Empire of the Ants

I came into Empire of the Ants expecting a gimmick dressed in pretty clothes, and the visuals absolutely deliver on that promise. Tower Five built something that looks genuinely jaw-dropping, a photorealistic forest floor where every grain of soil, every blade of grass and every insect model holds up under a hard stare. The orchestral soundtrack layers on top of that, giving the whole thing a scope that punches well above the studio's size. If you have a high-refresh monitor and a capable GPU, this is legitimately one of the better-looking games you can run right now. So the presentation is not the problem. The problem is that the gameplay underneath those visuals is divided, and neither half fully commits. The RTS sections have you commanding legions, specifically Workers, Gunners, and Warriors, inside a rock-paper-scissors combat triangle where Gunners beat Warriors, Warriors beat Workers, and Workers close the loop on Gunners. You build and upgrade nests, deploy support units like Rhino Beetles for mobility or Snails for defense, and use pheromone abilities to buff, scout, or spook enemy legions. On console with a controller this works reasonably well, since Tower Five tuned the UI for a pad. On PC, mouse-and-keyboard players expecting classic RTS granularity will find the controls stripped back, with no way to assign individual legions to hotkey groups. You either direct one circle of units or all of them, which caps the tactical ceiling hard. Hardcore RTS fans are the wrong audience here. Then there are the exploration and platforming sections, where you wander the Fontainebleau Forest as Ant 103,683, scanning items by scent, tracking missing sisters with pheromone radar, and occasionally jumping across leaves and stems in charged-hop platforming that can flip your camera orientation in uncomfortable ways. Some players find these sections calming and atmospheric. Others find the early fetch missions, hunting faint dots against a bright sky, a slow and poorly communicated start that sours first impressions. Both reactions are fair. The campaign runs roughly 20 hours and is loosely based on Bernard Werber's novel, though the story is widely considered the weakest part. Multiplayer is where the game has a bit more going for it. Online PvP supports up to three players with cross-platform support, and the condensed tactical decisions feel more alive when there is a human reading and countering your legion choices. The Master AI difficulty setting is a credible solo alternative that uses pheromone powers aggressively, but reviewer consensus is consistent: the multiplayer has more depth than the campaign, and even then it lacks mode variety for a long-term competitive scene. Tower Five has committed to a post-launch content roadmap, so that picture could improve, but right now the multiplayer is fun in short sessions rather than something you grind ranked in. Bottom line: this is a console-first, accessibility-first RTS with visuals that no other game in the genre matches right now. If you want a relaxed, approachable strategy game with one of the best-looking environments you have ever walked through, it delivers. If you want a crunchy PC RTS with deep unit control and a ranked ladder worth climbing, look elsewhere.

Fred · Scout Team

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