Ant Raid, published by HeroCraft Ltd. is a simple tower defense game in which the player (an ant) defends his or her home from once friendly worms, bees and snails. In story mode, there are 2 chapters, with a third coming 2013. Each chapter has 15 levels with in-game videos dispersed throughout. There is also a survival mode with unlimited play, if you live for squashing bugs.
To play, the player selects ants all around the fort and then selects an intruding insect. They will attack until the intruder explodes and/or the defending ants are knocked out in which case, other ants must come to the rescue. In later levels the ants acquire power ups which cause speed and agility, which turns the ants red, invincibility which turns them blue and “divine power” (the player zaps intruders and causes earthquakes with a tap). Your score is based on how many out of 3 stars you retained during the level, depending on your objective- collecting needles as quickly as possible, using blue and red powers at the same time without letting the intruders touch the fort, etc, etc. It was rather difficult to get three stars at all past the first level or two.
The graphics and sounds of Ant Raid are quite endearing and theme is especially catchy. The game play is quite fun if not challenging. In fact, there is a large discrepancy in the difficulty of many levels, which one the one hand helps to keep the game interesting, while on the other it can make the game near infuriating. For example, In chapter 2, you go from simply collecting pine needles (to extend your fort’s alert tower, naturally) to collecting needles, killing intruders and trying not to bring down the fort with your own powers all at once.
Another drawback to Ant Raid is that as adorable as the little purple ants are, you are required to download a video cache of nearly 90 Mb if you want to watch the cutscenes. You are not required to download them to play, but considering you have to download the videos to even watch the intro, it’s a bit of an inconvenience.
Ant Raid, despite its problems, is a fun and challenging strategy game that is well made and can certainly keep you entertained, even if it’s because you’re trying to beat the same level for an hour.
Ant Raid is 99 cents from the Google Play store and can be downloaded on any Android phone with Android 2.3 or greater.