Image & Form mixes line-drawing and real-time resource strategy in pheromonal iOS game Anthill

What is it about ants and Scandinavian developers?

Back in July, Finnish developer Prank Entertainment released its iPad RTS Ant Raid, and now Swedish outfit Image & Form is preparing for the release of its line-drawing strategy resource game, Anthill.

Gameplay-wise, you're in control of the pheromone trails that route different types of ant. Simply draw a path from the anthill to food or a defensive holding pattern around your anthill, and then specify which type of ant can use that trail.

For example, a blue trail is used by workers ants who will bring food back to the anthill, boosting your resources, while yellow trails will be patrolled by soldier ants, who will automatically attack enemies. As you'd expect in an RTS game, you can spawn more ants of each type by tapping on that type in the UI at the bottom of the screen, also dependent on what resources you've collected.

The activity of the different ants is automatically routed through the trails available to them, and you can tap on any trail to bring up the option to delete it.

Adding depth to your options, other ant types are Spitters and Bombers, which are flying ants who will bomb any part of the map you tap.

Your ultimate goal is to protect your anthill from incoming insect waves as well as making sure you get to any resources before they do.

In terms of level-by-level progress, there's a typical upgrade scheme where you get to spend the stars you earn in each level to upgrade your ant types' attributes; each has three, and you can also spend real cash to buy stars to speed up your progress if you so desire - 20 stars cost 99c, €0.79 or 69p.

Anthill will be available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad on 6th October.

You can get an idea about how it plays in the following video.

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