The Last Ant

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  Anthony digging around, luckily no red ants.

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  Anthony stumbled upon many red ant eggs, one is hatching near the middle of the screen.

Inspiration

Most people think that we live in a world controlled by humans. This is false. We live in a world dominated by ants. Ants make up nearly 20% of the biomass of the entire planet. They have complex societies, and have spread across the entire Earth. Tropical red ants specifically have spread throughout the world, and in the process have displaced native ant populations. We thought it would be interesting to peer into the life of a singular, lonely ant. A queen ant, lost without her workers to defend her, having to fight to stop the invasive red fire ants from slaying her.

What it does

This is a 2d tile based game, where the player controls Anthony, a queen ant without a colony. Anthony must dig tunnels, eat blueberries, and run away from invasive ants to survive. The player wins by eating all the blueberries in the map, without starving or getting killed.

How we built it

We built this program in Java, utilizing the Java graphics class heavily.

Challenges we ran into

It was difficult importing images into the program at first, as well as developing the movement methods to allow the red fire ants to autonomously move through the ant tunnels.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of the eggs that hatch the red fire ants.

What we learned

All three of us are beginning programmers, without much experience besides half a semester of CS 1101, so most of it was a learning experiences.

What's next for The Last Ant

Allowing Anthony to give birth to worker ants that can bring food to Anthony and fight off enemy ants.

Built With

• java