Formica

Raise an ant colony from a single queen. Watch it dig, forage, fight and grow, then send out winged queens to found daughter colonies.

Release a queen on the ground and watch her dig her first chamber. Her workers tunnel out food stores, nurseries, granaries and middens, forage the surface, and age from nurse to builder to forager. You don't control the ants: you keep them, with sugar, mealworms, leaves over the entrance before rain, berry bushes, root aphids and a marker for where to dig.

Five real species play differently, from tireless black garden ants to carpenter ants, big-headed ants, fire ants that raft their queen out of a flood and honeypot ants that store honey in living workers. Pick a meadow, woodland floor, sandy dunes or riverbank, each with its own soil, weather and danger: antlion pits, centipedes, robins and a summer army-ant raid.

Survive a winter and the colony raises winged queens and males. After the nuptial flight you can follow a daughter queen to a new patch of ground, with traits she inherits from how her mother's colony lived. Version 1.2, "Wider World", added the biomes, pheromone trails, the lineage and the dangers.

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