Play SimAnt Online

Summary

SimAnt (also known as SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony) is a quirky simulation where you command an ant colony from a backyard perspective. The SNES version adds eight distinct scenarios and supports the Super NES Mouse, letting you direct ants with a pointer.

The game offers three play styles. Quick Games pit your black ants against red rivals while you dodge spiders, rain, and even a lawn mower. Full Games expand the objective to conquering the whole yard, then the house, while battling insecticides. Experimental Games turn you into a lab scientist, building walls, laying food trails, and testing chemicals on the insects.

The title earned the 1992 Codie award for Best Simulation Game and was praised for its non‑linear strategy, even snagging Educational Game of the Year from GamePro. Though its creator later called it simple, its influence echoes in later life‑simulation titles.

Storyline

In SimAnt you assume the role of a single yellow ant living in a black ant colony in the backyard of a suburban home. The colony must battle enemy red ants, expand its territory across the garden and into the house, and ultimately drive out both the red ants and the human owners.

Quick Game mode puts you in control of one ant, allowing you to lay pheromone trails, dig tunnels, recruit other ants, collect food and pebbles, and fight larger foes such as spiders, caterpillars and antlions while dodging hazards like human footsteps, electrical outlets, bug spray, lawnmowers and rain.

Full Game expands the view to an overhead map of the yard and house; you spread the colony by producing queens and drones and win by eliminating the red colonies and forcing the humans out of the house.

Experimental Game lets you take the side of the red ants or spiders, placing pheromone trails, maze walls, rocks, ants, pesticides and food.

The Super NES version presents eight distinct scenarios, each set in a different locale with its own specific hazards, where the objective is to eradicate the red ant threat.