Ant Rancher

Entry for XanderJam Spring 2021.  The goal of the game is to evolve an ant colony.  You can click to place food pellets and ants that bring food pellets back home will have kids and spread their genes.  Right click drops mutagen pellets that will greatly alter the stats of any ants that bring them back to the hill.  There is a free play map and 2 competitions where you play against another ant hill (the hill in maze is untrained and the hill in competition is pre-trained). The first hill to gather 100 of the score pellets wins.

Pressing Escape at anytime will take you back to the title screen.  The Spacebar will get you 10 new low quality ants to train.

The fun is in watching the ants grow and reach new distances and get better at being ants, winning is secondary.  Details about the ants stats are in the help screen. Have Fun!

Post Deadline bug fix: The free play mode didn't work at all, quick bug fix

Art for the title screen is from Kenny https://www.kenney.nl/

Font - Anton ;)

Inspired by -

Music Credits: 

Moonlight Beach by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/6671-moonlight-beach

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Late Night Radio by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7613-late-night-radio

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This game is more of a prototype but there's something intrinsically fun about watching ants evolve. I had hoped to have more time to work on this during the jam but as always life got in the way.