up in 2D, but there are some tricks to let the GPU handle most of the work. Just not necessarily in Unity, will have to reach deeper into the toolbox for this one.

Bersaelor [author] Jun 11, 2017 @ 12:15am

@Irolden @Lucy: It's on hiatus but not dead. Had to get back to earning money with my work for a while..

If you like it, subscribe on formicarium.org or like us on https://www.facebook.com/Formicarium2014/ . I'll inform you when we start a new funding campaign and with the help of a dedicated fanbase it might just work next time :)

Lucy Apr 30, 2017 @ 4:39pm

It's dead isn't it? ;( Why do great indeas like that never work out, so sad. Please come back and finnish it!!! Pleeeaassseee

Sirius Pack Sep 4, 2016 @ 8:08pm

Does anyone know if this game is still in development? I'd love to buy it

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