“Nice game with a message” – New strategy game turns you into an ant, is a little insider tip

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Since November 7th, 2024, Empire of the Ants, a unique strategy game, has been released for Steam, GOG, Epic, PS5 and Xbox. Instead of managing everything from above as a “god”, you act as an ant and control your units from close range. And such small creatures have completely different challenges.

What kind of game is this?

  • In Empire of the Ants you play as ant number 103,683, who is appointed a kind of commander by the queen.
  • Your armies consist of various ants and beetles that you have to lead to sources of food and resources or command in battle.
  • You control the ant yourself the entire time. Base building, commands and technology all work without an isometric perspective.

    • Empire of the Ants: The launch trailer for the unusual strategy game on Steam

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    This is how Empire of the Ants arrives: On Steam, Empire of the Ants has a rating of “mostly positive” with 76% approval, although it only has 103 reviews. According to SteamDB, the game had 1,126 players when it was released.

    Steam users particularly praise how smoothly the game runs and how relaxing it is to play. The gameplay is “refreshing”, but also “calm” and “almost meditative.” A special treat is that while playing you get the important message that you should pay attention to your surroundings.

    The negative reviews say that the missions quickly become repetitive. Some ant lovers are also disappointed that the topic is only superficial. You can simply replace them with people. In general, the game isn’t bad, it’s just too expensive for what it is at 40-50 euros.

    The colleagues at GameStar rate Empire of the Ants with 77 out of 100 points. They also praise the graphics and the rather quiet gameplay. There is criticism of the strategy factor and the story.

    30 to 60 hours of playtime for Ant Strategy

    The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of a mix of Pikmin and Mount & Blade. Your ant rushes across the field and looks for resource nodes or enemies in order to command the units he brought with him there. How much of what content you see depends on the game mode:

  • Exploration is for players who like to roam freely and play smaller tasks like rescue missions.
  • Tactical has an additional combat component and is essentially a skirmish or skirmish mode where you just fight a battle. The troops function on a rock-paper-scissors principle.
  • Strategically, base building, resource management, troop training and the tech tree come into play.

    • The campaign alone should take between 30 and 60 hours of playing time, depending on how completely you want to complete all the tasks. There is also a PvP mode in which you can compete against other players.

    MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus was already able to play Empire of the Ants at gamescom 2024. As a big RTS fan, he was initially skeptical, especially because the game is optimized for controllers. But the unusual strategy game surprised him: I love strategy games on PC, but an RTS with a controller is my insider tip from gamescom 2024

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