First of all, I have no time to eat. I simply haven't watched any games recently. I was too busy to browse the app store, and then I was trapped by this Ant Simulator on the 5.0 platform. I originally thought it was a boring little game where you hang up to collect food, but when you play it, you find that, my dear, the competitive depth and balance design of this thing are more sophisticated than some mobile games that call themselves MOBA.
Let's first talk about the confrontation logic of the core gameplay. In the game, you are not invincible. You are an ant, leading your family to survive in the wilderness. It sounds like casual survival, but in actual play, this game is completely an asymmetric confrontation game at high levels. The refresh location of food points, the patrol paths of natural enemies (such as spiders and anteaters), and even the shrinkage of territory caused by weather changes, every step is an information war. You have to always calculate whether this wave of rice grains moving to the east will hit the main force of the ant colony controlled by the opposite player? Should we send worker ants to steal the family's resources, or should the whole team press forward to grab the sugar water stronghold in the middle?
I think the most praiseworthy thing about the balance of this game is the restrained relationship between "quantity" and "quality". Many similar games like to crush numerical values, but in this game, even if you are a kryptonian and raise a single ant to the maximum level, if you make a mistake in moving and are surrounded by five ordinary worker ants, the control link will still be consumed alive. This gives civilian players a lot of room for maneuver. I have seen a master use a pure basic ant lineup, rely on the aggro of wild monsters to collide with the opposing elite team, and then take advantage of the chaos to steal resources. That kind of operational thinking really makes me feel like watching the top teams in the LPL steal money. In the forum, everyone calls this tactic of "four or two moves a thousand pounds", which I think is quite appropriate.
Of course, the current competitive environment is not without its hidden dangers. What needs to be complained about most is the "natural enemy system". In ordinary maps, the threat from natural enemies is equal to both sides and belongs to the environmental mechanism. But in the high-level ranking mode, the triggering mechanism of natural enemies is too friendly to the defender. Because you only need to squat near the nest, set up the trap, and when the other side passes by with food, trigger the alarm to attract the anteaters, and then you can wipe out the group of people in one wave. This has led to the current mid-to-high-end game play styles being seriously solidified, and the offensive side is at a huge disadvantage. Everyone is just trying to be the "sixth" player, and the enjoyment of the game has dropped a lot. I looked through the latest update announcement from the developer Beijing Le Jie Lun Technology Co., Ltd., and it seems that this numerical adjustment was not mentioned. If the triggering range of the defender's trap is not weakened in the next version, I think the high-level events of this game will become more and more boring.
Finally, let's talk about rhythm. The best thing about this game is that the time of a single game is well controlled, about ten minutes per game, which is very suitable for fishing at work or playing a game after finishing a ranked game. But the details of its operation require hand speed, especially the multi-line operation: on one hand, you have to control the field of view of the reconnaissance ant, and on the other hand, you have to divide your troops to interfere with the enemy's collection, and you also have to drag the screen with hand speed to release rescue skills. If the official wants to put this game on the e-sports stage, it is recommended to optimize the viewing angle first. Currently, the logic of tracking the main angle of view when watching replays is a bit messy and not clear enough.
In general, as long as the official can fix the damn defensive advantage, the competitiveness of this ant survival game on the mobile terminal will definitely rank in the T1 echelon. I post this recommendation in the original novel section because I feel that the game's operational gameplay is indeed telling a magnificent epic story. I will continue to pay attention to its subsequent versions, and hope that the planning will not ruin a good hand. If you are interested, you can really give it a try. The survival challenge tutorial levels at the beginning are also very natural. 🕷️🐜