Beware of Ants

Somebody keeps a formicarium on the desk of their one-room apartment, and you're the first worker to hatch in it. You grow the colony, move the queen nest by nest and rob the house all the way out to the persimmon tree in the yard, and the homeowner mustn't catch on.

Lay a pheromone trail

You bite a piece off the sugar cube, hold the trail key the whole walk home, and the others line up along your pheromone trail to fetch the rest of it, which is the thing you'll do most in this game. Food turns into eggs and eggs into workers, up to 335 of them, and when you call, the ones nearby drop what they're doing and fall in behind you.

The homeowner

The homeowner likes these ants enough to drop mealworms in with tweezers, and once the suspicion fills up, the same tweezers come for any ant seen wandering about and put it back in the nest. The bug spray, the robot vacuum and the feet really do cost you workers, so shout "Freeze!" and everyone stands still for six seconds, since the homeowner only notices ants that move.

Formicarium to persimmon tree

A ladder of workers gets you over the glass wall of the formicarium, and after that you work through the desk, under the bed, the bookshelf, the veranda and the kitchen. Once the kitchen is cleaned out the homeowner phones an exterminator, and the final escape is walking the queen out through the veranda drain before they arrive. Out in the yard come the flower bed, the crock terrace, the vegetable patch and last of all the ground under the persimmon tree, eleven zones in all.

Nine kinds, one trick each

Your queen only lays workers and soldiers. The other seven kinds live in bands of their own around the house and the yard, and a band moves in with you once you've carried it enough food. Weaver ants link up into a bridge over water, army ants swarm a bug as a pack, and trap-jaw ants snap open the balsam pods nobody else can.

Outside there's a toad

It sits by the crocks and its tongue takes anything that moves in front of it. In the vegetable patch a mole shoves soil up right through your trail, under the persimmon tree a magpie comes down to the fallen persimmons and pecks at any ant still moving nearby, and a sparrow lands right in front of the line. Like the homeowner, the birds only go for ants that move, so "Freeze!" works out here too.

After the ending

Seeing the ending puts "Replay a zone" on the title screen, where you pick any of the eleven zones and play only that one again. The board keeps your best time for each with gold, silver or bronze, plus a stamp for losing no ants and one for finishing on Spicy, where the homeowner notices you sooner, the birds, the robot vacuum, the mole and the gusts turn up more often, and the final escape gives you less time.

Controls and settings

Keyboard and mouse, or a gamepad

W A S D walk you whichever way they point on the screen, and the camera turns when you hold the right mouse button and drag

You can walk up walls and across the ceiling

Every key can be rebound except Esc and the number keys

Relaxed mode makes the homeowner slower to notice you and puts more time on the clock in the final escape

Screen shake switches off, and the camera can trail behind the ant or not, whichever your stomach prefers