Microtopia by developer
Cordyceps Collective and publisher
Goblinz Publishing and
Gamera Games—PC (Steam) review written by
Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 8.5 minutes
Microtopia is a neat game where players grow a new kind of colony, the kind that is run by robotic ants. Now if an automation game where you get to control robotic ants isn't an interesting one, you've been living under a rock. Your job is to automate the building, gathering, or smelting of materials to create an epic supply chain and rule this ant world. There's just one draw back, you have to do all this knowing that your ants have a short lifespan.
I shall talk a bit about this interesting game with my thoughts on both the good and the bad points to paint a picture of this particular civilization.
Gameplay
The first action you take is to place your robot queen ant. She will spawn larvii that turn into cute little small ants that hold the weight of the colony on their shoulders. Right off the bat, you have four worker ants that don't die (at least, from my experience that is true). These ants have to collect some resources before you can do anything significant. Naturally, that means you will have to gather enough resources to build a warehouse and an incubator. The warehouse will hold the shiny supplies you collect while the incubator zaps the larvii into small worker ants. Those worker ants will comprise the bulk of your colony as they are the ones responsible for collecting and crafting the materials needed to expand.
Each unit type has a limited life span (with exception of the original four worker ants), meaning that you must continually feed the queen in order to produce more larvii. If the ants don't feed the queen, she can no longer produce larvii to keep the colony thriving. Another thing to note about the queen is during the beginning stages of gameplay, you can only have one. She cannot move on her own either, although you can manually move the ants and the buildings whenever you like.
As you progress through the game, you will be able to research new technology and expand onto new islands. With respect to the new technology, it has to be researched in the tree by using points collected by an inventor ant. The inventor ant is made in the combiner which merges them into a larger ant. It is unique in that you have to feed it until their bubble is full enough to burst. Literally. Once you manually click on this large blue bubble, you will receive research points and the inventor ant dies.
Once you unlock enough technology in the tree, the game becomes more complex. It is not uncommon to redo your entire base because of new pathways or buildings that may be larger than the area you have. It also makes the game a bit frustrating as you may find yourself shuffling your whole production line repeatedly. When you combine that with the unique way of gathering research points as well as the life span of your ants, the game can get messy.
Tech Tree
Let's talk about the tech tree for a few moments. I saw that the tech tree is quite vast, and it has it's downsides. When you begin the game, there are limited paths you can draw for your ants to travel. As you continue through the tutorial, you will gain access to cutting paths and gathering paths, both of which you have to be mindful of their usage and placement. After that, you will gain access to logic gates to how many ants can go to another line so that you don't lose production or collection in another area. You will even get to unlock splitter lines and 'null' lines. Naturally, the splitter lines are self-explanatory, and the null lines are used for allowing ants to take that path if they don't have resources in their hands.
The tech tree allows you to unlock fabric, iron plate tiles, the ability to unlock copper, and even the skill to morph an ant into a flying variant! On the surface, the tech tree is decent enough to progress through the game while still providing a challenge. Although, I do have some gripes about the tech tree which I will get into later in the review.
Graphics and UI
Microtopia is quite cute for a colony builder. It has a unique visual aesthetic that drew me to the game in the first place - that and my love of ants. Believe it or not. Anyways, I couldn't help but chuckle when I began my ant colony because they literally have IC's (Integrated Circuit) for heads! What an interesting idea! Anyways, the game has a vibrant color palette that certainly fits well with the various machines and objects used by the ants.
When you start discovering new islands to explore, you will find that they have different color palettes because they are different biomes with different materials. How these biomes are found is none other than the radio tower you have to build which establishes a connection with other ant colonies. On the one closest to my starting island, I have access to copper among other materials. So visually, Microtopia is rather pleasing because it has unique plant life and a different take on a colony builder.
The UI is alright, but it has some shortfalls. While it is clean and doesn't bog players down with too many windows or information about the colony, I have some gripes. For one thing, manually clicking on an ant to move it to another place requires you to click a path all the way to the required destination (if it isn't on a path). Many games allow you to click on a unit and then click an end point to get it to the desired location. This is not the case in Microtopia. You have to click individual points around the obstacles to get them to its intended destination. Now, the problem with this is if you are looking to move multiple ants, you might not be able to because there is a building blocking the path. In the early game stages, this isn't as much of an issue as it can be in the later part of the game.
Another aspect of the UI that I dislike is the lack of ability to see where ants are - or more importantly if an ant ended up somewhere without a path to follow so it is sitting idly. To add onto the shortcomings here is the fact that depending on the object, you cannot manually move it. Most materials that are used in the construction of items can be picked up by ants. What I discovered that can't be picked up are rogue larvii that end up on the ground instead of in the incubator. What's more annoying is the inability to kill it or have it die over time. And on the subject of dying ants, I would love to have the ability to remove them off the field instead of waiting for a dead ant to despawn.
That said, we are given enough information about how many ants are on the map as well as what type they are. Also, there is another tab that displays your total inventory levels, which is particularly useful as you need parts to build machines. Another positive point about the UI is the ability to track tech tree objectives and you are able to minimize each progression step as needed. In summary, the UI is decent, although imperfect, for the player to see their colony at a glance.
The Good and the Bad
Microtopia is a game that has an interesting take on the standard colony builder. Often the genre is filled with titles that have similar aspects even if they take place in different time periods. The basic food production is similar, building shelter for your citizens is paramount, and recruiting new people to your expansion efforts is often the lynchpin. However, Microtopia tosses a few things out the window in favor of a different method to colony building. There is no food production, there are only fruit bearing plants that certain ants consume. Although, most of your ants don't need to eat! Heck, they don't even need oiling from what I can tell... *heh*
As you have robotic ants as your citizens, you will discover that these ants also do not require shelter from the elements. The only purpose for building your colony is collection and expansion. Who cares about all the other stuff, right? And recruiting more ants is as easy as feeding the queen so that she can produce larvii.
When you account for the fact that the graphics are vibrant and cute, Microtopia starts off on the right foot. It allows you to start your colony on the island in whatever location you wish. The game also gives you a sizeable tech tree to work your way through and even if you cannot reach some of the technology, you can see what a node will unlock because it is listed!
Though, no game is perfect, and this one is no exception. Among the negative points about the game are needing to rearrange your workers and buildings frequently. This could be because of a lack of understanding about the different paths or simply not having access to the right types of paths until much later in the game. I found it to be prohibitive that I could not simply create an inventor path, as an example. Also, the scrap piles may seem like they have a lot of materials in them, but you will have to move your paths to hit new piles a bit more frequently than I like.
Another big thing that frustrated me was the tech tree. For one thing, while you can see what you are working towards, you cannot see the prerequisite lines to the next bit of technology. At least, you cannot see those lines easily because they fade in and out quickly, and they are rather soft in color. What's even more frustrating is having to wait on a seemingly invisible milestone to unlock the tech you want. I spent a good amount of time waiting to see how much something would cost but that never became visible to me.
While we are talking about the time restrictions, the biggest detriment to the game right now is the early game is mostly a waiting game. While you could make an argument that you have to constantly watch for when resources run low, it's just not enough to stay invested. Although, Microtopia tries to mitigate this fact by forcing you to micromanage your colony as you deplete resources. Generally speaking, colony builders share a few elements, but the biggest one of them all is the ability to speed up time. A feature which this game does not have. For a game that relies on automation and logic gates, it lacks clarity and features for me to play it consistently.
Final Thoughts
As much as I enjoy the concept of this unique departure from the average colony builder, Microtopia doesn't quite do enough to keep me interested. It has robot ants that have relatively short lifespans, interesting concepts, and a sprawling tech tree. It just became tiresome too quickly for me to add it to my regular games list. Although, I will say that the game isn't bad per se, it simply lacks needed features and some reason to replay it beyond a couple of sessions. For one thing, the game doesn't have a tutorial skip or sandbox mode which might entice people to play it more frequently. It also isn't clear on the time passage or the milestone requirements to advance in the tech tree. And the help feature does not add to the information it already tells you from the first time you are introduced to a new material or building or pathway.
With all of that said, I really wanted to love playing with these fascinating ants, but there are enough small issues and lacking elements that made me lose interest rather quickly. But, even with my lack of interest in the title over time, the game is decent enough and it has a good number of positive reviews on Steam. Take that for what you will. I hope that a time skip and a tutorial skip can be implemented later on, and that there is a bit more work done with respect to progression.
