Ant War Review

Your goal: manage an ant colony by harvesting food, finding gems, shopping for more ants and more space until you reach a billion ants. Of course to get to a billion you'd have to force yourself to play for more then 15 minutes. Completely unecessary to read any directions, can be picked up as soon as play begins.

How to play: The player can assign a percentage of different types of ants to handle the necessary duites of building an ant colony. The choices are scout--finds food, nurse--produces more ants, carpenters--build the nest, or soldiers who defend. As well as buying food and supllying the colony with items for each variety of ant.

You are guided by written (and annoying) reminders on the upper right of the screen of the weather conditions, which are frequently far different from what is on the screen. Players are also advised of the need to increase the size of the nest or to get more ants. You can do this by finding gems and food and winning battles. The "finding" of these items requires nothing more then repeatedly clicking the Go button. You can only increase the variety of ant by increments of 5% which lowers the other types and the cost is very expensive compared to what your ants "find" in your chosen locale.

The so called battles consist of a threat appearing, lady bugs, worms, moths etc and the option to attack or retreat. Regardless of your so called advisor in the corner you will lose ants. You might gain food but it makes very little difference to the growth of your colony.

There is very little player control and the appearance is of a very young comic book genre. The sounds do not change as different levels become available which does nothing to keep a player's attention. This may be more entertaining for children under 7 but any kid with a game boy or access to online games would get bored fast.