Coming from developer Tower Five and publisher Microids, Empire of the Ants is a photorealistic, third-person RTS that will keep you busy and entertained for hours as you explore the life of an anthill.
Empire of the Ants is currently available in Early Access for those who have pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe Edition. Thanks to a review key, we were able to check out the full version of the game ahead of its full release on November 7th, when this antsy journey will become available to all players on PC, PS5 & Xbox Series.
While the developers themselves describe it as a strategy, in truth it is much more than that. There is an entire immersive journey that awaits you inside. The game offers an unusual perspective, that of a warrior cast ant, tasked with completing great things: protecting the city, hunting, gathering, avoiding dangers, and exploring the world that looks so unusual it might as well be a fantasy setting.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is our Empire of the Ants review for PC, and we hope your antennas are ready for an adventure!
The way the colony of ants communicates among themselves is inspired by the novel Les Fourmis (The Ants) by French writer Bernard Werber, originally released in 1991. Thus, much like in the book, the behavior and social organization of the anthill and the interactions within the species and outside of it seem to be scientifically based and detailed, while also being juiced up with a great deal of anthropomorphism to make it more engaging and easy to understand and empathize with.
The game adapts a similar approach when it comes to gameplay, so you shouldn’t expect complete realism. You should, however, be able to ride a mantis into battle as your beetles uproot an enemy termite settlement while the workers are building defensives around your own nests.
As comes from the name, Empire of the Ants will allow players to take a closer look at what is happening right under their feet. Playing as 103,683rd, you will get to see the world from the point of view and scale you have likely never seen before. Mundane items such as an empty water bottle or an abandoned ball turn into alien and incomprehensible objects that serve as exploration points for 103,683rd, while the overall level design might seem stranger than fiction.
The Recommended PC specs include 16 GB RAM and AMD Radeon RX 6800 / NVidia GeForce RTX 3080. The game is created using Unreal Engine 5, and, while it can be taxing on your machine and has certain requirements to your build, it is more than worth it. You can spend a great amount of time simply watching the everyday life of this microscopic world and how stunning it looks up close.
The scale goes further than just your surroundings, however. You will notice it right away as you get to command your ant warrior: the tiny size and even tinier weight of the creature will affect a great deal of physics when it comes to controls. Falling from great heights without damage, the springy feel and nature of jumps, being able to crawl up and around basically everything is your new reality. And so is bumping and bobbing up and down as you busily speed along the forest floor to do your business.
Adjusting to the miniature size of our hero and the way it affects controls can take some time. Additionally, it seems like the game is way more comfortable using a controller as opposed to the mouse + keyboard combo. It is by no means unplayable, but it can feel like the controls sometimes are actively fighting against you, especially when you are trying to navigate areas that require subtler movements.
The story starts small (in a few different ways), with our little hero being sent to explore areas near the great ant city of Bel-o-kan. The pace quickly picks up, however, when you hear distressing news that the nearby city of Ta-yu-kan is facing a sudden flood. 103,683rd is sent to aid fellow ants, by scouting the way through water and helping the evacuation process. The entire campaign might take roughly 15–20 hours to beat.
If your intention with the game is simply to command the legions of bugs and wage microscopic but intense war against termites and enemy cities, you can do so through missions that require just that or by participating in 1v1 or 3FFA multiplayer matches. There is a custom private lobby available to test your skills against a friend or AI if you don’t feel comfortable jumping straight into battles against strangers.
However, the game also has a number of exploration missions where you only control 103,683rd and have to complete a number of tasks to ensure the survival of your city as one ant army. Those include actual exploration, hunting for food, and – both my favorite and the most despairing moment in the game due to being geographically challenged to the max – the likes of saving fellow ants from flood in a traversal-type challenge.
To me, it was those moments that proved that Empire of the Ants has a big heart and an inquisitive touch in addition to the visual prowess. Without being distracted by the need to micromanage your nests, you can focus on the beauty of the world, the close, loving attention to details, and see what makes an anthill tick.
Busy workers rush by, bringing the supplies back to the bustling Bel-o-kan, your sisters are on a lookout for any possible threats, butterflies flutter around, sunrays filter through leaves as you go through the change of day and night, cycles, and seasons… and inevitably get spooked by a giant snail, spider or some other creepy crawly you run into (and away from).
Once you’ve spent a dozen hours in and have tried it all, even these missions might become a tad repetitive despite the gorgeous views. The game could have used more variety when it comes to this type of gameplay.
I did not expect that managing an ant colony and defending it from enemies would remind me of wrecking the goody-two-shoes in Overlord, but here we are.
As 103,683rd, you personally set out on the battlefield to control your legions and bring them to victory. While your ant has no way to directly participate in battle and is usually stuck pointing antennas and giving directions, you can still affect the outcome by using a variety of pheromones: shielding, healing or enraging your own troops while scaring the enemy into fleeing.
But your main role is giving orders to your loyal bug soldiers and managing the nests: collecting resources and building the right chambers on any given nest allows you to further enhance the economy, empower your soldiers, learn about the enemy, and more.
You can control up to 7 legions on any given map, with the game offering three base starting legions: Workers, Warriors, and Gunners. One nest can only create one legion, and can be then further used to upgrade the corresponding troops with respective buildings.
Additionally, you get access to the support troops (there are a total of three), and more powerful super-predators corresponding with the basic troop types. It is up to you to choose whether you want to opt for the defensive Snails or, perhaps, for the mobility with Rhino Beetles.
The system is interesting, easily understood and simple. While it allows for quick start with barely any tutorial, the downside is that the simplicity does not allow for much depth, and quickly leads to the same feeling of repetitiveness. Much like it is with the exploration missions, at a certain point you might find yourself looking at the screen and thinking “Haven’t I done this already?”
Empire of the Ants is one of the most visually-stunning strategies I have ever played. The sheer beauty of its graphics coupled with the unusual microscopic perspective it provides create for a remarkable picture at every second of gameplay, where the mundane looks extraordinary.
However, the game suffers from a clear lack of strong identity. As an RTS, it offers an enjoyable but simple system that will have you control 7 legions and order them around while simultaneously building up your nests. It is not exactly deep, and can easily become repetitive a dozen hours in.
Meanwhile, while offering an impressive look at the everyday life of an anthill, Empire of the Ants can’t exactly be called an ant simulator due to the lack of activities to pursue beyond marveling at the beauty of the world.
It is an entertaining and novel experience with unique perspective and visual prowess for a short while, but it is up to you to decide whether it is worth its price.
Note: a review key had been provided for free for the purposes of this article. I did not have a chance to try out the multiplayer component of the game, and thus cannot speak about it.
