Publisher Microids and developer Tower Five shared another look at their official Empire of the Ants game, a new game based on Bernard Werber’s best-seller.
The new trailer shows off the official Empire of the Ants game ahead of its showcase next week at the Game Developers Conference 2024. If you haven’t read the novels, the game will give a “strategic experience” close to the books, where you command an ant army.
Empire of the Ants will have players step into the legs of an ant, specifically the 103,683rd ant also known as the Ant Savior. This ant is the one destined to lead the doomed ant colony, rebuild it, protect it, and make it prosper while also conquering other meddling ant colonies.
The new game is not to be confused with the H.G. Wells short story from 1905, which featured a larger and highly intelligent ant species that started attacking humans.
Bernard Werber’s novel trilogy follows a highly descriptive account of ants and their morphology, behavior, and even social interactions – the latter of which led to the book being considered fiction, though some consider it speculative fiction.
Empire of the Ants the game will play out as a real-time strategy experience, though it remains to be seen how much of an RTS game it will be in terms of unit management, tech trees, resource management, and overall tactics. There are hints that ants will gather food or other materials in the footage and bring them back to the colony.
All of the footage we’ve seen thus far (including today) has shown photorealistic graphics but not much in terms of what the actual gameplay will be like. Perhaps the goal is to keep the game as close to real life as possible with minimal user interface and actual game mechanics.
Tower Five teased the game will have a mix of “exploration, strategy, combat skills” as well as the “local wildlife alliance” as the key to winning in this microscopic world of epic proportions. The game will apparently feature different seasons as well – it’ll be curious to see if flooding will be a factor.
Here’s a look at the new trailer and gameplay:
Empire of the Ants is launching sometime in 2024 for Windows PC (via Steam) and newly confirmed home consoles on both Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
