Relentless. Streams of ants. Waves of enemies. Hazards in all corners. No pause. A real time strategy at a micro level but with minimal micro management. I’ve played a couple of long sessions through a handful of missions and first impressions are very good. The fast and deadly world of bugs makes rich source material for a 4X game.
The central tactics revolve around resource management. Particularly food and unit numbers. To collect food you need ants that can travel long distances and fight off enemies. Setting up a brood of eggs costs food. Broods for each type of unit are essentially spawn points with each tile equalling a single unit. When the unit dies it respawns at the cost of some food. Connected broods form armies that can be sent to rally points using pheromones. This is what creates the streams of ants that will undertake tasks. There’s a bit more to it but this is the core stuff.
Prepare to lose a lot of little buddies. Despite quite simple overall controls it didn’t take long until I was panicking at the site of more incoming wolf spiders while trying to collect enough food to fuel my depleting army. Getting the balance of different types of units and their upgraded versions right is essential, because once the food is gone there will be no reinforcements coming. Optimising base building will probably become more important in future.
Two choices really helped build atmosphere. First, the lack of any paused tactical mode. All decisions have to be made while the game is running. Second, the inspired choice to have narration. In the main game it’s quite amusing listening to the cruel dude experimenting with the colony. In the side missions, used to get essential rewards, there is a documentary style voice over that adds a weirdly fitting tension.
From what I’ve played the difficulty curve has been reasonable. Only a few restarts learning the strategies. I can see new units, enemies, and environments being added regularly. The mission list, while substantial, is not too long and so I’d expect something new every time. I can imagine it getting very intense towards the end.
Performance wise, on my M1 Max Studio, so far the game runs very smoothly. However it does run very hot. It’s an Unreal Engine 4 game, has good graphics, and there is a lot going on. You can regularly expect hundreds of active units in moderately long levels. I’ve lowered some settings to keep heat and fan noise down.
macOS • Windows • Linux
Available from GOG, Steam, and Epic.
mishmash 