Project Ants makes an ant the size of a Metroidvania
3 min read
Most insect games shrink the camera for a gag. Project Ants keeps the insect, and the kingdom is a 3D map you have to earn with new legs.
The colony is the dungeon
The pitch is one action: you play a fallen ant warrior exploring a fractured insect kingdom to find the lost queen. The store's own comparison is the useful one — the exploration depth of Hollow Knight with the technical hack-and-slash of Ninja Gaiden. The body is small. The map is not.
Metroidvanias usually sell the new ability as a key. A jump that becomes a hook that becomes a swim. Project Ants adds a scent to that. Pheromones create openings, chain combos, and enhance mobility. If that is real, the ant is not only hitting harder. It is writing on the world, and the world answers in routes you could not take a minute ago.
That only works if the vertical map is the skill. A pretty bug in a corridor is a skin. A bug that has to master movement to find the next room is a system. Shortcuts, hidden paths, backtracking with new legs. Mastering movement, the store says, is as important as mastering combat. Believe that when a wall you walked past becomes a road.
A map that has to be smelled
We wrote about this in the world design of Hollow Knight — a map becomes a place when routes, rewards, and shortcuts feel chosen. Project Ants is trying that in 3D, which is a harder camera. If the ant always knows where to go, the kingdom is a hallway. If the ant has to remember a scent and a ledge, the kingdom is a world.
How AM2R and Samus Returns remade Metroid 2 is the other half. Remakes fail when they sand off the feeling they were chasing. A 3D insect Metroidvania fails the same way: convenience that skips the read. Auto-markers, giant arrows, a pheromone that plays the game for you. The ability has to be a tool, not a skip.
Sequence and backtracking are the test. Sequence breaking with Toki Tori 2 is about worlds built to trust the player. If a clever ant can break a gate early with scent and movement, the map is honest. If every door waits for a story flag, the ant is on rails.
What you actually get
Project Ants is by Ant Team, self-published, listed as Coming soon on Windows. Action, Adventure, Indie, single-player, with achievements. English plus five other languages. The store warns about intense violence, blood, gore, and horror themes. System requirements are still TBA.
The listed loop is explore, fight, pheromone, unlock a new movement, backtrack. That is the Metroidvania sentence. It is the right size if the ant's body keeps changing what the kingdom is. A bug mascot in a 3D corridor is a costume. A bug that has to write on the map to cross it is a system.
If the appeal is carving a path through a body that did not want you there, KAIJECT is the other one on this list — you drill the kaiju and change how it behaves. Project Ants lets the ant rewrite the colony the same way.
