Remember back when you were a kid and you wanted to have an ant farm of your own? Well, you can now do that! In a way, anyways. Ant War: Domination has you playing as the ants, and you’re out to take over the world!
Ant War: Domination is like a clicker game combined with some strategy. You take the lead of an ant colony and must build up your army until you take over the world. You’ll need to breed ants, get food, and build up your army so that you can defend yourself from the world.
As you start up Ant War: Domination, you’ll be presented with the choice of what kind of leader you want. I highly suggest you go for either food focus, ant breeding focus, or army focus, as these three are ones you’ll need the most of. Once you’ve started, you’re presented with the management screen. Be prepared to see this area a lot, as you’ll have to do a lot of stuff on it.
Despite being a strategy type game, the only real strategy you have is choosing what percent of your colony will do what job. You can choose the percents in increments of 5, with the totals having to add up to 100%. Your highest focus is likely going to go into getting food, especially as you get later into the game, as your colony will eat through a LOT of food. Your next highest focus will need to be on your army though, as a lot of things will come to face you down, such as a millipede army and the local bully.
There is a variety of different areas you go move your ant colony to, but they all end up playing out about the same. There are a few that are inside that will help protect you from the weather outside, although I’m not quite sure what all the weather affects. Some areas do have different battle encounters you can find, though the majority of your additional fights will come from leveling up and getting more ants. Some of these areas also have different effects, such as the beach having no battles and some places gaining a bonus to things like food during certain months.
While Ant War: Domination does have a weather system, it’s one of the most messed up “weather” systems I’ve ever seen. Ignoring the fact that it can snow in the bakery, you’ll see some major temperature swings, such as days going from -22C one day to 15-20C the next. Then there’s the days where it’s a nice, cool, 60C outside, and then it’s around 55C and hailing or raining out. Perhaps this is just a world after global warming? It’s always possible!
Should you want to do upgrades for your colony (spoiler: you really want to), you’ll need to save up gems. Gems are obtained from winning battles, leveling up, and random events. Upgrades are pretty expensive too, especially considering how long it can take to level up. By the time you even get them, the effect hardly feels like it does anything at all, leading you to have to save even more gems to get the next tier that will feel extremely outdated by the time you reach it, continuing the cycle.
The biggest problem in Ant War: Domination has to be the fact how high the goal is. In the 8+ hours I played it, I didn’t even make much of a dent in the amount I needed to win. Sure, you can just play it forever until you get there, but by that point the game has become incredibly tedious. You quickly realize that you’re just doing the same thing over and over, and that the game is just like one of those old flash game time sinks. In fact, it’s not because it’s like one of those old flash game time sinks – it IS one of those old flash game time sinks. Ant War was originally released in 2004 as a flash game. While some places gave you just a short demo, wanting to charge you $20 for the full things, there was also places it was available (and is still available) for free.
Unless you really want some sort of strategy game time sink, avoid Ant War: Domination. In fact, even if you want a strategy game time sink, avoid it. There is hardly any strategy – most of it comes from trying to manage your food and figuring out what battles you can actually take on as auto battle will sometimes want to run from battles you can clearly win. While other “strategy game time sinks” may cost a bit more than Ant War: Domination does, you’ll also end up getting more enjoyment out of them in the long run. Ant War just becomes not fun after a short while, when you realize all you’re doing is clicking “Go” a lot and watching how awful the weather system is.
Ant War: Domination Review Score
1.5/5
The graphics, while I didn’t mention them in the main review, are at least fairly cute. However, there’s also the constantly “Like us on Facebook!” ads that come up every time you level. And yes, this game does at least seem to save, even if it never tells you it is saving.
