Empire of the Ants is putting to have a look at. For a second, you would possibly even imagine it’s actual macro-lens footage of ants in a nature documentary, and the degree of element on the textures of the forest flooring is extraordinarily spectacular. It’s not likely what it seems to be, although: this can be a real-time technique recreation with swarms of bugs on display screen without delay, however you’re by no means truly commanding greater than seven models – and given the considerably clumsy means its controls make you cycle via them to present orders, that’s a mercy. You might be capturing and build up nests, however there’s actually nothing beneath the floor. So whereas it seems huge, Empire of the Ants is definitely a fairly small-scale technique recreation in most different methods, and the lack of unit selection and multiplayer modes make it really feel smaller nonetheless.
Multiplayer matches have a good quantity of nuance in how you employ your small quantity of models and construct out your nests to tech up, and there’s ample room for expert gamers to show a scenario to their benefit with good use of powers to spice up their bugs’ harm output and debuff the enemy. It’s not in contrast to a slimmed-down model of Firm of Heroes in the means you seize territory and generate the two assets – meals and wooden – and that’s an excellent place to begin. Ant models get locked into melee fight and may’t disengage till one or the different loses, so you’ll be able to be taught to carry off a harmful Warrior unit till reinforcements arrive or stop a retreat when you end off an enemy. And when you can shortly rebuild a misplaced unit when you’ve got the meals accessible, every ant legion has a house nest they’ll respawn from, which may imply there’s an extended hike again to the entrance strains.
Every nest you seize has a set quantity of improve slots that may be crammed by a constructing or spent to help a unit from that nest, so turtling up isn’t actually an choice – you gained’t even have sufficient slots to tech as much as tier 3, which implies you’ll inevitably be overrun by ants with higher stats. All the constructing is finished from a radial menu that pops up while you work together with a nest and, cleverly, you employ your ant as a cursor to pick out issues. Crucially, taking out an enemy’s nest disables all the upgrades that have been based mostly there, as much as and together with turning off their minimap. (Fog of battle is a factor on the minimap, however since you’re viewing the world in third particular person as a substitute of a standard RTS overhead view, it’s useful you can spot a shifting legion of ants from an extended distance even when their icon hasn’t proven up on the map.)
Nonetheless, Empire of the Ants feels skinny relative to most real-time technique video games, largely as a result of there’s essentially just one faction to work with. Everybody at all times has the identical set of employees, big-headed warriors, and “gunner” ants as their major models, and so they all counter one another in a simple rock-paper-scissors steadiness. (You’ll be able to’t even play as the visually completely different termites you struggle towards in the marketing campaign.) The one selection comes from the means to customise your loadout by selecting 4 of eight accessible powers on your foremost ant to forged, swapping out your help unit between therapeutic aphids, armoring snails, or troop-carrying beetles, in addition to one of three “tremendous predator” unit sorts. These actually allow completely different methods, however I’m not a fan of the means locking these decisions in earlier than a match begins limits your means to pivot to a unique strategy in case your opponent throws you a curveball. I’d relatively be capable of swap from the flying wasps to the acid-resistant beetles as my selection of predator if my enemy goes heavy on gunner models, as an illustration, however that’s not an choice.
One other main weak point of multiplayer is that there are solely two modes: 1v1 or 1v1v1. Which means there’s no choice to play cooperatively towards the AI (which could be very weak even on the highest difficulties and doesn’t appear to know learn how to use powers, that are essential) with a good friend. It does have 21 maps, at the very least, and there’s a good quantity of variety there in phrases of how they’re laid out and the creeps that guard their useful resource caches, like large spiders and praying mantises which might be cool to observe your ants take down.
That’s good, as a result of it quickly turns into clear that there’s mainly no selection to the bugs’ animations. At first, skittering round at excessive speeds could be entertaining, even when the controls freak out since you unintentionally climb a small department and begin spinning round it like an precise confused ant. Watching a swarm stream over terrain is convincing and, since we’re up so shut, dramatic. Warriors will choose up enemies of their large jaws and shake them round, and useless our bodies are flung excessive in the air like mortarboards at a highschool commencement ceremony (which I don’t suppose ants truly do?) after which roll down hills. However while you’ve seen one ant-vs-ant struggle, you’ve seen all of them. Beetles particularly get repetitive to observe in a short time as a result of of their lunging assaults. Even so, there are good causes to play the Empire of the Ants’s multiplayer, which can’t be stated for the single-player marketing campaign.