So, if you're like me, you sometimes find yourself distracted in class. For example, last Tuesday, we were in a lecture about logic. At the particular moment I'm referring to, the professor was talking about infinity. However, the teacher was being a tad long-winded, and I, as I am wont to do, started typing random stuff in Word. In particular, I typed "sigh..." (except I did it in Dutch) and showed it to the person sitting next to me, my fellow member of Alpha Chicken, Paul.
After that, I opened Photoshop and made a lovely graphic involving the same phrase. It was beautiful, with rainbows and pastel colours and lots of flowers. Paul told me that there were too many flowers, but I – respectfully – pointed out to him that there was no such thing as too many flowers. He said what if we had an infinite amount of flowers, since the background noise was indeed still about infinity at the time, and I said that that still would not be enough flowers. He mentioned that we would also need an infinite amount of bees.
Now, it's been a while, and I don't recall the entire conversation, but a while later I jokingly said I should create the buttons for our menu. Paul mentioned my design for the button was too colourful and had too many flowers for the theme we were going with. This theme, sweet readers, was just a dull dungeon. However, I disagreed, saying that the dungeon could have a lot of crystals in the walls, because it was also a fantasy setting, and what's cooler than magic crystals? Okay, some things, but it's pretty high on the list of cool things. I also added that, because of the magic, there could also be flowers growing on the walls! Because flowers are also high on the list of cool things, of course. (In case you're wondering, unicorns are indeed on the list as well.)
So, Paul asked me what the enemies would be like in this slightly modified theme. I answered it would, naturally, be giant bees, referring to his earlier comment about an infinite amount of bees. Of course, only bees would be too boring, so I also mentioned we could add other insects, like butterflies. I liked the idea of butterflies. I pointed out we could have butterfly enemies that would flee from the enemy, but, upon being killed, would drop some sweet loot. At that, Paul pointed out how weird it would be for a big sword to drop from a butterfly, but I quickly retorted that the butterfly could drop its wings, improving your movement speed. Paul answered by claiming that wings in a confined place like a dungeon, with its low ceiling, would not help too much, but then we agreed that if the player was really small, it would be doable. Paul then wondered what the player would play as, and I simply answered a butterfly-sized human. However, Paul had a better idea: an ant.
Yes, that's right, dear readers. In case I haven't made it obvious enough, this is the story of how we decided on the setting of our game. You are an ant. You play as an ant, defending the tree you live in from harmful insects like bees and other ants and wasps.
Now, here is a tip, my dear readers: if you encounter a wasp (in-game or in the real world), flee and ask your mother for help. It's the heroic thing to do! If Achilles did it, you can do it.
Not that there's a mother ant in-game. That would just be silly, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?
Ah, but back to the point. It's not just that you play as an ant in a tree, no, you play as an ant in a living tree. A treant, or ent. Of course, since the levels are randomly generated pretty much infinitely, there's no definite ending. So, to summarise, you're an ant in an ent with no end.
If nothing else, we should at least win an award for most puns, right?
Oh, and I have a very interesting piece of concept art for you, drawn by our own very artistic Paul:
Now, the title for this game will be Antless. My original suggestion was Ænðless, but the others said that there were too many strange characters in there. I just thought it would be nice to put all those different words (end, ent, and ant) in one title. However, I can accept that not everyone appreciates that.
I am now going to leave you, my sweet readers, but not before sharing an interesting piece of ant trivia with you: in an ant colony, most ants are female. In fact, male ants are practically only used for reproduction! Until next time, where I shall update you again and share more interesting ant trivia with you.
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