Backloggd: https://www.backloggd.com/u/TGA_backloggd/review/2005934/

I caved during a recent sale and bought this, even though I have MANY more games to go through in my own backlog on steam, but nvm. I initially picked this game up because I love the idea of commanding a group of ants and ants were one of my very first special interests!

The story revolves around this ant colony that's being experimented on as a new species known as "Gene Stealers" who are able to adapt and add genetic material from other ant species into their own colony such as leaf-cutter ants, fire ants, black ants and more. You have a set of "documentary missions" where you play as one of the new ant genes that you've added to the colony, attempting to live out in the wild. I like to think it's genetic memories from those colonies that were extracted for this experimentation, but it doesn't state that.

Each colony has it's own playstyle, that's also somewhat educational like how leaf-cutter ants don't eat the leaves, but use them to grow the fungus that they actually eat!

You also have to acquire royal jelly by playing these missions, which are used to level up and improve your colony in regards to upgrading the basic stats of your ants and unlocking new abilities that can work with synergy with your group and get ready for the next tests where your colony will have to face dangers and adapt.

Food collection is for general colony upgrades like improving the stats of a tile, regardless if they're a brood, storage, movement or whatever tile. It's always good to have a extra supply of food before starting these tests as whenever an ant dies, a new one is born on that same tile to replace it. How much territory you can acquire is also capped, going up as part of mission rewards before you take on the gateway test, which will allow you to advance and gain a knew gene group and new connected documentary missions, however, each time you replay a mission, the rewards are reduced so if you're struggling with trying to pass another mission you might have to replay a level multiple times. Now they try to cover this by adding challenge alternatives to those missions, which can add new threats that make the missions more difficult, sometimes extremely difficult in regards to enemies that can't easily be killed or often hide like the beetles that hide in their traps or the Phorid flies that inject their brood into the head of your ants, killing them slowly and you can't effectively target them.

The base building reminds me games like Dungeon Keeper where you can mine out areas to either make corridors or into chambers to build up a new brood group.

Each brood group that you make can be assigned to one of five (plus a home-group) of squads that can be directed with waypoints, which is how best to get your ants out and collecting resources, hunting enemies and organising a large enough group to take out a boss creature that might be on the map. You can also set up their behaviours if you want to make groups dedicated to combat, resource collection, mounting an enemy or medical assistance. All of the above are fairly explanatory, the last one something only unlocked with the last gene in the storyline as they can heal up your troops and the mounting is where the swarm climbs up on top of a creature, often weakening it for the others to attack and some ants are good at injecting toxins, like the fire ants, whilst mounted on top of it to weaken the enemy further, but there are times that mounting an enemy like this isn't beneficial.

There New Game+ feature allows you to restart, but have all the upgrade and unlocked ant species, even taking all of these upgrades into the documentary levels, whilst also making the enemies stronger too, however, this feature irritated me because, thankfully they warn you, that achievements are disabled for this section which I do not understand why they did this as this is not cheating and even if it was, it's a single-player game. Who's going to get irritated at someone having achievements someone else doesn't have?

The ending was a lot of fun and what's great about the credits is that they provide you links to all of the free resources that they used, so that if you wish to make a game and want some of the sounds provided in the game for your own project, the credits have all of them linkable that you can click on and be taken straight to that sound!

I love it when developers are willing to share their resources with people, especially when said resources are free anyway and it can be used to support future developers. They even wrote down what the sounds were in the game so that you know how these people used them and you have a good idea how you can use them in your own future projects!

Keep gaming out there and good luck to anyone who wants to get into game development as this game can be a great resource. Especially if you want to make a similar type of game too.

Backloggd: https://www.backloggd.com/u/TGA_backloggd/review/2005934/ I caved during a recent sale and bought this, even though I have MANY more games to go through in my own backlog on steam, but nvm. I initially picked this game up because I love the idea of commanding a group of ants and ants were one of my very first special interests! The story revolves around this ant colony that's being experimented on as a new species known as "Gene Stealers" who are able to adapt and add genetic material from other ant species into their own colony such as leaf-cutter ants, fire ants, black ants and more. You have a set of "documentary missions" where you play as one of the new ant genes that you've added to the colony, attempting to live out in the wild. I like to think it's genetic memories from those colonies that were extracted for this experimentation, but it doesn't state that. Each colony has it's own playstyle, that's also somewhat educational like how leaf-cutter ants don't eat the leaves, but use them to grow the fungus that they actually eat! You also have to acquire royal jelly by playing these missions, which are used to level up and improve your colony in regards to upgrading the basic stats of your ants and unlocking new abilities that can work with synergy with your group and get ready for the next tests where your colony will have to face dangers and adapt. Food collection is for general colony upgrades like improving the stats of a tile, regardless if they're a brood, storage, movement or whatever tile. It's always good to have a extra supply of food before starting these tests as whenever an ant dies, a new one is born on that same tile to replace it. How much territory you can acquire is also capped, going up as part of mission rewards before you take on the gateway test, which will allow you to advance and gain a knew gene group and new connected documentary missions, however, each time you replay a mission, the rewards are reduced so if you're struggling with trying to pass another mission you might have to replay a level multiple times. Now they try to cover this by adding challenge alternatives to those missions, which can add new threats that make the missions more difficult, sometimes extremely difficult in regards to enemies that can't easily be killed or often hide like the beetles that hide in their traps or the Phorid flies that inject their brood into the head of your ants, killing them slowly and you can't effectively target them. The base building reminds me games like Dungeon Keeper where you can mine out areas to either make corridors or into chambers to build up a new brood group. Each brood group that you make can be assigned to one of five (plus a home-group) of squads that can be directed with waypoints, which is how best to get your ants out and collecting resources, hunting enemies and organising a large enough group to take out a boss creature that might be on the map. You can also set up their behaviours if you want to make groups dedicated to combat, resource collection, mounting an enemy or medical assistance. All of the above are fairly explanatory, the last one something only unlocked with the last gene in the storyline as they can heal up your troops and the mounting is where the swarm climbs up on top of a creature, often weakening it for the others to attack and some ants are good at injecting toxins, like the fire ants, whilst mounted on top of it to weaken the enemy further, but there are times that mounting an enemy like this isn't beneficial. There New Game+ feature allows you to restart, but have all the upgrade and unlocked ant species, even taking all of these upgrades into the documentary levels, whilst also making the enemies stronger too, however, this feature irritated me because, thankfully they warn you, that achievements are disabled for this section which I do not understand why they did this as this is not cheating and even if it was, it's a single-player game. Who's going to get irritated at someone having achievements someone else doesn't have? The ending was a lot of fun and what's great about the credits is that they provide you links to all of the free resources that they used, so that if you wish to make a game and want some of the sounds provided in the game for your own project, the credits have all of them linkable that you can click on and be taken straight to that sound! I love it when developers are willing to share their resources with people, especially when said resources are free anyway and it can be used to support future developers. They even wrote down what the sounds were in the game so that you know how these people used them and you have a good idea how you can use them in your own future projects! Keep gaming out there and good luck to anyone who wants to get into game development as this game can be a great resource. Especially if you want to make a similar type of game too.