Gameplay Mechanics.
After some research we discovered how intricate and complex ants are, and how different they can be from kind to kind. In that research we saw so many of the ants’ natural behaviors, extraordinary way of living, surviving and communicating. We wanted to use those behaviors as the inspirations for our mechanics. First introduced mechanic that will be shared with all ant species is:
communication – ants communicate by leaving traces of chemicals that the other ants can read with their receptors. There are several different mixes of chemicals to communicate different things.
We wanted to replicate that phenomenon in our game, that the ants communicate to the player the same way they do to each-other and in real life. So we wanted the ants to leave objects on the ground, that you as a player have to touch and interact with to read the message it holds.
Fighting – in our game you may encounter small bugs and insects along the way that will act as enemies. The fighting mechanic is pretty simple, you have 3 hit points while in a fight, and they get regenerated instantly once out of the fight. You fight with your hands, hitting the insect makes him lose 1 health point (the player can’t tell how much life the insects have but it is between 5 and 10), the insects have more health points then you which makes fighting hard in the early stages.
Specie specific mechanics
In our game you learn a new game mechanic by learning it from the ants, so each level you meet a different species of ant that teaches you a core mechanic that they use and you can use it to help them solve puzzles and in return they help you by guiding you further back to home. In the end of the game you master all 4 different ant species mechanics like the Avatar, and you can use those skills to help defeat the ants’ enemy, the spider.
Those are the mechanics by learning order:
Leafcutter ants – heavy lifting – leafcutter ants can lift objects up to 50 times their weight.
In game:
You can lift big objects in the world map (plant parts, sticks, stone, etc.).
You start by lifting things out of the way to help the ants, and then you get to stack things up together and get challenged with a few challenges to master your new learned mechanic.
In the rest of the game it can be used to help you make steps reach things make way etc.
Fire ants – defense – fire ants are fierce fighters and have a strong defense system.
In game:
They teach you their technique of fighting, which translates into seeing the weak points on your enemy, hitting an enemy in its weak point destroys him immediately, making fighting other insects a much easier task after that point. It can escalate in the level starting from big and easy to reach weak points, and evolve to smaller harder to reach ones. The enemies themselves will also evolve in size and agility.
That mechanic can be used throughout the game in any fighting encounter.
Weaver ants – Larvae weaving – weaver ants’ larvae (ant egg) produce kind of a silky matter as residue, and the grown ants use that to glue leaves, seal holes and to build, the larvae can even sense it is being used and amp up the production of that matter.
In game:
you use larvae kind of like a glue gun, to seal holes and glue leaves together. The larvae produce a sticky rope of silk that can interact with the world and allow creative uses of it. Sticking things together, making a path, connecting places with a rope, creating traps etc.
Carpenter ants – Digging – carpenter ants like their name suggests can cut through wood, and usually builds nests in wood.
In game:
They teach us to cut holes through wood, allowing the player to pass through some obstacles, rerouting parts of ants colonies, and as a very powerful mechanic is only introduced at the last stage.
VR Platform.
First of all since the game is set in the world of ants, we wanted to emphasize the size, and how different the world is from that dimension. So it seemed that the most effective way of conveying that feeling in an immersive way is in VR.
Actually being in that world in that size. Being surrounded by huge grass and human size ants. To get the most out of this technology we decided to make it without controllers, only with hand tracking to enhance the imersiveness of the experience.
VR brings many challenges with it, not having controllers means you are very restricted with your button press input and need to find creative ways for the player to interact with the world.
World direct interaction
This is the simplest part of VR that you can directly interact with the environment and objects with your hands.
Locomotion.
This part is a bit more tricky. In an ideal world you would play the game in a huge safe open area or own an omnidirectional treadmill to be able to navigate around the world seamlessly in the most immersive way.
Since we know most of the time it will not be the case, to cater the majority of our player base we need to be able to move in game without moving much in space. Usually it is achieved with stick buttons, since we don’t use the controllers we are using hand gestures as an input method. We use gestures to make the character move, this gesture can be easily customizable to suit any individual player’s needs.
Accessibility.
VR has many challenges for the variety of players we want to enjoy the game. We want people with any kind of need to be able to properly enjoy the game. Even if it may not be the optimal or default way of playing the game there are alternative options to cater the needs of various players.
hands
For people with motoric problems who will have a hard time playing with there hands only there are 2 kinds of options:
1. you enable the laser pointer option which allows you to interact with objects from further away and not directly with your hands.
2. play the game with controllers and if you cannot move your hand as freely you can use the controllers both to move and to interact with the world.
locomotion
When playing in VR it is pretty common to have what is called VR sickness, people have different tolerances for it and can be triggered either by long playing sessions, mismatch between the players physical moving state and what his brain perceives through his eyes or different highly dynamic pictures that can put the player in miss confort.
Smooth movement is the optimal way to experience our game, but being myself very sensitive to VR motion sickness we will apply a very common way of adapting to this situation which is a teleporting system, in which you point somewhere (with different restrictions according to the level) and you can teleport there.