Even if you're a regular reader of my content, you may not know about my secret, hidden passion. I am an ant guy. Or well, aspiring ant guy, I should say.
Ever since I was a wee sprog rummaging in the dirt in England's urban Midlands, I found myself fascinated by ants. The military urgency and sophisticated co-ordination, their biologically specialization and advanced social structure, their beautiful subterranean architecture. What LOVELY creatures, I would think to myself, only to be saddened when my parents refused me my boyhood dreams of owning my very own ant farm. With the march of time, I let my passions fade into the drudgery of adulthood, until now.
I'm a grown up now with my grown up money, meaning I can buy an ant farm if I WANT TO. And no mean parents can STOP ME THIS TIME, although maybe my girlfriend probably can... but let's not stymie the dream just yet.
Somehow, YouTube's uncanny algorithm peered into the deep recesses of my mind and began surfacing ant-based content recently. Channels like AntsCanada and Homemade Ecosystems fill my feed with 6-legged goodness, while I anticipate building my very own vivarium one day.
But wait, Jez, wtf does this have to do with gaming? Well, friends, I'm here to tell you about the fantastic next best thing to owning your very own ant farm. Coming soon to Xbox, PC, and PlayStation: Empire of the Ants, which I had the privilege of playing just last week.
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Entire the Empire of the Ants
Launch date: November 7, 2024.
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC, PlayStation 5.
Genre: Real-time strategy.
Modes: 20-hour single-player story campaign and 1v1, 1v1v1 online multiplayer competitive modes.
Xbox Game Pass: No.
Price: $39.99.
I saw the first trailers for Empire of the Ants during Xbox presentations, and found myself immediately drawn to its insecty goodness. The visuals are just stunning, and the video above is 100% representative of what I experienced on my RTX 4070 PC. Very well optimized, with charming tilt-shift visuals that emphasize the microscopic world of the ants and their ilk.
Empire of the Ants is a strategy game at its core, and we'll get into the gameplay in just a moment. I want to first touch upon how surprised I was to discover that this is actually quite heavily story-based. I was expecting something a little more like Sim Ant before I'd done my research, but this is in fact very action oriented, with a surprising emphasis on story delivery.
Empire of the Ants is based on a French science fiction novel by the same name, which juxtaposes a human story in Paris with that of an ant colony, also living in Paris. The book details the trials and tribulations of the ant colony and its characters, with science-based details that won the book a ton of praise in its heyday. It's almost a military war novel in essence, as the ants face down various threats to their colony and territory, and contest with unknown weapons from beyond their sphere of perception, and even royal court betrayal and intrigue. It seems Empire of the Ants follows a similar cadence, and describes itself as "Game of Thrones, with ants," full of twists and turns. I guess all the ants in the colony are technically related, after all.
In my demo, I was able to go hands-on early with the build Microids plans to present at Gamescom 2024. The build gave me a good overview of the game's structure. You're presented with a variety of hub areas, where story beats play out. In my initial mission, I was tasked by the Queen to solve logistical issues facing the colony, that had just emerged from winter hibernation into spring. Indeed, as the seasons progress, or even missions, the landscape radically changes. It made me realize how a bit of rain for us is essentially a biblical, catastrophic flood event for ants, since after the first mission, rainwater basically flooded the entire map. Puddles are essentially oceans to an ant, and the game riffs on these types of notes quite heavily in its story delivery, much akin to the book according to reviews I've read.
The story is penned in close collaboration with the original author, and features music composed by Mark Choi and Mathieu Alvado, who count Rayman and Baldur's Gate 3 among their achievements. Upon exploring the hub world and learning fresh aspects of the story, players will be able to enter tactical or explorative missions. Microids and developer Tower Five seem to have paid careful attention to making the game as accessible as possible without sacrificing depth, giving players two paths to pushing the story forward. If you don't fancy the hardcore tactical layer but still want to experience the story, the softer-paced explorative combat mode might be more your speed. I will say that Tower Five has done a great job of making the strategic layer incredibly accessible in its own right, though, with intuitive controls and gameplay design that should come naturally to even the freshest RTS larvae.
Real strategy but accessible (and fun) for newcomers
After meeting up with the Queen and committing myself to a pre-emptive strike on a hostile termite colony to the north, I entered into the game's first tactical mission to get a taste of what to expect from the game's beefy 20+ hour story campaign.
Your savior ant acts as both a general and a cursor of sorts. You can move around easily using the joystick, and leap onto ledges and branches and cleverly stick to surfaces in a very anty kind of way. Crawling upside-down can be a bit disorienting at first, but your inner ant will eventually crawl to the surface, and you'll be commanding the six-legged hordes in no time.
Empire of the Ants eschews the heavy resource management of games like Age of Empires or StarCraft, and instead opts for something a lot more action-oriented and fast paced.
The resource economy revolves around capturing rival nests from other types of colonizing bugs. Smaller colonies can be invaded and scattered, giving your bugs a new base from which to grow and harvest. Scouting is also key here, using your main ant to survey the locality, and build up your satellite colonies appropriately.
For example, if you see a big food item nearby, it might be worth building a battalion of workers who can set up a supply line to that fallen food stuff. Having a steady supply of food can rapidly increase your unit production, and once you head into warfare, rapidly growing new populations of soldiers, ranged acid-spraying ants, or flying ant bombers becomes increasingly important.
As you spread across the battlefield, your objectives will come into view. For the demo, my task was to destroy a rival termite colony threatening to encroach upon ant territory. Dispatching the termites would be more of a challenge than beating back smaller nests of budding rival ant species, and thankfully, the game gives you the tools to rise to the occasion.
Unlockable via your nest locations, you can learn how to produce pheromone commands that can inspire, heal, and boost your armies in the locale. You can also spawn super units and other swarms of heavy bugs for those more difficult fights, although they're a lot more limited to access than basic units — so careful use is paramount.
I was surprised how easy and intuitive the gamepad controls were, making good use of the playable ant as a sort of "cursor" to interact with nests for spawning units and the like. You literally crawl over the UI buttons to activate them, which is quite clever, and will make it ideal for devices like the ASUS ROG Ally and Steam Deck too. It's also easy to separate units into different categories to create separate groups and battalions, and send them across the battlefield using the camera to target specific icons. It's not unlike being a squad commander in Battlefield, assigning orders, although your squad is actually guaranteed to listen in Empire of the Ants.
While Empire of the Ants was not quite the simulation strategy game I expected, the intriguing story and impressive visuals coalesces into a game well-worth anticipating.
It's a bug's life for me
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Empire of the Ants is a very different kind of strategy game, that in essence leans more towards the likes of Minecraft Legends or even games like Overlord or Brutal Legend than something like Age of Empires, which should make it less intimidating to genre newcomers. The simplicity makes it easy to get into, and the royal court intrigue, arthropodic military politics, and stunning photorealism gives it a sense of uniqueness that similar action RTS titles often lack.
I do wonder if the full game will have enough variety and depth in its combat scenarios to avoid repetition. I also wonder how emotionally connected I can possibly feel to ants that don't have facial expressions and the like, but I still find myself entranced enough to put this high up on my list of most anticipated upcoming Xbox games.
Grab Empire of the Ants on November 7, 2024, for Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
