The Ants Reviews

This game started great. Support and terrible refund policies tank it. I had an IOS billing error due to a bad connection during a purchase in my first week. I requested a refund through Apple, not thinking anything about it - IOS - should be an Apple issue. A few days later I received a letter in game from support saying that they were going to lock my account in 3 days due to a “malicious” refund. I explained that I purchased a package that is only available once per day and the purchase errored out. I then completed the purchase on a better connection. I received no response. I continued to make purchases thinking that I would hear back if there were additional supporting documentation needed. Instead I woke up to my account being blocked for literally 20 years. After about 15 hours I finally got a response from support which is now telling me that they will only release my account if I repay the refund. They are losing a customer over a valid $5 refund because they didn’t want it reported to Apple. I’d rate lower than 1 star if I could because of the wasted 2 weeks and the friendships I made in that time that now are lost with them having no idea why.

Update: developer - please read feedback for improvement ideas. Kind of the point.

This game is pure paid a win, if you have a lot of money and you want to bully other people with your money play this game. The customer service is almost at a standstill it took multiple days to get a simple request done for my account. All these people care about is your money. I’ve spent over $200 on this game over the course of a few months and I still get ads and pop-ups in my face every time I login. I’ve been playing the game for months I know what the packs are I don’t need to have that crap shoved in my face every day. Also if you want to play a PVE experience go play something else. They claim that the cultivator class is more of a gatherer and not a fighting class where you play PVP. If you play a cultivator or a Hearder class you’re just gonna get farmed by people who put money into the game. People regularly on earlier servers will go make new accounts just to bully new players. There are zero systems in place to stop new players from getting bullied except for your typical shields. Also from what I’ve seen this game is a Word for Word exact copy of state of survival but with ants…

Routinely had issues with things like shield durations which can be a huge problem if your shield expires hours early and somebody decides to wipe out your next. Another Huge issue is How this clearly Chinese company chooses to Censor your Avatar. Now I personally do not care what somebody uses as an avatar and in this game people got by with enormous cleavage pot smoking no biggie. So I paid for for a package that allowed me to change my avatar picture. I downloaded a simple picture of me from my torso up in my dress blues no weapons no slogans just me in front of an American Flag and the flag of the USMC. I was notified the next day that this simple picture was offensive in some way. Secondly that I Would not be able to upload anymore avatars until directed by them. I paid actual money to do this and find this level of Censorship ridiculous and hope fellow servicemen will take note before downloading a clear tool of the Chinese Government. I have also notified many servicemen organizations of this. It is up to you if you play it but the people that run this like American money but hate American Ideals like freedom.

So I started out really liking this game. Most especially the ant life part of it. I liked seeing the different ants and insects. And creating an ant hill is fun. BUT if you don’t live on this game, drop money, and keep shields up, you will endure endless attacks and lose hard earned resources. Also if you’re part of a peaceful Alliance you can’t attack others or try to bring back more resources based on their own rules. But I refuse to spend money on a game where my resources could vanish due to some yahoo person coming in and wiping me out.

Alliances are trying to help out and defend but communicating with your group is really hard. There’s no notifications to assist for help, leaving members unaware they are being ransacked. The chatting options are super lame. End of the day I have to work and have a real life. So this game is getting old fast…

There should be an option that if you are peaceful you can’t attack nor be attacked. At least have it be some good time to spare between the attacks. Just to frustrating to keep playing. Boooo

I’ve been playing this game for the past couple months and Ive really enjoyed it, but due to today’s new ornament update, Ive had a strong change of heart towards this game. Basically, there are weekly events that allows you to grind for ornaments which give buffs that helps you advance through the game. Ornaments are a cool way of showing off your accomplishments while also strengthening your anthill.

With this update, it limits the amount of grid spaces occupied by ornaments to be only 10 spaces. Larger ornaments that take up 3 grid space are almost useless now as you won’t be able to use them. An entire weeks work of grinding is voided and the only way to increase the amount of ornament spaces is unlocked through spending real money. So there is literally no point at grinding to get ornaments in this game because you can’t even use them.

Please change this or there will be a large portion of the ant community leaving this game.

I started out completely in LOVE with this game. Everything about it is right up my alley. I love the design, the ants and even though I’m super tired of rok it was different enough to keep me interested. I like the weekly events, I seem to be one of the few people who understand most of the mechanics and I see buying packages as supporting the developers so no problem there. I will say though that the light contract us wildly overpriced and I don’t recommend it.

Then the game and it’s violation of its own rules just wore me down… and down… and down. It keeps going like this and I’m just exhausted… 1) me: look into what you need to do, fill the requirements, expect it to work; it doesn’t work so you try support. 2) support: you need these things to do that. 3) I have that it’s not working 4) support: you need these things to do that 5) me: I do! It’s not working 6) support: you need these things to do that 7) me: can you maybe ask anyone else there for help 8) support: you didn’t do it in the right time 9) me: because you have wasted all this time!

I pretty much give up. I’ll never get the money I spent back but I have learned a lesson.

I'll keep this short. When I first started consuming time with this game, it did what it was supposed to. I upgraded my stuff, ants got stronger, upgraded more stuff, got new buildings. The game was time consuming and fairly interesting. Then out of nowhere I started getting attacked 3-4 times every few hours for literally MILLIONS of my resources I worked for weeks to build. That's where all my enjoyment with this game went out the window. I don't want a game where I'm pretty much paying a 80% resource tax to other players. What's fun about making a hundred thousand just to turn around and lose 2 million? NOTHING! (3 Stars for the beginning grind) (1 star if it wasn't for the fun/safe start)..
S/N: if you get attacked in this game, you can't even attack back because the person who attacked you will just move to a new location with all your stuff. No way to find them. Bad bad feature.

It’s a good game, but needs lot of work, the translation button is way to small, and it doesn’t translate the greatest, when talking in the chats, after entering your message, have to hit done then send, why can’t there just be a send button, and words said in chat, I typed in “ghosting” and it blocked out every letter but the g and the ing, it’s not a swear word, when out on the map it gets laggy so makes scrolling hard to do, while scrolling on the map if you click something the information pops up, but to get it off doesn’t work so well, you click in different spot and something else pops up, rallies, when someone sets a rally, there is a rally tab that pops up, we click it to join rally, but once you join it boots you out of the rally area and the tab disappears, so then you have to go into the chat to join a second rally, and why can only 4 ppl maximum join a rally, if you have 50+ people in an alliance, how is it fair to the new people trying to grow, because rallies are one of best ways to grow, customer support, there’s no way to contact customer support to give suggestions or to inform them of a glitch, there’s a gm, but each time I’ve tried to send suggestions all it does is bring up informational Q&A, I know it’s a newer game, these are a few things I’ve noticed in the week I’ve been playing, overall isn’t bad so far

But, SvS is killing the game. Under lvl 15 or 16, participation prevents hill growth and development. Also, pvp within server damages SvS, causing many higher level players to get bored and leave the game.
I suggest starting a battle arena that functions like a high stakes poker game. Players would have to have adequate resources as collateral, or developers could create a “poker chips” type currency to participate so there would actually be a cost and reward to involvement. You gotta work your way through lower level battleground against players from all other servers, narrowing competition until you get to the top with the best players. Keep the top winner as “king of the hill” to incentivize others to keep trying to topple them. This would potentially bring back players who’ve quit for lack of good pvp action. Everyone wants to test their troops and try out their defenses.
Thank you for your time.

I started as a new player four days ago. I went through the tutorial which is very in-depth and very helpful. I got to the alliance portion of the tutorial and applied for a team of active players. Unfortunately after 14 hours I figured it was time to find another alliance. After the 14 hours of waiting I had found a group of experienced players that were willing to help me. I was really enjoying the game and I have played other games similar. The artwork is fantastic. And the community seems to be quite active. So after two days. The alliance leader let me know we would be moving to another server by using the new player teleport. Of course I was a bit behind my team. I could not find a way to know how much time was left on my newbie teleport. So, about 15 minutes before the new server openedI got a notice that my new player teleport just expired. It wasn’t a really big deal, I was going to move with that team anyway because I really enjoyed the camaraderie. So then I got into this binding issue with the account being bound. Nevertheless I went through the tutorial again couldn’t save that game because the other one was bound still. Then I would have to go through the tutorial again. All of that ended up being too much. Besides that it was a great game.

This is a game where you are basically always upgrading in order to increase your power however the ui is just not advanced enough. Delete all takes four clicks, three clicks to send a message. No claim all on most screens. No easy navigation between hatcheries for instance. This game requires an inordinate amount of time to perform upgrades before you can even be competitive. I played one solid week without attacking anyone — just upgrading and collecting resources to get to 500k power and then decided to quit because there just isn’t enough fun to be had while you are doing the massive grind it takes to upgrade everything and I found that I didn’t want to continue to pay the huge price in time and effort to be able to compete. The graphics are the only reason I hung in there for a week.

So far this feels a TON like a Rise of Empires re-skin. ROE is a wildly profitable game so I can see why they would do it, but I hope they can avoid a few things from ROE that made me leave… namely power, success, fun are mostly tied to how many whales you have on your alliance.

I’m only level 9 so far and it seems really tough to predict what resources I’ll run out of to upgrade… Some of the battles (with critters) to gain resources more powerful but I still lose- so im not sure how that works yet. And on the world map, the lack of a zoom capability is really tough. Lastly- I’m still struggling to understand how to use the special ants to form a strategy.

But it’s an interesting concept and I oddly like learning the facts they have about ants and I’ll give high marks for the walk-throughs and tutorials. I’ll try to update this as I get a little farther along… hoping it doesn’t turn into a pay2play bully playground.

This game is pretty fun. As one review mentioned, it is like coc and ff, but ants. You can make new friends and grow as a player if you find the right people. My issue is that it’s clearly made to be pay to win once you get to higher up levels. I’m a q22 and it takes forever to get rss for many builds and depots. I know it’s possible to go the free to play route but if you’re in a bad server with whales, like I used to be before migration, this can make the game much less fun. However, we migrated to a new alliance that is more accepting of f2p and p2w alike, as long as you contribute to svs. Another issue is how the game will crash at the most inconvenient times, like when I’m writing a message or I’m retrieving my gatherers. One last note, honestly the part that confuses me most, is the censor in chat. The word “something” gets censored because it just happens to have the word “meth” in between it, the words “is expecting” get censored because the word “s ex” is detected between the two combined, and many other examples similar to that make it hard for players to chat with each other, alliances to communicate, and even for the current king to send important mail without confusion.

I would rate this game 5/5 if not for the lack of customer support options. I do not have access to LINE or Discord, and so am not able to contact a human being about a purchase I made. If this issue is fixed, I will happily edit my review. Otherwise, a fantastic game with lots of fun features for whatever type of player you are. The game leans a little more towards war and battles with other players/alliances/servers, but there’s still a peaceful option. Not a simple game, but there are lots of tutorials available.

EDIT

The issue I had apparently resolved on its own, but thank you for the quick response here. Review edited to reflect 5/5. CS options are still a little limited (Discord link doesn’t work and I’ve heard rumors of help on there being all but abandoned and GM chat doesn’t appear to do anything); CS email address should also be more prominently displayed in-game.

I love the game. Very realistic. You gather resources and upgrade your kingdom. You fight others and help your alliance. I have some update ideas. Could you add springs out side? They could
Be filled up by rain and collected by other ants.

Thank you!

So I have an update idea. Can you make lady bugs red? Them being white is kinda weird and bothers me. Can you add birds you can attack. And maybe an ant eater as a really BIG CHALLENGE. I would appreciate it very much! Could you add a few more classes and tasks. I would switch to one. This game is very fun!

Thank you!

So, I have some update ideas.
I was thinking that when you occupy land you can create little houses for one troop. It could cost 50k sand and 350 diamonds. You could supply it so the power growth continues. You could dig advance and hatch. Which cost more diamonds each time. I would appreciate it very much.

Thank you!

So far, I’m having just update ideas, but I have noticed a bug. The music in the game is kinda loud so I turn it all the way off. ALL SOUND OFF. But sometimes, for no reason the sound just blares and the second I hit the sound down button it turns off. So it makes no sense. This is the only bug I’ve discovered. I still appreciate and love this game though! I hope the bug gets fixed and,

Thank you!

I’ve tried many of these types of base builder multiplayer games - by FAR this is the best. There is so much to do, the community is great, AND THE DEVS ARENT GREEDY. They shower you free diamonds and resources through regular gameplay. It seems to be designed in a way that you can either put in a moderate amount of time in the game, or obscene amounts of money - there is no in between… which is good because that means it seems most people don’t pay to win. Skill and interpersonal skills are required to be successful and no amount of money can buy that. I actually signed up for the monthly subscription at 24$ - VERY worth it. You get 11 hours of speed ups per day or a choice of resource packages. I’m lvl 16 out of 25 and am saving the majority of speed ups for higher levels. Get this game - it’s a breath of fresh air. If you do - be sure to support the developers with a purchase so you can show them that not being greedy can still be a good thing.

I love how you can have insects to fight along your side or help out at the hill, the things you can research to help your hill grow, the events are really cool and help you grow a lot, and I love that it does not take a lot of time to increase your power and your things, and how you can decorate your hill but one thing that I hate about the game is how the gifts you can claim all for the normal gifts at one time but when you have like 125 rare gifts you have to click everyone at a time and I just wish that they could add a button to claim all rare gifts so it does not take forever and please if you are reading this game creators can you please see if you can add this. But that’s about all and I could say a lot more cool things about this game but there is so many and it would take me about a year but that gift thing is the only thing that bothers me.

I love playing this game it’s interesting and there’s a lot of different things to do. The only thing I find that repeatedly annoys me is that you can’t move piles of resources within your hill, like the sand, wet soil, water, etc. I’m super OCD about organization and would really like to have all of my different recourses in one spot but can’t move the source. Similarly I wish we could rotate the builds we can move it make it a lot easier to organize the inside of the any hill. Other than that it’s a great game. I love all of the different kinds of ants and other insects and that there is always some kind of event going on so although upgrading some things can start to take a pretty long time the further into the game you get, you’re not just stuck waiting. There’s almost always something else to do. 😁

Most addictive game in a while reminds of my old clash of clans account lol I’m at 12 k is what I forgot to post and well now I’m at 4 mil in my server and ranked on top 100 in unit power even tho u guys had me spend a bit I love the game it would cool adding more skillz or even lending special ants to alliance members so they can try different builds to see if they like other ants like right now I’m a shooter ants build i would like to see if theirs other special ants that I can get to to increase my unit performance or donating ants as a way to increase clan evolutions (i also need help changing my in game pic I asked on discord to help and no one has hit me back not sure what to do cuz I can’t manually change it so it’s a big hassle wait weeks to get a response from discord

As a kid, the ants game back in the time were dumb. Squashing ants and random ant feeding simulator, I enjoyed these and they deserve a lot, but this game… THIS GAME!!! WOW! I don’t have the WORDS to explain the amazing game this is. I love the fact you need to be decently active to stay in alliances, prevent being attacked and participating in events. The rest is just too fun! As you grow, you get skins from events or even sourcing them! A great way to want to keep working on the game. It’s kind of a bummer that the chat doesn’t have a “send button”, which is annoying if you need to type quickly. Another thing is how toxic people can be over the dumbest things. I was attacked so much at the beginning due to defending myself from one of the biggest alliances in my server (JOD, my former alliance). Of course, the game can’t control these crazy people. I love it so much and joined because of the ads. Not really what I expected… It was better.

I like the idea of ant colonies in general so this game appealed to me as someone who’s only played one other game like this and new to mobile gaming in general (I’ve played PC for 10+ years). There’s so much content/tasks/events going on at the same time—there’s so much to do it’s insane. You can spend hours a session (if you want) playing the game instead of just waiting for things to finish. There seem to be weekly content updates. There are no ads at all besides occasionally for the reasonably priced in-game purchases. Cooperation is big and most people in my zone are friendly and helpful. Gameplay itself is fun.

Only issue I had is occasional issues with the English in the game which I can overlook for everything else.

Overall you can tell a lot of effort and thought was and is being put in this game which I appreciate. Would absolutely recommend giving it a try.