We didn't have many games on my first home computer, but one that always stuck with me was the shareware version of Ant Attack. This little game for MS-DOS had a memorable premise and challenging gameplay to back it up. Though revisiting it decades later does reveal some oddities.
In Ant Attack you play as an exterminator. Charged with protecting a number of picnic baskets from an army of encroaching ants. There were originally 10 levels for you to take on in the shareware release, with the full game boosting that number to an impressive 100.
You have 3 tools at your disposal. Of course there is your trusty bug spray that will kill any ant you use it on. You then also have a bucket of water that can create impassable terrain for the ants, as well as a digger that can clear the brown dunes that block your movement. You're going to need that last one a lot, as most levels are completely covered in blocks. At which point it does become a touch frustrating that you can only switch tools by clicking on them with the mouse. A keyboard shortcut would have been nice so you don't have to take your right hand off the movement keys to switch. Unless you're a lefty, that is.
Now there may be a picnic, but beating these levels won't be a walk in the park. Most stages have picnic baskets scattered all over, with ants already in close proximity. Where do you go first? What do you prioritize? In some levels it may genuinely be impossible to save every basket. The ants spread way too fast and you have so many obstacles to overcome to even get to them.
This creates a nice balance between action and puzzling. You got the immediate fun of blasting ants, but you're also trying to puzzle out the most efficient strategy on-the-fly. Adapting to sudden changes and sometimes having to choose to let the ants win in one corner so you can save a bigger hoard of baskets on the other end of the screen. Though you will eventually have to wipe out every ant in the level to win. Each new level then introduces a new layout, with many of the later stages being exceptionally devious.
The actual difficulty mode you're asked to pick at the start determines how quickly the ants reproduce. Though even on the easiest difficulty, this is already quite fast. Every few seconds a group of ants will spread to an available tile adjacent to them. Usually in the direction of a basket, but they may also try to link up with other colonies. Normal is already incredibly challenging, but on Hard mode it's a veritable wildfire of ants. I do not believe that even the developer has finished the game on that setting.
For all its merits and hidden depth, Ant Attack can't avoid feeling repetitive. Each level uses the same graphics after all and its gameplay never really evolves anywhere. You do the same thing over and over, for up to a 100 levels. As nostalgic as I was, even I couldn't binge through all that in one go. Fortunately there's a save feature that lets you resume from the last level you were on. Allowing you to treat Ant Attack like a mobile game, where you just tackle a few levels whenever you feel like it.
I also have to say that the water bucket feels redundant. You can only use it on empty tiles to create a single space that ants can't cross, which isn't much. Especially since most tiles in any level will be occupied, so you'd have to go through multiple steps to create any kind of meaningful barrier with the water. On top of that, the spray does the same thing when used on an ant. It not only kills the ant itself, it makes the tile it was on a death zone that the colony can't spread to anymore. Not a big deal, but I wish it was more directly useful.
In many ways, Ant Attack is a perfect embodiment of the kind of games that emerged from the hobbyist computer scene. Rough around the edges, but with a lot of content and a strong central premise. I won't pretend that now, in 2024, Ant Attack is still a must-play experience. Even at the time there were many games like it by one-of developers, desperate to have their work stand out amidst the sea of shareware. Yet 30 years later, Ant Attack still sticks with me where so many others did not.
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