Antmates is an idle colony sim in a glass formicarium that lives on your desktop. The ants inside live their own busy lives: they dig tunnels, carry crumbs, nurse the brood, rest in their dormitory and greet visitors at the glass. You decide where the next room goes and what to level up — they do the rest.
•Income is counted step by step, and you see every step: foragers, worker strength, crowding, trails, the jam at the entrance, rooms and diet — each with its own multiplier, and the biggest loss marked.
•Every room levels up two ways, and the game ranks the income upgrades by how fast they pay off.
•Find the weakest link: beds, crowding, the entrance, the queen’s space — the colony grows as fast as its tightest spot allows.
•Trail and population milestones multiply your income, and the entrance widens as the colony grows.
•Plan your nest with 25 kinds of rooms — from the Royal Chamber and the Nursery to the Pantry, the Well, the Sunroom and even a Cinema.
•Every room levels up on two ladders of 100 levels and furnishes itself as it grows — shelves fill up, beds and lamps move in. Finishes go from dug to decorated, and some spots the ants like better than others. One MAX click buys as many levels in a row as you can afford.
•Watch diggers cut real tunnels and carry the dirt up to the surface.
Crumbs come in four kinds — sweet, protein, fatty and salty — and you choose what the feeder drops: each kind in stock boosts its own job, and all four at once make a feast. Keep the water flask topped up — the first refill is free, later ones cost a little — because a thirsty colony slows down.
•The queen lays eggs, nurses raise larvae and cocoons, and workers grow up through 5 ages — from tots to adults.
•Balance the work: foragers, diggers and nurses — or pick a preset and let the colony find its rhythm.
•When the colony is ready, winged ants leave on a nuptial flight. Start a new colony and carry your legacy into it; the old queen rests in amber in the Queens’ Hall, with a plaque of her colony’s deeds.
•14 finds to dig up: a coat button, a 1978 penny, a tin soldier, a glass marble…
•8 visitors come to the glass — a ladybug, a snail, a woodlouse, a scarf moth and more. Keep them all in your album.
•A magnifier for a close look at any room, and the journal tells you what happened while you were away.
•The Antcyclopedia: a book about the real garden ant, from egg to home formicarium, with photos.
Decorate the surface with a Windmill, a Barn, Temple Ruins or a Smoking Volcano. Change the soil, paint marks on your ants, give them vitamins — all for Tockens: every second of play drops into your counter while the game runs.
•Your colony never dies out while you are away.
•Soft sounds you can turn down, a slow, calm pace.
•The glass slowly gathers dust: wipe it now and then, or let Auto-care do it.
•No ads, no microtransactions.
•A window of any size, fullscreen, or always on top of your work.
In your second hour of play, the farm sand turns out to hide a seed: a cactus sprout pops up under the lamp. Move it to your desktop and it settles on the shelf beside the farm, in a pot of its own, with a little plate for its name. Not a cactus person? Weed it out — no hard feelings.
•Water it every three days; fertilizer is optional and only speeds up growth. Forget it for a while and it won’t die — it just falls asleep until you water it.
•The ants dig up mutagen vials, three for every cactus. You pick which cactus gets each one, and the vial picks the rest: 26 mutations, from Purple Reign and Frosted Tips to Midas Touch and Get Off My Lawn.
•Four kinds of cacti and thousands of possible looks — before you even count the pots and colors.
•The Pot Has Eyes — and they follow your cursor.
•Your cacti bloom, and new sprouts keep coming, so the shelf slowly fills up with little friends.
