Antbassador
released on Apr 25, 2023
Take control of The Antbassador, a giant human finger with a tophat, as he makes his way through a bustling ant colony. You must use your prodigious digit to help the citizens of Antopia without causing an international incident!
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On paper, this game is a fun idea, but dear god does it control like shit. The limp and floaty quasi-ragdoll physics make this play more like QWOP than anything else I can think of. At one point I spent about 3 minutes trying to pull a single lever, which was a level of precision that this game just isn't designed for.
And... well, that lever ended up being about half the play time. I think this is literally the shortest game I've ever played, and it feels like it really underuses its premise. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to have to do anything complex with these god awful controls, but I feel if this played better you could probably stretch the concept out to an hour or so long adventure. As it is, this feels like it's just a tutorial level.
After playing this, I learned that this is a proof-of-concept prototype for a subsequently abandoned game, released for free on the Steam store. And you know what? Even though Antbassador is pretty bad, that's a pretty cool move from the devs and I can respect it. It would be great if more devs would do similar things in the name of art preservation, even if it does mean the games we'd get out of it may be a little bit shite.
And... well, that lever ended up being about half the play time. I think this is literally the shortest game I've ever played, and it feels like it really underuses its premise. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to have to do anything complex with these god awful controls, but I feel if this played better you could probably stretch the concept out to an hour or so long adventure. As it is, this feels like it's just a tutorial level.
After playing this, I learned that this is a proof-of-concept prototype for a subsequently abandoned game, released for free on the Steam store. And you know what? Even though Antbassador is pretty bad, that's a pretty cool move from the devs and I can respect it. It would be great if more devs would do similar things in the name of art preservation, even if it does mean the games we'd get out of it may be a little bit shite.