SimAnt - The Electronic Ant Colony

Sim Ant is fun to play due to the unique twist the developers choose to use. You are an ant. Having sat down earlier today to play the game i found it was very enjoyable and easy to play. However i did have some compatibility problems when trying to play Sim Ant through Windows - I encountered no sound and at times the game froze.This was easily solved by switching to DOSBox.

Playing Sim Ant is fun because it's so refreshingly different. How many other games do you know of that let you be an ant? The gameplay is similar to games such as Age Of Empires. You must build up an ant colony and set out to defeat those blasted red ants, as well as later conquering the house located in your back yard. There are many small features that make Sim Ant that much more fun than other games in the genre. Features such as Body Switching. Other games in the same genre have you clicking on a unit and obtaining instant control, this makes you feel like a god. Sim Ant made me feel more like a military commander than a god as you have to seek out the ant that you want to control before being able to body switch. There are other methods that you can use to control ant's. You can recruit them and make them follow you, or you can edit the colonies general behaviour by using the behaviour window. A small triangle with a dragable circle, you place the circle at a point in the triangle and it changes how many ants will do a certain action. The three actions are digging, foraging and nursing. There is also another identical triangle that you use to control breeding, except for this triangle you have 3 different categories - breeders, workers and soldiers. To win in Sim Ant you must build up a strong enough ant army and eliminate the red ants whilst building your colony. You are vunerable so it's wise to make pebble walls to keep enemy ants out as well as setting scent zones. I didn't fully test the danger scent zone feature, but i presume you use it to set up patrol routes for you ants.

Conclusion

When you first fire up Sim Ant, it will all be a little overwhelming, but after playing through the tutorial you should soon pick up all the basics required to play. Sim Ant is a suprisingly fun game with many neat features that you won't find in other games. Despite the out-dated graphics this simulation game is still extremly fun to play, and the small file size is also a bonus.