Hover the cross-section to inspect. Drag with right mouse or hold SPACE to pan.
Anthill To Die On
You found a colony at the surface. Everything you need to win is buried, and
every tile you take out of the ground is a load of spoil somebody has to carry back up.
You never command an ant. You daub scent into the world and the colony reads it —
imperfectly, slowly, and sometimes wrong. That gap is the game.
To win
Grow the colony until it is mature
Bank a food surplus and hold it
Keep a surface exit open and unfrozen
Then commit the surplus to alates and launch the flight
To lose
The queen dies — one tile, deep, protect her
Winter arrives and the stores are empty
The workforce collapses entirely
How it works
Brushes 1–6
1 Attractant — biases wandering ants toward the paint. Use it to point foragers at food you can see.
2 Dig — marks soil for excavation. Ants nearby get recruited to the face. Marks sit in the soil, so you can draw a whole shaft.
3 Repellent — abandon a route. For floods, breaches, and dead ends.
4 Rally — alarm scent. Ants converge and fight. They are bad at it; you will lose workers.
5 Seal — backfill a tunnel with spoil. Cheap disposal and the way to wall off a rival border.
6 Royal — mark a new royal chamber. The queen will walk there. She is helpless on the way.
Costs
Paint decays faster than ant-laid scent. Intent has to be re-committed.
Paint is made of food. Direction competes with growth.
Paint changes probability, not pathing. There are no waypoints and no orders.
The ground
Spoil must be hauled to the surface. The mound is beautiful and it advertises you to predators.
Wide unsupported spans collapse. Chambers braced against roots do not.
The water table rises into whatever you cut below it.
Rock cannot be dug. Route around it.
Other colonies were dug by these same rules. You will breach one by accident.
Keys
1–6 brush · [ ] radius · SPACE pause
· + − zoom · Q find queen
· WASD/arrows pan · V debug view
Things worth knowing
Workers reallocate themselves. Dig marks recruit whoever is nearby; hungry
colonies put more bodies back on forage without being told.
A tunnel is one ant wide. Two-way traffic in a single shaft jams. Shaft
width is a real decision.
Seal is the cheap way to get rid of spoil — no surface trip. But the
mound drinks rainfall, so hauling buys you flood protection at the price of predators.
Winter plugs the mouth. The colony will cut its own way out in spring, slowly.
Digging a carcass, seed cache or bloom yields food instead of spoil. The bloom
regrows into your tunnels.
The water table is flat and it does not drain. Rain does drain. Learn the difference
before you commit a chamber below it.
Rallied workers can pull down a beetle, and a dead beetle is 38 food. It will
cost you workers either way.
You only see what your ants have been near. Marking a dig into the dark is a gamble.
How the spec's open questions came out
Fixed four-season calendar, up to four years, ~20 min a year — adjustable in Tuning.
Fog of war, not the whole cross-section. Full haulage tax, adjustable.
Rivals can only be contested, never allied. The viewport scrolls and zooms.
And yes — the queen can be relocated, for 40 food, on foot, exposed the whole way.
Tuning
The spec left these open on purpose. Change them and see. Applies immediately.