Dig. Feed. Defend. Raise a colony in a glass world that never stops moving.
v47 · saves locally in your browser
Your colony
What you are
One queen, four jobs, and a brood that never stops. Tap a role to see its detail card.
♛ Queen
Lays every egg the colony needs and settles in the royal chamber. Use the ♛ Queen tool to set her destination. Protect her — if she falls, the colony falls.
⛏ Worker
The digger. Excavates the cells you designate and hauls the soil back up to the surface. A well-planned tunnel beats a big tunnel.
🥚 Nurse
Tends the brood in the nursery — feeding larvae and moving eggs as the nest grows. Nurseries kept near food rear brood fastest.
🍬 Forager
Travels to the feeder and the surface, hauling food home to the store chamber. Pheromone trails (✏️) show them the way.
🛡 Guard
Fights. Guards patrol the border and swarm to the queen's alarm. When the rival colony raids, guards meet them head-on.
The brood
Egg→Larva→Pupa→Adult
Mechanics
How the world works
Everything simulates for real: soil, water, scent, hunger and war.
Digging & designations
Tap cells to mark digs (⛏), wall-offs (🧱) or erase (⌫). Workers excavate exactly what you designate.
Food economy
Foragers haul food to the store chamber; the queen converts it into eggs. Keep the store above zero or the colony starves.
Water & flood danger
Rain pools on the surface and soaks down. Ants drown and tunnels flood — plug with fill (🧱) or dig high ground.
Pheromone trails
Drag ✏️ to draw a scent trail explorers follow; erase it to reroute. Trails decay where nobody walks.
Chambers
Carve purpose-built rooms — nursery, royal, fungus, waste, food store. The 🏠 overlay colour-codes every room.
The rival colony
A second colony digs over the border and raids for territory. Skirmishes flare at the frontier — or turn the rival off in ⚙ settings.
Tubes & frames
The terrarium is a set of glass frames with six brass sockets on each edge. Connect two sockets with 🚇 tubes and ants travel between frames.
Material palette & sandbox
🎨 paints raw materials — soil, sand, water, lava and worse. 🧪 sandbox freezes the colony for a pure physics playground.
Controls
How to play
Pick a tool, tap the soil, watch the ants do the work.
⛏🧱⌫✏️👆♛🥤🍬🎨🌧🌱🚇🧪
📱 Phone & touch
Tap — designate dig / fill / paint with the active tool
Drag — pan the view, or paint strokes with a material tool
Pinch — zoom in and out
Toolbar tap — switch tools; ⋯ opens the extra drawer
⚡ slider — simulation speed (pause to 4×)
⚙ button — settings, wiki & conditions
🖥 Desktop
Mouse — click to designate / paint; drag to pan; scroll to zoom
WASD / arrows — pan
M overview map · L colony & combat log
H humidity · G gas · T temp · V vents · P pheromones · C chambers
[] brush size · ,. switch frames
Esc — close overlays / leave paint mode
Look inside
The colony, alive
Turn through the terrarium — real captures from live colonies.
The nest at scale — chambers, tunnels and surface in one living cross-section
Level select
Choose your nest
Five ways to play. Difficulty is honest — start gentle.
First Nest
Easy
A calm starter terrarium. No rival colony, gentle rain and a big feeder — learn to dig, feed and grow.
rival=off · rain rare · food ×2
Terrarium
Standard
The default living terrarium. Temperate climate, regular rain — and a rival colony digging just over the border.
default boot · rival=on
The Border War
Hard
Open hostilities. The rival colony is at your border from minute one — hold the line, or starve defending it.
rival=on · constant war
Deluge
Hard
Swamp conditions: soaked soil and near-constant rain. Build plugs and high ground — or watch the nest flood.
swamp preset · rain frequent
Sandbox
✦ Creative
The colony is frozen — paint any material and watch the pixel physics and biology react. Pure creative mode.
sandbox=on · all materials
Scenario settings apply automatically right after the game boots (same-origin delivery). If the browser blocks that handoff, the game opens with its defaults — the URL still records your pick. The URL always records what you picked (?scenario=…&rival=…&sandbox=…).
