Sometimes, the most straightforward ideas are among the best. Empire of the Ants takes an idea so simple — that of the tiny, highly social and surprisingly intelligent insects referred to in the title – and transforms it into an almost photorealistic real-time strategy game with a likeness to Creative Assembly’s Total War series. Consider me interested already — but do you know the best bit? It’s being developed with console-based controls from the outset!
We’ve been lucky enough to gain access to the latest preview code for Empire of the Ants, and whilst this is only accessible on PC, we were also advised that it was currently optimised for play with controllers, and therefore I was able to achieve a console-like experience. My first impression was, as yours may be, that Empire of the Ants is an absolutely incredible looking game that may even have exceed my expectations.
As Dann said in his original preview for Empire of the Ants, console-based strategy games rely on their exceptional controls and a reliable camera that does the right things when left to its own devices, but which can be fettled easily for tight situations by the player. As I played through a level where I had to hunt down three fireflies, I found myself able to navigate tight underground tunnels and corridors with relative ease, albeit with the expected and occasional challenges of controller inversion when I was walking on the ceiling.
Dann originally wrote that “Empire of the Ants is incredibly detailed, and with a tight third-person camera and some fantastic lighting it’s no surprise that words like ‘photorealistic’ are already being bandied about by people talking about it. Critically though, it also performs fantastically” and I have to say that I broadly agree. They also mentioned that the console-bound demo performed admirably, and I can say the same for the version that I’ve been testing on PC — even with the graphics options set as high as possible.
There are two “modes” of play in Empire of the Ants, which broadly translate as battles or combat missions, and then exploration and storytelling. In combat, the player controls their own, single ant who acts as a commander to other legions around them. These legions comprise of warriors, ranged fighters and even creatures such as snails which are not actually ants, but whom have some symbiotic alliance with them — which is occasionally explained in the bestiary screen.
Combat is simple and straightforward, although I did have some specific controller issues that I am fairly confident were due to how the game recognises my (cheap and nasty) controller. Movement, camerawork and most buttons worked fine, but I couldn’t use the trigger buttons to direct units. Thankfully, despite being told that keyboard support was not available, these buttons did work, and so through deft use of both controller and keyboard (not quite as intuitive as keyboard and mouse, I will say) I was able to get things done.
After just a few battles and offline, solo play only, I can say that combat in Empire of the Ants shows a lot of promise. I’ve only seen a handful of units and some very basic upgrades (linked to the base building elements of the game) but I found the distinct nature of each unit to be intriguing – both visually and tactically — and despite hundreds of little bugs on screen, there was never a performance drop at any point. It will take some time to get used to how many creatures are in a legion though, and I will need a bit more experience before I can completely differentiate units of different kinds in a congested melee.
In the exploration missions I enjoyed conversing with other ants, and I’m pleased that Microids has gone chosen to retain the narrative route set by Bernard Werber’s source material, rather than dropping this for perhaps pure strategy. I did try one early exploration mission — where I needed to capture three fireflies with no idea of where they were, or any real offensive skills of my own — which I found quite frustrating, but hopefully that kind of issue will be ironed out over time.
Generally speaking, I am hugely excited about trying Empire of the Ants (on console in particular) and I look forward to when have access to a final release version. Whilst it may be a simple idea in principle, the way that Microids has chosen to present Empire of the Ants is far from it in terms of technical scope, yet so far it appears that complex ideas have been made relatively simple in their execution. Let’s hope that the finished product is as fun as it promises to be!
Empire of the Ants is expected to launch on most current generation consoles and PC later this year.
