Dev Diary #1: Ranged Units and a New Mode

Greetings to all ant colonies!

We have added a new ant to the game: the "Dart". It can attack enemies from a distance and shoot through obstacles. Additionally, a new game mode has been introduced, and we want to tell you more about it in our first development diary.

A bit about the Dart:

It has become the first ant capable of attacking enemies from a distance. We planned to create such an ant during the first year of development, but we kept postponing it due to the complexity of the shooting mechanics. The turning point that made us realize it had to be added was our desire to evolve the combat system. Right now, players mostly rely on Daggers or Tanks and play the entire game using them.

The new ant is intentionally designed to be vulnerable in close combat, and we've taught enemies to react to being shot. These traits of the Dart make it impossible to use effectively without the support of strong melee ants.

The Dart's main strength is its ability to attack enemies through tiles in the dungeon without taking retaliatory damage. Its usage completely turns the game upside down, transforming anthill raids in the late-game areas into a Tower Defense experience.

The new ant has had a massive impact on the endless mode. The familiar "Dagger Spam" strategy has been replaced by more interesting tactics that combine different ants and walls. Even during playtests, we started receiving a lot of messages about new high scores!

How was the new ant created?

The creation started with a simple sketch drawn in green. Later, when deciding on a color, we noticed that our concept stood out very clearly against the other warriors, so we decided to keep it. As for how exactly the ant would shoot, there was almost no debate — we based it on the real-life ant species Paraponera clavata.

The main problem we encountered during the initial tests was that the ant would stop in place to reload when it ran out of ammo. It looked strange; it would just freeze for a few seconds and wiggle its abdomen. We decided to let the ant reload constantly on the move so it wouldn't have to stop. This turned out to be the perfect solution, which you can now see in the game.

In the early concepts, the ant had only one charge. Generating another projectile took a lot of time. We didn't like that, in this state, the ranged unit always dealt a flat amount of damage per minute. We gave it the ability to store charges. Now, during the first encounter with an enemy, it can fire up to 3 shots in a row with less than a second of cooldown between them. After that, it needs to generate shooting fluid again, which takes significantly longer.

This feature allows a large group of shooters to kill an enemy before they can retaliate. However, to use this tactic effectively, you need a solid understanding of whether your current number of shooters is enough to finish the job. If you miscalculate, they will die quickly, and your economy will be left in a grim state.

Another challenging aspect was the projectile trajectory. The projectile needs to fly in a visually pleasing way and always hit its target. But how do we make the projectile reach a target that has moved away from the spot we initially fired at?

We designed it so that the projectile always takes the exact same