October 6, 2026

You can take over one ant

After the first workers hatch you stop playing as the queen and the whole game is marking things for the colony to do. That works, but when I played a young colony for a while there wasn't much for me to do with my own hands, I was mostly watching.

So you can take over an ant now. G takes the one nearest the pointer and the camera follows it. It walks with WASD, digs while you hold F, picks up and puts down with E, bites with Q and eats with T. Holding Shift lays trail scent as it walks (or the rally or avoid scent if that's the brush you have out), so you can draw a trail by walking it.

An ant being steered, marked with a ring, with the reserve bar and keys at the top — The ant with the ring around it is the one being steered. The bar at the top is the reserve, with the keys under it.

It runs on a reserve so it doesn't turn into the main way to play. A full reserve is one minute of steering, and it fills back up faster the bigger the colony is, about 3 minutes with 50 ants and 20 minutes with none. G again or Esc lets the ant go and it goes back to whatever the colony wants from it.

Everything the ant does while you steer it goes through the same rules as any other ant, it isn't stronger or faster. I think that's the right call but I haven't played with it enough to know if a minute is the right length.