SimAnt

"Command & Conquer With Ants!"

SimAnt is very unique simulation game from the same people who made Sim City and anything else that says "Sim" in it. Anything you ever wanted to know about ants and the way they live you will be thoroughly taught and lessoned as well as schooled by the big evil red ants. In the world of SimAnt the black ants are the good guys and the red ants are the bad guys. I never really thought they had a constant war raging in the natural world and have never seen them fight each other, but hey you need some drama in a game that involves ants. Because basically, the game is just no fun at all without a reason to raise an ant army and invade the other side's ant hill. SimAnt becomes eerily like a prelude to Command & Conquer where you will have to have ants collect and harvest food in the form of little green balls and avoid running into spiders, red ants, and other man-made disasters awaiting the demise of ants.

There is a story of sorts to this game. You take control of a yellow ant that controls everything the other ants do except for the queen who will do nothing but pop out ant babies. The game will have you go through many different levels to overcome the red ants as well put you into various different scenarios against a larger occupation of red ants. I really do not know what the beef is with the red ants. Anyway there is also an informational section of the game where you can learn all about ants that you probably did not already know. Insects are interesting, and there is a lot of complexity to the life of an ant. If you have ever stuck a piece of food near and ant hill and watched the ants carry it all off in triumph then this is definitely a game for you.

The controls act a little like a "Sims" game, but you have a lot more options to master to get the game going in your favor. You will begin the game by selecting what type of ant you want to be from breeder to war ant. The best is the worker ant for starting off because you will have to quickly get your ant hill moving and your queen popping out more babies. The ants will follow you to food and then you can release them and they will follow their own little scent paths to green deliciousness and take it back to the queen. Some other bugs will be able to be taken down and turned into green balls and this is an excellent source of food. Spiders can also be ganged up on and taken down as well, but if you let him go he will attack individual ants and do some serious damage to your numbers. Eventually all of this food taking and scavenging will lead to encounters and skirmishes with the red ants. The dead ants will remain on the map so you can see where the damage was done. There is also an overview map to see where your ants are as well. So eventually your yellow worker ant will probably get killed by a gang of red ants and then you will know it is time to start a war. You can go in the options menu and select the rate of what type of ants need to be made and you can start raising an army. The yellow ant has some sort of whistle that you use to call all your ants together and then you can march into the red ant hill and Ghenghis Khan them.

The drawbacks to this game are the difficulty of getting through the main story in the game. It is really hard. Think of trying to start a colony in a home of people who have a can of raid. Then you always have to deal with the red ants and if you die accidentally you may not have enough lives to take the red ants on. The great thing I like about the game are the simple graphics and the fact that the dead ants don't disappear. Even with next generation consoles the bodies have to disappear and you can't look back on all the carnage. But with SimAnt you will end a game with the map looking like a nuclear ant holocaust happened in between the black and red ant hills.

The sound and graphics are okay, but the sound effects may seem too cutesy for a game that is all about massive ant wars.

There is significant replay value to SimAnt. If you are able to complete the very long and very challenging main part of the game then you get to do the scenarios part of the game, kind of like Sim City is for the Super Nintendo. And it is a sadistically fun game to play for the Real Time Strategy fans like me.

Final Recommendation 7/10

SimAnt is challenging and you have to find certain things about it to like it. Sim fans may like a unique game if you are tired of setting your sims on fire or sending earthquake after earthquake to destroy your city. If you are a fan of bugs and insects and have a special place in your heart for ants, then give this game a shot. Otherwise I don't really recommend this game as a must buy.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/13/08

Game Release: SimAnt (US, October 1993)