The idea is you're given a simulation of an ant colony that grows autonomously 24/7. You define a window of time each day in which you're allowed to make adjustments to the colony's strategy to help them live more optimally. This is paired with mental health exercises like breathwork and journaling.
The intent is to get people being more consistent with self-care by being motivated to care for a digital pet, but to not make it such an involved endeavor as to be time consuming like a traditional game.
I'm going to pair it with some chill lo-fi music so you can hang out and watch your ants do their thing when you need a moment to feel less frazzled while at your desk job :)
Still a long long ways to go before I have anything really tangible and useful, but feel free to follow along with the code or ask questions!
If user is expected to do nothing, I'd prefer some type of simulation over a fantasy / D&D themed game.
Need not be anything special as long as result looks interesting. Simulated ant heap, aquarium, predator vs. prey populations, cellular automata, folding a protein molecule, etc etc.
I was playing RimWorld one evening, had everything running smoothly, put the game on 1x speed, zoomed out, and was like, "Wow. This is nice. Some chill music playing, all my pawns moving around doing their thing, me emotionally vested in the outcome but not needing to contribute right now. At some point I'll need to provide input, but right now I can just observe and relax." and then decided to try and build out something similar, but that runs in-browser and on a longer timescale.
Nice to see you're still working on it! I've used it a couple of times since I first saw it a few months ago (albeit only for short amounts of time) - I'm looking forward to the future updates based on your Github and lore doc.
Yeah, it's still nowhere near a point where I use it. I got the basics of a "top-down" perspective with pheromone trails going somewhat recently. Now I'm trying to learn how to design more engaging game mechanics, but it's really challenging to know when I'm going in a good direction or just inventing convoluted ideas.
Thanks for the words of encouragement though, I appreciate it.
The idea is you're given a simulation of an ant colony that grows autonomously 24/7. You define a window of time each day in which you're allowed to make adjustments to the colony's strategy to help them live more optimally. This is paired with mental health exercises like breathwork and journaling.
The intent is to get people being more consistent with self-care by being motivated to care for a digital pet, but to not make it such an involved endeavor as to be time consuming like a traditional game.
I'm going to pair it with some chill lo-fi music so you can hang out and watch your ants do their thing when you need a moment to feel less frazzled while at your desk job :)
Still a long long ways to go before I have anything really tangible and useful, but feel free to follow along with the code or ask questions!