I Simulated Leaf-Cutter Ants

[@pandoratheclay]

“They seem much less likely to murder me in my sleep.” The chance has been lowered, but not to zero

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Watch your windows

[@thegoblingreen]

@@LycheeGameLabs oh no

[@Just_a_guy909]

r u n

[@ldfinn990]

@@LycheeGameLabs By getting rid of them, they are angry. They may be gone, but once they're back...

[@thequimsnaim]

This game looks like it’s going to be so fun! Ngl the notion of ants carrying a chunk of radium straight into their colony is so funny to me.

[@Vennele]

I always wanted an ant farm. 😂 This is the way to go, to avoid the hard parts of it. HAHAHAHA.

[@Sam510.]

A neat ant species you could add to the evolutions section is weaver ants. In real life, they use their larva to spin silk and create leaf basket nests in the tree tops. Though, as there aren’t currently any tall trees in the game, another option would be spiny ants which are known as “lesser weaver ants” and basically do the same thing as weavers but on the ground, and with debris instead of leaves. In the game, this could lead to silk being some special material that might be difficult to produce (needing the larva to make it) but would have high rewards for using it as a building material. Anyways, great content, can’t wait until the next dev-log!

[@valiang8867]

Weaver ants are also characteristically tall and skinny compared to most ants, which could give the lil' guys a unique look-

[@LazyFluff]

Silk would be perfect for trade with the bees in exchange of honey!

[@Coryn02]

To me, it sounds like beekeeping is halfway between aphid farming and big-game hunting. So, I think you should handle aphid farming next, so you can apply what you've learned from that and the fungus farming to beekeeping later.

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That's very logical

[@CrashJetTech]

I could see bees being a sort of rival faction, like a different kingdom with options to trade with them for resources, or the possibility for them to grow hostile and give you an army to worry about. Definitely something to tackle after aphids and more basic enemies.

[@jansila6005]

I agree, it seems like a nice progression from the more similar things to the more different ones. Although it might be better to tackle the big game hunting first, that way the fighting and farming mechanics can be optimized independently before combining them for the bee keeping.

[@Fred28.]

this is incredible. Please consider adding aphids, they're comparable to cows and you could say that the ants "milk" them, which is really interesting.

[@jdstearman]

In a way, they kind of do milk them. Ants tend to the aphids and allow them to feed, and in return, the aphids secrete a fluid that the ants absolutely love, like cows and milk.

[@InfernalX-v1g]

@@jdstearmanThe ants get sap from the aphids! Maybe there is multiple ways of getting sap, and the sap could be building material for higher level huts, along with ploop! This introduces a difficulty curve and more strategy! Like should you try to get ploop, or focus on sap and you must do both because the enemies will destroy your huts, which requires both. And other ways would make sap feel like a more challenging resource, because the choice of picking something can be difficult! The aphids could have a chance of getting angry and try to attack, but they give lots more sap, but farming it by plants is safe, but gives less! I really want to see sap as a resource, as it would bring a lot more content!

[@casperadriaensen5390]

36:20 ...

[@tommax1626]

@@casperadriaensen5390 yup

[@InfernalX-v1g]

@@casperadriaensen5390i know but i am giving a suggestion on what aphid ranching could do, and expanding the idea

[@valiang8867]

Honestly the baby snail as the queen's hair is GENIUS

[@smite8070]

Can't wait for anthill village 2 where you control a single ant and fight giant bugs with sparking zero style combat

[@LycheeGameLabs]

You've seen my secret notes?

[@Icebluesword]

It feels like the game is moving closer and closer to a sandbox style rather than a sequence of levels...which I personally think would be really awesome! Might involve exploring procedurally generated biomes with different resources, expanding your anthill across a big map, tracking monsters back to monster lairs, and maybe even discovering rival ant colonies! A sandbox mode would really scratch that resource-farming itch and it's the perfect concept for it imo. Keep up the great work!

[@mihast3273]

Yessss

[@barb56]

If you add aphids a cool mechanic could be protecting them from other creatures, which could add some risk to farming them and would result in protecting multiple areas. Ants irl do this and of course people do too so I think it would be perfect for ant-people

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Yeah this is a great idea

[@Crustacean_Nation]

I really enjoy watching the growth of this game. I’m really excited for the release

[@thelordchar1406]

I'm interested in how bee (peace)keeping would go. Perhaps you have to supply food and water to prevent bees from attacking, to which excess food and water grant you honey and wax, which could be cultural resources. Maybe even a side option where you intentionally don't give bees resources and instead raze the buildings that *they* would make, allowing two different and opposing options to gain the same resources. Perhaps the latter is faster but requires more micromanagement, whereas the former is robust but resource intensive.

[@bazzboda4785]

Ground nesting bumble bees as a bee species might be particularly useful. In addition to producing honey their hives are usually in the ground sometimes popping up a little above ground level, and in the case of some species they make these near exclusively in rodent dens(tests show they will choose a former rodent den over other similar structures) The partially emerging out of the ground would let them be a similar size as you ant castles and the rodent den dynamic could result in some interesting gsmeplay. As a hypothetical example is if you clear out a rodent den or some other animal den, that would make one or more hives on the map happy and then they would create a new hive on the den location.

[@hueban1643]

Maybe even having the bees firs appear after a rodent hunting level since big game hunting would be a simpler mechanic probably

[@SIZModig]

5:00 those pheromone trails need to start dissapating when the ants return empty handed, maybe 5-10 percent per ant?

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That's an interesting concept. I'll have to think about how it interacts with the other features

[@lwilso9152]

But then longer tasks like carrying radium would Peter out, and keeping track of which trails have run out later in the game when you’ve scaled the colony larger will become an annoyance. Usually a good UI doesn’t yank control from the user, so it should keep doing what you told it to do, *until you tell it to stop*. Although, it would be interesting to have the ‘annoyance’ of keeping track as motivation to level up so you can get a reward that makes pheromone trails either last longer, or stay permanently until you change them

[@nadri3335]

only queen and king ants have wings, and short after they reproduce, the king perishes, and the queen goes on to make her anthill. I would reccomend to have the player represented by and army ant with a military helmet for example, as youre comanding the army

[@EuphemiaRem]

I feel like the "mayor ant" would make more sense as a junior queen--queens flying to a new place and founding a colony is a thing real ants do, and if the colony is producing larvae there has to be a queen somewhere laying the eggs. maybe rename the tutorial queen character to "empress", or just establish that she's the mother of the player queen

[@thaumoking9947]

Very interesting video to find! Love how it looks! In case you want more weird ant behaviours to consider implementing, I would suggest looking into Weaver Ants and Honeypot Ants.

[@zeighy]

Oh, there's also ants that domesticate aphids to "milk" them for sugary substance that they secrete. Not the same as leaf cutters, but might be interesting if ever the idea of extending it beyond just farming as this sounds sorta adjacent to that. (I clearly wrote this before the end of the video, I see it's in your next steps... and that's cool!)

[@LycheeGameLabs]

You know me better than I know myself!

[@DominoPivot]

Wow. Impressive work, and it's really nice getting to see the whole process being summarized. I can definitely see how this game would be fun, or might I say, satisfying to play. Seems like it might bring some of the essence of automation games and city builders with much reduced mental load and focus on numbers. And I like the idea that the map will grow greener as you expand, the opposite of what happens in most factory themed games. Ants collecting a big crystal and evolving? That gives me big "Children of Time" vibes, haha. Excellent sci-fi book which, among other things, explores the evolution of a civilization of spiders and their relationship to other species. There's an ant colony that finds a crystal that happens to slightly vibrate in reaction to ambiant radio waves, and the curious phenomenon sparks the scientific curiosity of the spiders.

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That's a wacky book lmao

[@MontesVerdes]

I was just thinking the same!! That book was phenomenal, one of my favs

[@glorytoarstotzka330]

34:00 I was expecting you to place the houses next to your big colony, at least that's what my first instinct was. I definitely wouldn't place it far unless it was a gathering building like the gathering post from frostpunk that is meant to be further than usual

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Maybe in the future, enemy creatures could discourage being spread out

[@thecrazymoon6578]

Frostpunk Shoutout!

[@Barquevious_Jackson]

26:00 - Brutal scrubbing out of character. He hit them with the modern logo ray and removed their articulated body. Maybe it is because I am older than most of the people on the discord but I like the old design of ants. That feels like what they're supposed to look like while the tiny ants are like abstract representations. The same way a lot of pixel art games lovingly rendered scenes in art for the cabinet or manual or box art, you know to work around the limitations of memory. You're working around size but it's the same concept. If you're going to make them ants, and put effort into the style being ant like through a cartoony style you might as well commit to the vision. If you really think they're creepy It'd probably compromise by making the eyes bigger and ramping up the cuteness to offset their more detailed bodies instead of scrubbing all the detail out and making them brown pumpkins with horns.

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Maybe I'll make some kind of an in-between version. Thanks

[@preferablygeneric]

Yeah I kinda got bummed when he said he had simplified them. I think it would be totally fine if cutscenes portrayed a more detailed world and characters, reminds me of how in many animations, the perspective would zoom in to little dots and scribbles on the floor to reveal a fully realized world, seemingly as vast and complex as our own. From what I can tell, the scenes are separate enough from gameplay so as to not cause a clash in artstyle. With the worker ants simplified, it now looks _really odd_ to have them in the same picture as the queen.

[@ithalathegayguy]

​@@preferablygeneric agreed 100% Like, the simplified sprites work great for rendering a bunch during gameplay, but when you're watching a cutscene that only has 5 of them looking up at a much more detailed queen they just feel lackluster. I also feel like the mayor should just be the cursor the whole time, so it makes it more obvious that this character is you and so the pheromone trails aren't just coming out of nowhere.

[@TheCrimsonKnight.]

@@ithalathegayguy Gonna have to disagree with you on the Mayor opinion, I think having him follow you is much more interesting and unique than just "another game with a custom cursor." But yea I also much prefer the old sprites over the simplified ones, mostly because if I'd been given that sprite and told to say what it is, I'd say it's an alien lol

[@ithalathegayguy]

@TheCrimsonKnight. I don't mean have him locked to the cursor, the following animations are perfect. What I mean is, in the gameplay footage, the only times you see him are at the beginning of the level when he builds the anthill and at the end of the level when he flies across the screen. I'm sure he probably also shows up in cutscenes, but since those weren't shown in this video I can't confirm that. Otherwise, he's just non-existent. But if he was actually on screen while playing, it'd make a lot more sense that he's you and that he's the one making the pheremone trails and managing the colony. As it currently is, he just looks like some rando builder and leaves all the real work to the player.

[@JoshSauder]

These are so cathartic mto watch! One note: I'd name the upgrades more closely to what they achieve, rather than their real-life explanation. Even after watching the whole video, I saw ants carrying leaves and thought "why would I want the leaf cutter upgrade? They're already cutting leaves." This game looks so fun and I've had a blast playing through your builds.

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That's worth considering. Thanks

[@StijnGrol]

35:29 two ant live in the well

[@mushykins]

my cat absolutely lost it during the queen flying around the screen part 🤭

[@reedrendered]

this is one of my favorite devlogs of all time

[@accidentalaccident]

I love this game and these videos I’m glad you uploaded!!

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Thanks! :D

[@OwnBuild]

I'd like to see big enimes! But a frog or bird would be unsettling I like the bugish theme, maybe a bark scorpion or a tarantula would be cool,

[@linuscraft8538]

Another cool ant species is the honeypot ant, which has certain ants that store sugary nectar in their abdomine. Maybe there could be giant honeypot ants that can hold nectar from aphids.

[@sedatev7341]

I like the idea of having to choose between multiple different ant types I feel that would be fun.

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That would be awesome if there's enough time to add it

[@kolegaramic260]

You're too good at this man, very talented! Thank you for sharing the journey

[@mooncow984]

32:41 for me soil kinda looks like outer space -_- but overall looks awesome. and music is amazing. love your game. good luck!

[@alephnole7009]

I really like how the color of the nuggets also change slightly. Really helps sell the shimmering effect

[@robertbecker959]

Beekeeping enthusiast here. Ants and bees are somewhat related, but they are rarely friends. Ants are commonly a pest who sneak into the hive to munch on food or move into a corner and be a nuisance. So you could make it into a theiving mechanic. The ants raid the hives to steal honey from them

[@themichaelfarber]

this has been probably the most exciting series to follow on youtube! I love how you explain everything and share your entire process. small thing: from a design pov I think the icons over building with black outlines seem a little out of place of place since the rest of the environment is flat. you already have the semi-transparent black circles and boxes showing different info so the design style is already established. this is amazing work nonetheless! very inspiring man

[@ernestoyaquello]

I think that having buildings that only do one thing would actually make things easier. Yes, selecting the right one would take longer, and the number of buildings needed would increase. But from the user's perspective, it's much easier to make the one-to-one mental connection between each building and its function than it is to remember all the things each one of the complex multi-function buildings can do, at least in my opinion. In any case, pretty cool video, lots of great ideas and progress!

[@itsgreenpro7064]

Add a Chad ant type called Chants (Chad-ant) Maybe make it carry bigger things and maybe something that only chants can carry

[@snuck7926]

Amazing devlog! Very curius about how possible new mechanics like hunting could work, i'm always impressed by your creativity! Can't wait for the next devlog! 👍

[@yiftahbt]

I love your videos one of the few channels that im exited everytime he uploads. I do prefer the brown ground and not the black but the game looks amaizing!

[@LycheeGameLabs]

I'll keep tinkering with the colors

[@RKIOrbMage]

Wow.The other day i was wondering when your next video was going to be. The wait was worth it, the game look amazing! I think bringing back combat would be a good next step :)

[@CJdoesALOT]

Every video on the making of this game inspires me. Honestly, I'm surprised at how fresh and amazing this looks. Like... it just... flows.

[@erinkarp]

The level of quality, thought, and detail behind all of this is amazing!

[@briandoe5746]

Termites farm some fish do crabs do. There's a jellyfish that does and there's a snell that does as well. But sure, let's say it's only leaf cutter ants

[@calicow]

I just went looking for a new video from you the other day. I'm so glad you have something to show us! You've been a huge game dev inspiration for me since your early Patch Quest logs. Amazing updates. All the juice has a huge impact.

[@SE-rg4he]

I love these videos. I’m not sure this is really my kind of game but I’m going to buy it regardless as thanks for making these.

[@ChloeS25]

Randomly found this on my home page. First caught my eye cause one of my college field projects was on leaf-cutter ants (before anyone asks, it wasn't anything big/serious/conclusive). But this game looks super cute!!! I've never watched a sort of dev blog before, but I love seeing and hearing about how it's being made and the thought and creativity behind it all. Definitely a lot of small things I've never considered, but in hindsight, definitely do add to the game! I would also love to see bee keeping because I think it's super cute, but maybe aphid ranching is the way to go, at least at first? I don't know if leafcutter ants do, but some any species do farm aphids. So, I think there is a more immediate thought/connection to aphids than bees (at least I think so...). Bee keeping seems like a good idea for maybe like... "sidekick" helpers for fighting enemies? Whereas aphid ranching sounds more like some kind of supportive/healing thing...?

[@asirithwelzorn5907]

I can't wait to see where this goes. I think it would be pretty charming if hunter ants had string tied to their antennae so that other ants could use them like an archery machine

[@unknowable4147]

SO fun to warch the project develop. I'm unsure if the core gameplay loop is quite for me but i am enamoured with these little guys and will gladly feed the algorithm!

[@wallynm]

There's so much info packed in a high quality video, awesome video! Those game details are awesome, wanna see future updates!!!

[@Jorge-bf2tq]

Loved the art similarities between this and Patch Quest

[@GamesBySaul]

Absolutely loving this. The art style I think just really sells everything!

[@Patrick-Sears]

The Play, Pause & Fastforward buttons should react slightly to you hovering over them, not just tapping on them. Perhaps increase the brightness a smidge or add a subtle outline while hovering? Just helps reenforce that they are clickable before you try & click on them~

[@terrapin-yob]

love the longer videos. this game is showing so much promise. gives off really sweet flash game vibes in the best way possible. keep up the good work

[@thattommino8982]

You should definitely add a building animation for structures, I think it would help to slow down tha game as well as add a way to show off some of the ants' character, also you cold have advanced structures need some building materials that have to be harvested in various ways, immagine big trunks of trees in the map with termites hollowing them to make homes

[@rallion1545]

This is becoming more and more interesting. Ive been watching the Devlogs for quite a while now and Im always happy to see the progress. I really want to play it already, keep up the great work!

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Glad you like them!

[@evanrobison567]

This is looking awesome! I really love the direction this is headed! One suggestion: since achieving milestones is how you increase population points, it would probably be better to return the full cost of the building back to the player when you sell a building. Otherwise, there is a good possibility that through buying and then selling buildings, you could end up with effectively no population points and no way to build new buildings. Additionally, by returning the full cost of selling a building, it would make it a lot less punishing to explore placing different buildings in different configurations. And, it would make it easier to balance the game since you wouldn't have to worry as much about the player having an abundance of attainable population points. Hope that makes sense.

[@brandonmack111]

Definitely going to try it out. I love seeing the progress this game has made, and seeing the subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes along the way.

[@lwilso9152]

You had me at fungus farm. The lil mushrooms are so cute! & the little clicks of picking up the leaves sound so satisfying

[@TheseWordsTouch]

Your solution for the carrying of the nuggets was so creative! 🥹

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Thanks!

[@haydenap]

WOW! This is such an incredible devlog, definitely worth the wait. It was so satisfying to see you workshop each individual new mechanic and then have a comprehensive showcase of everything at the end. Well done, eagerly anticipating more :D

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@AndrianTimeswift]

So, one kind of real-life ant that's pretty interesting are honeypot ants. In these colonies, some ants are designated to be a kind of living storage container for a honey-like substance. Their abdomens swell into these golden orbs, and they're really quite pretty. Ants feed the honeypots, who store that food for later as honey, and hungry ants come to the honeypots and get fed by them. I'm not entirely sure how this could be incorporated into gameplay, but it seems like something that could be interesting. Having these mobile food containers might be useful for some sort of migratory colony loop, perhaps. By having specialized units for storing food, the colony is able to allocate a greater proportion of its population to workers and soldiers when it's on the move. Of course, the honeypots are a target for predators (humans who live in areas with honeypot ants will collect and eat them as a form of naturally-occurring candy), and losing one could be a big blow to the colony, so they could quite naturally be part of an escort challenge. I'm really excited to see where this project goes, and I'll be wishlisting it on Steam!

[@AnotherTowerDev]

This looks like an interesting series.

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Thanks!

[@peterryrfeldt8568]

"Population" should probably be called "larvae", that makes it clear that you aren't consuming ants to create new buildings but gaining new ones

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That's not a bad idea

[@jimmyhirr5773]

I like how the carrying ants send messages to the chunk. It's very object-oriented in the Alan Kay sense of the word.

[@CrazyTotodile]

I love the evolution mechanic. It is a nice way of implementing the mechanic, the actual gameplay looks fun and I like the idea of the ants actually evolving because of radiation. It also feels seem-less with the atmosphere and kind of fantasy realism, where the fantasy ants are changed through radiation but the actual concept is grounded in reality and feels realistic

[@svon6642]

The early plant could be introduced by itself, then a future level you get the sprinkler (and the terrain is like "bad for plants") so it lets you use the sprinkler on wild plants like you show. That way it can be a nice progression of a few new things ("plant harvesting" > "Sprinklers" > "potatoes" > "Farms" or something)

[@SvenSierra104]

I freaked out on the 9th of Jan because I hadn't seen a video in months from the channel and worried I hadn't subscribed, and searched for the channel (I had subbed), and the very next day there was a new video! Though work got in the way and I couldnt watch for several days. Wishlisted! The game looks like its gonna be a blast. Loving the explanations of how and why you've made the mechanics and/or the tweaks you've been making along the way!

[@LycheeGameLabs]

It's been a busy period for me, but development continues!

[@vupni]

you should make the leaves drop more randomly and not just in a circle around the shrub, this way it'll look more natural and less weird

[@xylophoneserpent367]

This is one of the most highly ant-icipated games for me, I absolutely love the art style, and the gameplay looks extremely engaging! I do have some feedback about the ground color, though. High-contrast ground is a good idea, but I think the nearly black ground is much less readable than before, as it doesn't really read as dirt most of the time. I think there's a balance that's somewhere in the middle ground, where it's visibly quite brown, but still somewhere towards the darker, desaturated side.

[@KumoKumori]

I like the idea of dark ground for contrast, but to be honest when I saw it I thought that you hadn't added dirt yet and there was just some sort of ambient outer-space background. It's so different from the dirt anthills that it doesn't really seem like the same material.

[@quabbittherabbit773]

Love how this game has evolved over time, much as the ants will when I play through it :)

[@Olimar90]

This game looks so cool! I'm looking foward to it's release. Maybe one thing you could do, is to add a animation at the end of the level, where a new queen leaves the colony, and on the next level, she is the one to start the new colony. It will add a sense of progression.

[@juanpetersburgo6467]

0:50 Oh yeah! Liam changing and tweaking a ton of basic and essencial mechanics of the game that he is developing. Where have I seen that before??? 🤔🤔

[@LycheeGameLabs]

My Achilles heel...

[@juanpetersburgo6467]

@@LycheeGameLabs so true

[@dazcarrr]

still time for an emergency pivot to twinstick roguelite?

[@lukzloty]

I have the feeling, that the animations tied with the main building (building it/victory/defeat) would benefit with a zoomed-in and centered camera, to truly focus only on this action taking place. Once the building is ready, camera zooms out to it's natural state and player gets control

[@pixelolson6744]

Something that you can do for "overlapping sprites" is using more color variants. If you were to invert the color of one of your leaves, two of them can be placed together, and then changing the saturation could give you two more, this would allow you to create denser forestry without having everything bleed together

[@weirdbitgames]

Yay finally a new video on this game! It's been so long!

[@Thexus]

Aphids produce honeydew when they suck out fluids of a plant. They are a pest in real life, so you could make the plants deteoriate when aphids are on them. Uncollected honeydew could also cause mold infections on the plant.

[@gatorsoup]

This just gets cooler and cooler every time you show it

[@LycheeGameLabs]

:D

[@FIT7Y]

I think it would be cool if the mayor ant had more uses, just cause the demo of them following the mouse looked great. For example they could build the various buildings quickly one after the other for some charm, or slowly if you think that would be better. They could also be directed to improve the working speed/efficiency of a building, or help bring a big material back to the colony faster by supervising, but they wouldn't be able to do both that and build buildings at the same time leading to more choices. But you would probably have to find some way to prevent the ability to just instantly cancel their current action to build a building and then go straight back to that building they were at. And when they aren't doing anything they should slowly drift towards the mouse, and maybe they could be the one who makes the pheromone trails. I also think that fire ants would be a cool ant to add to the game, more focused on the combat instead of farming. Some fire ants can even form floating rafts to cross water or bridges to cross gaps, so that might be interesting to consider where different ants would take different paths to get to places on the map faster than other ants would be able to. And building on the water idea, that would be cool to have water be something not all ants can cross but that ants can interact with in different ways. Maybe even farming something like algae. Sorry for the rambling comment, I just kept fleshing it out more and more.

[@_stephenhubbard]

Every little decision you make and the way you implement it is so motivating to fellow game devs!

[@rowanmulhollem5267]

I think the ability to plant seeds would round out the farming mechanics nicely. You could choose where the plants go instead of just tending to wild plants.

[@grynte1]

Are you gonna make different species like also having a version where its termites with different buildings or? Also did anyone say mogswamp? xD

[@wukerplank]

Sound and animations make this look and feel very rewarding and satisfying!

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Thanks!

[@qwfp]

18:34 the ants called in Orbital Strike lol

[@oatie751]

I'm loving watching these videos, I look forward to all your future devlogs and other videos!

[@alexandre_henriques]

Tiny snails could be little events that ants would need to collect. Maybe could be used for colony upgrades beyond a single level.

[@prizedbenchreloadedandextreme]

Maybe make the full-body version of the ants a option in the settings? I kinda liked them :(

[@FutureDragon]

maybe a fog of war for larger levels or just in general could be a cool feature. you can send out your ants to explore and find new resources so that you dont just know where all the radium is at all times.

[@GuavaGarnet]

This is the channel that inspired me to make games ❤️ thank you

[@LycheeGameLabs]

That's awesome!

[@xardiodrack1798]

Bee i love bee bumblebee are so cute and fluffy also if you add cloth adding moth to get silk would be fun

[@dokchampa9324]

I know it's way too early to be thinking about stuff like this, but I can't help but imagine that an optional challenge run where you only control one ant would be really fun

[@jamesbaconreid]

these huge changes are amazing! looks great, sounds great, prototype is really fun!

[@ToonedMinecraft]

I think it'd be cool to have some kind of rival faction to play against, at least in some scenarios. Ants are well-known to wage war against other colonies, and I think it would be interesting to watch so many ants going at it against each other

[@LycheeGameLabs]

It would be cool! Though I'm a little worried about the coding involved.

[@MomirsLabTech]

Very excited to play this game once it is ready! I absolutely loved Patch Quest!

[@LycheeGameLabs]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@MindTheLlamaz]

Ahids! they are so cool! I would also Imagine an underground maze level with mist to bee really cool!

[@ghoma8336]

this is great, I YEARN for the ants to make little pikmin sounds when they spawn in

[@LycheeGameLabs]

I'll try to do something of the sort eventually

[@CubeHeadd]

Aphids should be first on the line

[@Etrehumain123]

The way they carry this radium crystal is absolutly adorable !!!! 12:17 I am not fan of this twist effect personnally. I like your game in flat 2D graphics and we cannot feel any thickness of objects. This effect creates a "made out of paper" and completely change the emotions in my opinion. But as always, I respect your choices. But everything is awesome, all those details, all the sound and visual and gameplay, really, I hope I am not unrespectful, because Im deeply impressed

[@zekejanczewski7275]

One thing I think is missing is that there is no reason to engage with everything. The food is sort of generic, and there is little reason to engage with anything but the most optimal growth. I think an intresting way to do that might be to make each food have a different effect. For example, mabey larvae are most efficient with liquid food, mature workers are mosy efficent with carbohydrates, warrior ants are most efficient with protein food, etc. Or, each food can have certian effects, like honey can reduce the spread of disease or something, grain can keep well over winter without decaying, ect. So new players can get away with just a farm and a compost, but as ants start to come at a premium, and more and more specialization is required, getting a greater variety of food becomes crucial

[@casperadriaensen5390]

I feel like I would love an infinite or near infinite mode in this game... I want to make a giant colony with hundreds of complex systems, farms and automations. I get that optimizing for large scale games like that is a different beast to the level focused game you are making, but if you add lose conditions to levels as well, you can just keep ramping up the difficulty until something fails when a player keeps playing beyond level completion (think mini motorways). Probably not what you want to go for, but something i'd personally love.

[@dwegonfwy]

I think it'd be really cool to see the ants and the bees have some sort of trade alliance. Like maybe the bees have the honey and the ants have the flowers and you trade them for each other. It also mimic irl human trading where some countries have a resource or technology not available to the others so they trade

[@denycast]

What a relaxing video that was. Perfect before going tolbed. Watching those ants doing stuff is quite satisfying. The only thing that bothered me was that you wanted to use coins.... it didn't feelt right. But later you changed it, so everything is perfect👍 I hopefully will play the prototype during the weekend and will leave my comment about that on the discord. I had the idea that the big animals could be the creatures of patchquest. But than I thought that I don't want to see my precious creatures turned into antfood😢. 🤣