Story Mode

Story mode is the main focus of the game.

## **About**

### **Settings**

In the main story, a gene-thief ant colony must establish itself in a formicarium and survive a multitude of challenges that the scientists create. The formicarium is your hub world.

When you are in the formicarium, click the ant symbol in the top left corner of the screen to open the mission menu. Hovering your cursor over each hexagon symbol will show you details about the respective mission.

You earn resources by beating story missions and they can only be used in the formicarium. You can use Royal Jelly to customize your gene-thief ant colony. You can use each territory point to dig 1 tile in the formicarium. Food is dropped on the surface as seeds, woodworms and woodlice.

A hard population cap, which is based on your number of brood tiles, is set in the formicarium. You cannot build more brood tiles when you reach the limit. It increases each time a new formicarium challenge becomes available. Currently, the cap is 100/ 125/ 150/ 175 before each respective formicarium challenge.

Medium is the intended difficulty for first playthrough. Enemies have halved health and grant doubled food amount on easy. Enemies are replaced with adult or larger variants and number of enemies increases on hard, extreme and impossible.

You can't save in the middle of any missions.

### **Documentary missions**

Each set of missions introduces to you new ant species in their natural habitats and new aspects of gameplay. The missions are narrated in documentary style. The formicarium customizations are not applied to these missions.

* **New Home**/ **Subjugation**: You play as black ants in a European forest. You must manage the limited resources and grow your colony.

* **Rising Tide**/ **Queen of the Hill**: You play as wood ants on a French beach. You must defeat the creatures running from the rising tide.

* **The Harvest**/ **Front Line**: You play as leafcutter ants in a Ecuadorian rainforest. You must engage in territorial disputes against other ant colonies.

* **Cold Blood**/ **A Bridge Too Far**: You play as fire ants in Green Swamp Preserve, USA. You must test your skill against a combination of previous challenges.

Challenge mode introduces new enemies, which mostly act as obstacles, to a previously beaten mission.

Beating documentary missions doesn't directly progress the main story. You gain extra resources if you do it for the first time or with challenge mode enabled.

### **Formicarium challenges**

You must beat formicarium challenges to progress through the main story. These challenges occur in your formicarium and your customizations are applied. If you lose, you will be sent back to right before you have attempted the challenges.

* **The First Experiment**/ **The Second Experiment**: You must survive attacking waves.

* **Possibly the Final Experiment**: You must defeat the enemy colony.

* **The Final Experiment**: You must defeat the titans.

You only earn resources when you beat formicarium challenges for the first time. Edible enemies become inedibles during replays.

### **Rehousing**

A spawning menu will be available on the left part of the screen after you are done with the story chapter. You can freely drop previously introduced enemy creatures in your formicarium to test your colony. They aren't edible.

Your queen will be moved to another formicarium with little to no resources to start anew when you decide to continue. You gain Royal Jelly equal to the number of territory points and excavated tiles. You also gain Royal Jelly equal to 1.25% of your construction cost and amount of stored food.

New units are only available for purchase after you have rehoused.

## **Save files**

Save files can be found in these locations, even if you delete them in the game. Each colony is saved into 2 parts.

* *Colony[x]Stage[y].sav* keeps informations about unlockables and state of the story.

* *Colony[x]LevelDataStage[y].sav* keeps informations about formicarium layout and resources.

*[x]* is the creating order of your save. *Stage[y]* is your previous progress and will be omitted completely if you are in the latest state of the story.

You can move these saves by simply copying and pasting. If these 2 files aren't compatible after being edited, the prior one will be kept and the later one will be overwritten.

## **Trivia**

* The original story of the game involved a scientist who followed an *Formica ereptor* queen on its migration. The story was meant to be based on an island with a variety of environment and ant species that shouldn't exist in the same place. The gene-thief ant colony expanded through the island, killing rival ant colonies and gaining their desirable traits.

* Aggressive creatures may also be dropped in your formicarium together with food after each time you beat a mission. This only occurs after the spawning menu becomes available. Inedible creatures like slave-maker ants and army ants may appear after each time you beat **Subjugation** and **Front Line** respectively.

## **References**

1. ↑ Confirmed by Mike on Discord (5/6/2023).
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1iyqSkO6cU
3. ↑ https://steamcommunity.com/app/463530/discussions/0/3416559391439193112/#c3467225783136620200
4. ↑ https://slugdisco.com/i-htm/