Anthill Review iOS
Platform iOS
Developer Image & Form
Publisher Warner Brothers
Release Date Out Now
Anthill gets a lot right, it is cute, colourful and most importantly it is fun. How it manages to stay fun is that the game has been developed specifically for the touch screen market. A common mistake by developers is to try and shoehorn an unsuitable genre onto the mobile devices, implementing a hap hazard touch control method or even trying to mask a conventional control onto the screen with touch “buttons” on screen.
This often results in your fingers blocking the action or the controls quite obviously just not working. Anthill on the other hand makes great use of the touch screen allowing you to trace trails from your Anthill and deploy your Ants with the greatest of ease.
The game itself is an interesting hybrid of a few ideas. It is part tower defence, part RTS and part Trail tracer and despite the myriad of different ideas being used, they are fused together quite well. Taking elements from all such as collecting and managing resources from RTS, planting and upgrading your defences to keep away the ever increasing threat taken from the Tower defence genre and the tracing out of the pheromone trails from the Trail genre.
When playing the game you are in charge of the Ants, using your finger you trace a track laced with pheromones. At the end of drawing the track with your finger you select from one of the three types of Ant. The Ants will then follow along the path you have set and carry out the tasks they are set.
Workers do what you would expect and gather resources to take back to the Hill. Warriors are your soldier Ants and protect the Hill and the Workers from the attack of other creepy crawly insects looking for a cheap lunch, and finally the Ranged Ants are flying Ants (yes ants have wings). These are used as bomber Ants.
Killing the attacking bugs not only means dinner but also upgrades for your ants allowing them to attack faster and take out those pesky ladybugs with a savage brutality.
The main campaign mode is very good and quite varied but perhaps a little too short for the better players. This is something the developers have tried to address in a post launch update which added “Infinity Mode” to the game giving it an extended shelf life.
Overall : You can’t go too far wrong with Anthill, much life Air traffic controller there is something very addictive about tracing trail games. Anthill looks good, it plays really well and for the casual on the bus gamer it is perfect. The veteran tower defence player might find that it over all too soon, but its quirky nature and ease of play means its does offer lots of replay value.
Score 8/10
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