✳ANT
KINGDOMS
A SMALL COLONY. A VERY BIG WORLD.Chapter 01 / The picnic wilds

A LIVING, SCRIBBLING GARDEN

Little legs.
Big adventures.

Follow the crumbs. Brave the shadows.
Build a kingdom beneath the marigolds. YOUR GARDEN IS ALIVE
✿ THE PICNIC WILDS DAY 1 · MORNING
The marigold patch✎   notes from a very small world
N↑
YOUR COLONY ◆ GUARDS SCENT TRAIL
A new queen. Twelve brave little workers. Your story begins.
✎ Click food to lay a scent trail. Click again to remove it.
Music off · four original ambient tracks
Click a wild bug to start a hunt.The tall grass is quiet…

UNDER THE ROOTS

Your little kingdom LV. 1

12ants / 18
16food stored
0guards

Gold shields mark guards. Injured guards return home to heal.

TODAY'S FIELD NOTES

A kingdom takes root.

Bring home 60 food, grow to 18 ants, and see the second dawn.

0 / 60 gatheredFirst night ahead

BEYOND THE MARIGOLDS

The colony atlas

Raise a young queen and let your family take root in a new garden.

Dig a chamber to unlock the nursery.

Other colonies rest while you are away. Every map keeps its own ants, pantry, and progress.

THE POCKET FIELD GUIDE

Welcome to the wilds.

Forage. Click a strawberry, biscuit, seed patch, or watermelon slice to toggle a route. Workers divide between active routes and bring food home. You can also use the four food buttons.

Grow. Hatch workers for 5 food. Train an existing worker into a guard for 8. Dig chambers to raise the population limit.

Protect. Gold shields and health bars identify guards. Guards patrol the routes and chase wasps. Badly injured guards retreat to the nest, heal to full health, then return to duty. Flowers and the nest shelter workers. A beetle eats from your food patches. Recall overrides automatic chasing and holds everyone at home until you mark food or a hunt. Rally guards sends defenders out even during Recall; workers stay home. Ants heal near the nest.

Survive. The colony eats every 30 seconds. Store food for the night. A full day takes three minutes. Food patches replenish at dawn. Meet all three journal goals to establish your kingdom, then keep playing.

Explore. Click an ant to control it with WASD / arrow keys. Walk onto food to pick it up and return to the nest to deliver. Press Escape to return to colony control.

Butterfly gifts. A painted butterfly occasionally drops a 60-food stash near the nest. It visits sooner when all patches and the last stash are empty. Workers automatically forage the gift; click the stash to toggle its trail.

Flies & mosquitoes. Flies steal food from patches and piles. Click a fly to hunt it; its food pile includes everything it stole. Workers bite mosquitoes within reach and guards chase nearby mosquitoes, which also leave a small food reward.

Hunt. Click a beetle, bee, moth, or roly-poly to mark it. Choose 2, 4, or 6 workers with Hunt squad, then click a bug. At most half your healthy workers join, leaving the others foraging and all guards defending. Hunters take food home as they attack. Gold chevrons identify hunters. When a hunted bug dies, its remaining food drops in a marked pile. Workers automatically collect it and carry it home; click the pile to pause or resume collection. Prey can fight back and will try to escape. Click it again, Cancel hunt, or Recall to cancel. Wild bugs return after a while.

Mantis. Occasionally a praying mantis enters to hunt stray ants. Three guards must stay within its reach for two seconds to scare it away; one or two cannot do it. Guards within 300 pixels rally automatically. Click the mantis or the Rally guards button to send all guards to it. Shelter workers at home or under flowers. Turn Sound on to hear its original ominous bass-and-drum theme.

New colonies. In the colony atlas below the garden, raise a baby queen for 30 food once you have a level-2 nest and 12 ants. She matures in 45 simulation seconds. Choose an unclaimed map to send her out with eight founding workers and 20 food. Your original colony stays saved and rests while you visit another. Restarting replaces only the current colony.

Soundtrack. Turn Sound on for an original relaxing composition for each map. Adjust Volume below the garden. The mantis brings its own doom theme, then the map music returns when it leaves. Music pauses with the game and when this tab is hidden.

Shortcuts. Space pauses, 1–4 toggle food trails. Progress saves locally every five seconds, with a backup. Large colonies remain saved; if one colony save is damaged, the other maps can still be recovered. Sound is optional.