Anthill - Review

With the Switch, it’s always a difficult trade off when it comes to a game that relies on the portable modes touchscreen. While I find portable infinitely more enjoyable, there are plenty who prefer to have their Switch tethered to the TV. This means you can’t rely on people buying a game that can only be played in one mode. With the recent release of the Switch Lite, it’s possibly a second chance for mobile games that didn’t translate their touch controls to controllers. Anthill is one of those games taking advantage of the new handheld-only Switch.

You’re in charge of protecting and providing for your Anthill, that’s it! The challenges to do this aren’t always the same, but the game in a nutshell is just that. There are six different campaigns and an endless mode, so the gameplay potential is for as long as you can hold off the waves of rival bugs. In the early stages of working through the campaigns I wondered ‘how tough could this be?’ Turns out tough enough. The initial waves are manageable, but as soon as a boss encounter rolls through it’ll put you to the test. It’s definitely no picnic.

Anthill plays like a Tower defence and real time strategy, only you’re spinning more plates than holding back waves of enemies. If you want to increase your numbers to fight for your home, you need to gather food to purchase more units. You control your ants by laying down ‘scent trails’ on the ground for them to follow. The worker ants will gather food and enemy remains, but they’ll run at the first sign of combat. The army ants will roam around their scent trail, fighting any enemies that get near. Bomber ants are controlled differently, by tapping on the ground where you want them to drop their explosive load. Then lastly there are Spitter ants that fire projectiles for some extra range. The real strategy comes from where you allocate your resources. Finding the right ratio of worker ants to get the food and valuables to the right amount of offensive ants that can protect the anthill. 

While strategy is involved and if you don’t pay attention you’ll lose your hill, it never gets too difficult until you get into the endless mode.

There is an upgrade system to help make your ants the best ants they can be. To be able to unlock upgrades you need to spend stars that you are awarded at the end of every level. The amount of stars you earn depends on how many points you have at the end. This means the levels aren’t just about defending your home, you also need to maximise the points you earn. Whether it’s gathering food, bringing back the dead carcasses of your enemies, or collecting the gems that can be found throughout the levels. If you want to make your workers more efficiently and your offensive units more potent, you’ll want those stars. You can’t rest on your laurels as soon as you have a nice food and defence routine set up, to get the points you have to be more active. 

Anthill’s visuals are okay, it’s what you’d expect from a 2011 mobile game. Thankfully there isn’t too much detail so it’s easy to see what you’re doing. I did find when areas got busy, the enemy bugs and the ants could all blend together. Even when it wasn’t too busy onscreen, it wasn’t clear when they’re similar looking enemies. Don't worry, I didn’t confuse ladybugs and cockroaches for ants. The pheromone trails can also be fiddly to deal with, though this isn’t so much a visual issue as more of the requirement of using the handheld switch screen. Once again when everything gets busy it’s hard to remove unnecessary trails if you have lots close together. 

Having not played the original mobile version, I can’t tell if there’s any performance issues not present in the mobile version. Really there’s no issues running on the Switch, not that this game puts the Switch to the test. One thing that you’ll notice upon start up is that the game was made by Image & Form Games, of SteamWorld fame. The charm found in those games isn’t present here, it very much feels like a mobile game from several years ago. It isn't a bad thing in itself, but the short burst gaming expected to keep games like Anthill from getting repetitive quickly doesn’t translate to the Switch. While it is priced at a reasonable price for older mobile ports, with the Switch’s extensive library it’s hard to recommend these much older games outside of the platform they came from. 

Anthill is an alright game from Image & Form. It’s playable and even enjoyable, but it’s a game that’s hard to feel motivated to play over so many games on the Switch. It says more about older mobile ports than it does this game though, I promise Anthill is a decent game. If you’re after a game you can play in short bursts and love your real time strategy games, or just really like ants, then there might be something worth checking out for you. 

Review code provided by Image & Form