Part of the 100 Games That Have Affected Me series.

SimAnt was one of Maxis Software’s more out-there sim games (right up there with SimTower, but probably not quite as mad as SimRefinery).
I picked up the game in 1994, when I was ten years old and getting ready to move from primary school to secondary school. My summer break was all about ants, entirely thanks to this game and its massive manual with accompanying ant facts book. When I wasn’t stowed away in my room with the Amiga I could be found lifting bricks to look for brooding winged queen ants, which I would capture and put into a large jar of soil, hoping that it would start a colony of my… her own in the microcosm I had created and foolishly positioned in my bedroom windowsill. I had it all worked out: honey for food, some worker ants to tend to the queen and a water moat around the jar, which I naively thought would keep my bedroom secure from the super-colony that I had created with my ant god powers. I probably should have paid more attention to the section of the fact book that explained the breeding cycle and flying ants, but the security risk was only an academic issue; my ant colonies always ended up being jars of rotten dirty with white mould growing on top, with eight dead ants inside. Still, I was God to the digital ants.

The game has several modes: a sandbox experimental mode, a “quick game” match between clans of red and black ants, and the full game mode where the goal is to create a massive colony of black ants that causes the human character to move out of his house. I had no real interest in the experimental mode, I preferred games with progression and goals (and I still do). Quick game served as a good introduction to SimAnt, but the full game was where I spent most of my gameplay hours.

The gameplay is primarily controlled through your yellow ant, which can be any black ant that you nominate (and even the evil spider, although this seems to be a secret cheaty thing to do). You can transfer your mind to another ant at any time, and use it to lead groups to attack, lay scent trails to food, dig out nests or assassinate the red queen. If the yellow ant dies it’s fine (unless you’re the only black queen) because you can be reborn or transfer at any time. As well as manually controlling an ant there are menus to control the queen’s birthing (the caste of the ants; worker ants, breeders and soldier ants) the mating cycles and where to start new nests in the yard and house.

The game had some edutainment leanings, but it wasn’t boring stuff, and wasn’t particularly useful a teaching tool anyway. There’s some useful information in the big manual and the HyperCard in-game knowledge-base, but I came away from the game thinking that all black ants were on the same team, fighting against their sworn enemies the red ants. In reality inter-colony ant relations are far more complex than this, and the colour thing was just a useful gameplay mechanic.

There was a sense of fun to the game, too. The Amiga version (at least) had amusing speech bubbles for the ants (that could be switched off after they got repetitive) showing their feelings and anger at the other team.

The game eventually becomes samey, and there’s not much replay value after you’ve spent an entire day slowly taking over the yard and driving the human and his dog out of the house, but I have fond memories of playing it for hours on end.