They Buggin!

by jacobloon

co-authored: @jungledorf

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.34

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.06

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.80

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.06

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.54

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.04

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.54

The life of an ant is hard, more so when being invaded every day. They must be BUGGIN if they think we wont fight back.
Defend your anthill, collect fruit, upgrade, and survive

Summon ants using the hot bar with collected resources. Either manually control them my clicking on them or right click them to swap between automatic modes. Over time, enemy ants and ant hills will spawn, attacking fruit, your ants, and your base. To keep up with increasingly difficult enemies, select your base to upgrade your ants, resources, and base itself.

Automatic Ant Modes:
“Right click your ants to cycle between three different behavior modes”
Harvest (Yellow): Prioritizes harvesting fruit and depositing it back in your base.
Conquer (Green): Prioritizes destroying enemy ant hills, then ants.
Bloodlust (Red): Prioritizes killing enemy ants, then ant hills.

Controls

WASD : Move the camera
Shift + WASD : Move the camera faster
Mouse 2 : Right click on an ant to cycle between automatic modes (harvest, conquer, bloodlust)
Scroll Wheel : Zoom in and out
Mouse 1 : Select an ant and select somewhere to send it
Control + Mouse 1 : Select multiple ants at the same time
Alt + Mouse 1 : Command all ants to converge onto the mouse position
1 2 3 : Summon an ant from your hotbar
E : Stomp on a location, squashing all (Be careful where you aim!)

Made With

GameMaker Studio 2
FL Studio
Audacity
Paint.net

Tags: #casual, #gamemaker, #hand-drawn, #top-down

Tools: Audacity, FL Studio, GameMaker, Paint.net

Comments17

Setter7 Oct 2024, 14:21

I like the game loop. I only could start playing once i found out you can cycle the ants modes so maybe make it more clear. Also it could be skill issue but the difficulty at the start is a bit too much.

Shiiro 10psi8 Oct 2024, 23:25

A neat RTS game. Brutally difficult. Would like some indication that an ant is selected.

Hamachi9 Oct 2024, 10:18

It starts and crashes

stepa9 Oct 2024, 10:19

Born gameplay, but nice music

Jacobloonauthor9 Oct 2024, 15:42

@hamachi Which version did you download/try to play? We haven't been able to recreate that issue yet.

JonasOlsson9 Oct 2024, 20:13

Man this game was hard! But I like the concept and gameplay :)

bacalear9 Oct 2024, 20:42

Great idea!

Damien Black10 Oct 2024, 05:37

Very cute. I was looking for the sim-ant entry. I enjoyed playing, actually fun. I spent the first 5 games trying to control the ants myself and completely failing. it was only when I stopped looking at the map and focused on creating ants and setting their ai goal that I made progress. Still didn't get very far, but I'll probably come back later :)

Also, the variation on Ant Go Marching is wicked good. Sounds great!

machino10 Oct 2024, 05:44

We pretty much had the same idea lol. I liked that the ants had auto modes and did their jobs well, I wish you could que up ants to buy since you end up with tons of money and you end up just waiting to click them again. I do wish there was some more agency as well besides the stomp mechanic (which is really cool) since it's easier to just let the ants do their thing. Overall a fun game!

Xacce11 Oct 2024, 06:59

So sad - ima kill my ants with my bots cause its not oriented box collider ;(

Iaroslavik12 Oct 2024, 07:17

Good job, like it

ElliotS12 Oct 2024, 17:43

Genuinely very fun, I loved the challenge. I wish worker ants had a gathering default though, given the pace saving some clicks would have been nice.

LDJam user 24319313 Oct 2024, 09:28

Nice RTS. I wish the ants would stay still or at least I could order them directly to be in any desired mode so I don't have to chase ants after first right click.
That being said, I like that ants have base order so I could summon any ant and be sure that they'll defend my base.

Honey Pony20 Oct 2024, 01:42

Once I realized that there were upgrades to the base I was able to do reasonably well. It definitely seems difficult to keep up with the ever increasing number of spiders--in particular it seems easiest to earn food at the beginning of the game and quickly becomes more difficult as the food ants tend to die and it's hard to keep them coming when you also need to defend the base.

Still, it was pretty fun to get better at the game and I was eventually able to kill 23 total spiders. It is fun to command the ants and see them go off and do their thing. I am very glad that the AI modes are there in the game, although I wish there was more indication of what each one did, as well as some sort of defensive mode so that it was possible to keep the base safer.

Unfortunately I always forgot about the boot past a few uses in the beginning. I perhaps could have survived a little longer with it. It is a pretty funny mechanic -- the idea that this one ant colony in particular has a human on their side stomping on all the other bugs.

All in all though a fun game!

Hengen23 Oct 2024, 13:58

This was awesome, i am super impressed that you guys were able to make an RTS during a gamejam! 🐜🐜🐜
Also, the music brought me straight back to this ANTZ scene lol

p0l4r23 Oct 2024, 18:31

Good game, i have major skill issues though

Coldays23 Oct 2024, 21:42

Very fun and addicting game! Very steep difficulty curve! It has a few missing quality of life features from being such a good game.
- Zooming should be centered on the middle of the screen
- "Selecting" ants should stick until you select another ant
- Some visual feedback on what ant is selected
- It's hard to have ants deliver food back to base without upgrade menu popping up
- There is no indication that an ant has food to deliver back to base

It's impressive that you managed to make such a fun game-loop. I played it tons of times and had a blast!

Other games by @jacobloon

★3.86

★2.90