Ant Skins

Ant Skins are a cosmetic in game. They are applicable to ants to change their aspect, and most of them are purchasable with Gems.

## Variety

There are **127 ant skins** in the game (75 of which are always displayed in the shop) with all kinds of colors and designs. These include:

* Single colors.
* Basic pattern designs.
* Country flag patterns.
* Creatures and entities of the game.
* Popular fiction characters.
* Superheroes.
* Real life objects and animals.
* Popular festivities.
* Etc.

## Types

### Purchasable

The most common variant of ant skins are the ones that can be bought with gems. These are shown in the shop with a lock until they are bought.

#### Flat-colored

There are few flat colored ant skins in comparison with the rest. These skins are colored completely with a single color, keeping some shades as in the default black skin.

There are **10 flat-colored** skins. The colors are: yellow, *purple*, brown, black, white, cyan, *light green*, green, *pink* and *indigo*.

#### Design

The design category is the most common type of skin, alongside with the Community ones. These skins have more complex designs than the previous ones, thus they're costly.

There are **24 design skins**, which feature country flags, stripe patterns, animals, fiction characters, and more!

#### Community-made

The community-made category contains skins made by players and fans of the game during "Pocket Ants Skin Contest" events in the official Discord server.

In these, people can submit their skins, which are later voted by the community. The most voted skin is added to the game, as well as other skins chosen by the developer. The authors of the skins receive a reward of gems in their accounts!!

The first PA Skin Contest started on 02-Apr-2021, and the winner was announced on 19-Apr-2021. The user **Romeo** won with his skin, the **"Golden Warrior"**. The winner skin and 10 extras chosen by the developer were added in an update two days later.

In another update on 25-Nov-2021, two community skins from the first Skin Contest were added as well as other 4 design skins.

The second PA Skin Contest started on 07-Jan-2022, and the winner was announced on 25-Jan-2022. The user **NuNcHaK** won with his skin, the **"Blue Ants"**. The winner skin and 10 extras chosen by the developer were added in an update the next day.

    The third PA Skin Contest started on 22-Jun-2023, and the winner was announced on 14-Jul-2023. The user **GrilloPepe** won with his skin, the **"Hormiga Demoníaca" (which translates to "Demon Ant")**. The winner skin and 16 extras chosen by the developer were added in an update on 20-Jul-2023.

That makes a total of **41 community-made skins** available in the shop! The variety of the designs of these skins is the largest, as it's totally open to the creativity of the contest participants. They include: real life objects and animals, fiction characters, other entities such as creatures, internet memes, fiction creatures, original concepts, etc.

These skins have the word "**Community**" in the skin shop.

#### Event

Event skins can only be obtained during Events, and they use the theme of the festivity of the event. After the event is over, they can still be equipped but they cannot be purchased anymore. Their designs are related to the Event's festivity, featuring typical elements of said celebrations, like pumpkins for Halloween, chocolate bunnies for Easter, or snowmen for Christmas.

There are **35 event skins**:

* Valentine's 2021
* 1st Anniversary Event
 Easter Event 2021 | 2
 * Halloween 2021, 2022 and 2023
* Christmas 2021, 2022 and 2023
* Valentine's 2022 and 2023
* Easter 2022 and 2023
* 2nd and 3rd Anniversary Event
* Summer 2022 and 2023
 Total

These skins have the word "**Limited**" in the skin shop.

Although skins from a certain event don't come back for the next year's edition of the same event, some designs can come back on a future event with a different color (for example, Santa Claus skin and Green Elf skin).

### Free

These are skins the player can obtain by doing certain tasks to unlock them, instead of buying them with gems.

#### Default

This skin is the **one** all players have when they start the game for the first time. It's a black ant, with different shades of black throughout its body.

It's the only skin with a different design for the player ant, which is a more brighter version of the worker. In all the other skins, the player ant and the workers share the same design.

#### Dungeon

These skins are not easy to get. These skins are a reward for completing a dungeon, and their designs resemble the entities or bosses from said dungeons. By example, the termite skin, as its name suggests, looks like the Termites, and it's a possible reward for winning at Termite Nest co-op mode.

There are **4 dungeon skins** currently: the fire ant skin, the termite skin, the crab skin and the frog skin.

## Obtaining

### Purchasable

They can be purchased in the Ant Skin shop, accessible through the Gem shop.

* Each one of the 10 flat-colored skins costs 200 gems.
* Each one of the 24 design skins costs 250 gems.
* Each one of the 41 community-made skins costs 250 gems.
* Each one of the 47 event skins costs 500 gems.

### Free

The default skin is the first to be unlocked since it's the one the player starts with.

The player gets the **fire ant skin** at a **100% chance** when the Fire Ant Nest is successfully completed for the first time.

Getting the **termite**, **crab** and **frog skin** is different because there is a very small chance of being rewarded after beating one of the co-op mode maps: Termite Nest, Crab Beach and Frog Pond respectively, with increasing difficulty each one of them. The termite skin was confirmed by the developer to have a chance of being rewarded lower than 2%. As for Crab and Frog skins, chances are unknown.

## List

**Notes:** The names given to the skins are all **unofficial** and **subjective**, except for some community skins named by their creators. The numbers are the order they appear in the skin shop, which is also visible in the expanded skin shop picture. Event skins may not be visible in game as they only remain on the shop if they were purchased during the respective events.

## Use

Ant skins may seem to have no actual use since they are only a cosmetic element.

Often new players think the termite skin can make their ants mingle with the termites or make them passive to ants, but this is totally false, the skin is visual only and termites will continue to attack ants with their new aspect.

However, ant skins can become useful in one particular game mode: Co-op. In co-op matches, specially in big clan co-op lobbies, it can be hard for some players to keep track of their soldiers, even though there's a "Hide player tags" option; but using a unique skin is helpful for this purpose, as it makes one's soldiers stand out from the rest.

Aside from skins, there are other items with a real function that change the aspect of the player ant only, and these are: the Lavender, which gives the player ant a purple color while it's active, and the Bee essence, which applies a bee-like striped pattern to the ant's body. They both are applied above the skin of the ant, meaning that skins don't interrupt the visual change caused by them.

## Limitations

The default skin and all the flat-colored skins are fully animated, with antennae and mandibles movement, walking animation and even a death sprite for the animation.

However, all the other skins are applied to ants as a new layer above the default skin. They are generally designed to not cover the mandibles, antennae or legs to allow the animation of these elements on the default skin to be visible.

On battles, the opponent ants' default skin is always blue. Therefore, if the opponent has any skin that is not flat-colored, the default blue ants will be visible below the skin depending on its transparency (see the "Blue ants"/Blue Flame skin for example) resulting in a different version that can only be seen by other players when the player is attacked.

## Trivia

* Previously it was not possible to see the preview of the skin applied to soldier and queen ants, only the worker preview was displayed in the skin shop menu.
* There are not flat-colored red, orange nor blue ant skins. This is probably because there are already Red Ants, Fire Ants and battle ants which are blue, and the missing skins would look similar to them, although later mimicry skins were introduced.
* The fire ant skin was changed to match better the design of the Fire ants. Curiously, the fire ants themselves were changed to match better the design of their queen and the skin, but it was changed back to the previous design.
* The crab skin design was also changed to fit more the shape of the ant.
* There are 5 skins that represent popular characters from Marvel, which are: Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-man, Dr. Strange and Deadpool.
* There was not event skin in the first Halloween Event, probably because it was the first Event ever.
* The Rose skin of the Valentine's Event 2022 set is inspired in a Rose skin from the 2nd Pocket Ants Skin Contest that didn't win.
* The following skins are recolors of other skins:
	+ The Blue Elf, Green Elf and Purple Elf skin are consecutive recolors of the Santa Claus skin, released in Christmas Event 2020.
	+ The Red Heart-shaped skin is a recolor of the Pink Heart-shaped skin from the previous year.
	+ The Yellow Party Suit and Blue Party Suit skin are consecutive recolors of the Green Party Suit skin from the 1st Anniversary Event.
* The Flowers skin contains a white snakeroot flower for the queen ant skin, while the other two flowers are not actual flowers in the game.
* The third PA Skin Contest is not only the longest skin contest to date but also the one with the most skins added to the game.
* Starting with the 86th skin "Witch/Female magician", the dimensions of skin textures was increased, resulting in all posterior skins (including that one) having twice or thrice the area of skins previous to them. The bigger space allowed for more complex and creative designs.

1. ↑ https://discord.com/channels/738416192255164446/771309272025137152/843161712924033044
2. ↑ https://discord.com/channels/738416192255164446/754394328243109908/939252441952698368