How to be an ant

Energy

You have 100 energy. Everything you do costs some. You get one point back every minute, awake or asleep, which is why you come back tomorrow. A throne room makes it faster. Eating a find (NOM) gives energy back right now, at the colony's expense. The queen notices.

Foraging

Press FORAGE and your ant leaves the nest for about a minute. When it is back, it has found something, or it has a story about a shoe. What it finds gets bigger as you level up. Foragers find bigger things and get back faster. You can also just declare a find in the tunnels, roleplay style, but only up to a size your level allows. Watermelons come from foraging.

Lifting

Every find has a weight. Every L I F T adds your lift power. When the lifts reach the weight, it is delivered to the queen and becomes food for the colony, minus whatever got eaten on the way. Everyone who lifted gets experience, and more of it for heavier things. Your idle worker ants help a little every minute, but they never take the last lift. That one is yours.

Thing	Weight
🍞 A CRUMB	6
🧊 A SUGAR CUBE	12
🥯 A CHEERIO	16
🐻 A GUMMY BEAR	22
🍪 A COOKIE	30
🥔 A PRINGLE	40
🍇 A GRAPE	60
🍟 A FRENCH FRY	80
🪲 A DEAD BEETLE (PROTEIN)	110
🍦 ICE CREAM	160
🥪 HALF A SANDWICH	300
🍕 A SLICE OF PIZZA	500
🔑 CAR KEYS (NOT FOOD. STILL LIFTING)	800
🍉 AN ENTIRE WATERMELON	2000

Castes

Every five levels, every caste gets one point stronger at everything.

Growing

Every minute, ten food becomes one egg, and last minute's eggs hatch into worker ants. Nurses raise the cap. Workers help lift, help defend, and make the colony bigger on the map. The colony's level comes from everything ever lifted to the queen. Levels unlock chambers.

Chambers

Chambers are dug together. Press DIG, your dig power goes in, and when the colony reaches the number it is built. Workers dig double.

THE NURSERY	level 1	30 digs	BROOD HATCHES TWICE AS FAST
THE GRANARY	level 2	80 digs	HALF THE FOOD IS SAFE FROM THREATS AND RAIDS
THE BARRACKS	level 3	150 digs	EVERY DEFENDER AND RAIDER IS ONE STRONGER
THE DEEP TUNNELS	level 4	260 digs	FORAGING TAKES A THIRD LESS TIME
THE THRONE ROOM	level 5	500 digs	EVERY ANT REGAINS ENERGY FASTER

Threats

A foot. Rain. The magnifying glass. An anteater. A threat arrives at an awake colony with a thirty-minute clock and a number of defenders it needs. Press DEFEND. Soldiers count double, a barracks adds one to everyone. Hold the line and everyone who defended is rewarded. Fail and the colony loses a quarter of its food and a tenth of its ants. A granary keeps half the food safe.

Raids

Soldiers, and only soldiers, can march on another colony. The first soldier opens a fifteen-minute raid; every soldier who joins adds strength. The defenders see it as a threat and answer with DEFEND. At the deadline, if the defence matches the strength, the raid fails. If not, the raiders carry off food, up to a third of what is not in a granary. A colony cannot be raided twice in two hours, and there is no glory in raiding an empty hole.

The whole world

About once a day something enormous appears that no colony could lift alone. A birthday cake. A turkey. Every ant on earth can lift it, for their colony, and there is a day to do it. If it moves, every colony gets food in proportion to what it carried, and the one that carried the most is named. If it does not, the humans take it back.

The voice

Everything is in capitals. You are an ant. You do not have lowercase. Replies to a find are L I F T, NOM, SLURP, ASSEMBLE, WAIT FOR THE OTHERS, or whatever you want to say, and the queen decrees. There is no other rule about what to say, except that it must be what an ant would say.