This strategy game about photorealistic ants will have you bugging out

digitaltrends.com:

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

As a long day of meetings at last week’s Game Developers Conference came to an end, I walked into a conference room to play one last game. I didn’t know much about it beyond its title, Empire of the Ants, and the fact that it featured “photorealistic ants.” It was the exact kind of curiosity-inducing sales pitch that I seek out at video game events like this, though I wasn’t expecting much more than an oddball curiosity. When I finally sat down at a PC and saw hundreds of intricately detailed ants milling around, my eyes bugged out.

Welcome to the colony

Empire of the Ants sports a truly unique premise. It’s a real-time strategy game based on a French science fiction novel of the same name. Players take control of one ant marching through the woods, though they command an entire colony with some clever controls. Some quick story setup introduced me to a bit of the insect conflict: I’m tasked with protecting the colony from the elements and invading bugs.

So much stands out at first glance that it’s hard to know where to start in explaining it all. For one, the ants are indeed photorealistic to a degree that’s sure to be sickening for those who find bugs creepy. Since the camera is placed at a close third-person perspective behind my ant, I get to see every intricate detail as it trots around. The developers at Tower Five stress that they’ve gone for realism in almost every respect — even ones that seem invented for a video game. When I jump, launching my ant across a patch of leaves, the developers on hand note that the motion is fairly close to how ants actually leap.

Another technical magic trick comes when I crawl onto a log and quickly realize that I’m not bound to flat surfaces. I’m able to walk up and around any surface, just as a real insect can. I test that out by snaking my way around an intricately detailed piece of wood, even twirling around a twig. Later, I climb up onto a leafy sprout and find myself twisting all