When I was a kid (waaaaay back in the 1970’s), one of the most popular toys around was the ant farm.  This was a wild contraption, made of clear plastic.  Inside was a mess of dirt, some plastic scenery, and a bunch of ants.  The fun came in as you watched the ants burrow through the dirt, monitoring their interactions and behavior.  It was one of those toys which, while we may not have realized it at the time, was both Educational and fun.   Well, now one of my favorite developers, Concrete Software, is bringing this experience…and a whole lot more directly to your iPhone and iPod Touch with the fantastic simulation  game, Ant Hill.

Ant Hill allows you to simulate not one, but two separate ant colonies: the peaceful black ants, and the more aggressive red fire ants.  You can control how many ants are on the screen at a time, the ratio of black to red ants, and even how aggressive the red ants are toward the black ants.  Be careful, the higher you raise the aggression meter, the more likely it is that the red ants will attack and devour your entire colony of black ants.  It would be nice if you could give your black ants some tools to defend themselves against the attacking red ants.

Once you have setup the colonies, you are ready to unleash them on the world.  But don’t feel like you need to just sit back and watch things move on their own.  You are kind of like a little ant-god.  You have quite a bit of influence and control over the activities of the colony.

The first tool at your disposal is the classic ant-mutilating magnifying glass.  Just hold it up to to concentrate the sun’s rays.  And…well, those of you who were once young boys know the rest.  Just like those idyllic summer days, just watch as the ants run around…quite literally burning their tails off.

Of course, if fire is not exactly your thing, then make it rain.  Although, in this game, it does not rain water.  Here, when you make it rain, rocks fall from the sky.  Giant rocks, which can crush whole colonies of ants at a time.  Use them to punish your colony, or to protect them from marauding red ants invading your colony.

Not everything in this game is designed to torture the ants, however.  In addition to dropping rocks on them, you can also drop strawberries, which the ants will simply devour.  I am not sure that feeding the ants does anything within the game, but it is pretty cool to watch the ants rip apart that strawberry.

You can even just decide to take up stakes and move your entire colony from one part of the screen to another.  There are two ways to do this.  First, you can just tap the Move Hill icon.  Doing so allows you to decide whether to build a red ant hill or a black ant hill.  Again, this warring faction idea is a good one, but in practice, it really ends up feeling very one sided since the black ants really have no means of defense or even protection.  Let alone the ability to counterattack the red ants.

Additionally, you can cause an Earthquake.  To do this, just turn on the accelerometer and give your iPhone a good hard shake.  Causing an earthquake will basically reset the game.  It destroys your ant hill, sending the entire colony of ants scattering to all corners.  They will quickly regroup, however, building a new black ant hill (but not a red one) in a random location on the screen.

Probably my least used option in the game was the path.  Just draw a line on the screen and the ants will follow the path you set.  What is pretty cool here, though, is that even after the line you draw disappears, the path remains.  The colony will continue to follow this path as long as this option is selected.  I rarely used this feature, and found it really did not add much to gameplay.

My favorite feature in this game is the race.  Just select whether to race for stones or strawberries.  This will pit the red ants and black ants against one another in a direct head-to-head competition, either devouring strawberries or moving stones across enemy lines. 

As much as I enjoyed this game, I did find that after a few times through, the seven controls you had got a bit stale.  This is a real problem with this genre of simulation games.  There is only so much you can do with it.  That is why I think Pocket God is a shining example of how these games could and should behave.  That game staves off the staleness problem by releasing a new update with a single additional feature each week.  That means every week, just as the game is starting to look stale, there is going to be something new to explore.  I think Ant Hill could learn from this lesson.  Although there have been a few updates, there have not really been any significant changes or updates in gameplay.  I think Concrete Software would do well to offer more regular updates, particularly at the gameplay level.

What I Liked:

• Unique and creative simulation game
• Fantastic animation and artificial intelligence

What Needs Improvement:

• The game gets stale without the addition of new features
• More weapons, abilities, or defenses for the black ants

Price: $0.99

Developer: www.concretesoftware.com

Related posts:

1. Quick look: Flight Control
2. Quick Look: Funkyball Worlds for iPhone
3. Quick Look: Wolfenstein RPG: Bringing the Classics to the iPhone
4. Quick Look: Harbor Havoc 3D
5. Quick Look: Shufflepuck for iPhone and iPod Touch