Difference between revisions of "SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony"

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[[Category: Simulation]]
 
[[Category: Simulation]]
 
[[Category: Adventure]]
 
[[Category: Adventure]]
 
[[Category: Games I've Beaten]]
 
[[Category: Games I've Beaten]]

Revision as of 15:51, 26 May 2017

SimAnt is a simulation game by Maxis where you play as ants in a colony trying to expand the size of your colony over a yard and house. The game also comes with an experiment mode and a thick manual with encyclopedic information about ants. Like a lot of the early Sim games, it's more of a toy than a game.

Status

I own this game for DOS and have beaten the game's campaign mode.

Review

Overall: 4/10

Good

  • The game nicely embodies the Sim mentality allowing for lots of experimentation. You can dig your own ant tunnels, lay your own chemical trails, pit ants against each other, etc.
  • It was nice that the designers actually included a campaign-style game where you can actually beat it. And the plot, trying to infest an entire yard, is very thematic.
  • The game has a lot of details that teach you about ants like the ability to modify the birthing caste, sharing food, chemical trails, etc.
  • The various hazards, rain, lawn mower, spider, ant lion, kitchen, etc. make the game very life-like.
  • The graphics are actually quite nice for a PC game of the day, the designers wisely chose to modify the EGA palette.
  • The manual is amazing.
  • The addition of dialogue boxes is a hilarious addition to the game.
  • The game has a pretty impressive windowed interface for 1991.

Bad

  • Over all, there just isn't that much to do in the game. After a single play-through of the campaign mode, and an hour in experiment mode, you've done everything the game has to offer.
  • The campaign mode is really easy, and can be beaten in only a few hours without much skill.
  • While you get to dig your own nest, the AI ants don't utilize it effectively. They drop food and eggs randomly around, making it very difficult to make a strategic layout unless you want to sit in the nest all day and move stuff around. I would have preferred a way for you to direct other ants to keep eggs in one section, food in another, etc.
  • Even though most of the game takes place in a backyard lawn, there is very little grass. This was probably a decided because too many obstacles would make movement frustrating, but this means you're looking at a dull brown screen most of the time.
  • For some reason, in experiment mode, you can't remove walls once they're built, which makes them problematic to use.

Ugly

  • Nothing.

Gallery

Links