Field notes · Coming soon to Steam

Ant Architect

A pixel-art ant colony city builder with roguelike runs. Plan the nest. Your leafcutter ants dig it, farm it and fill it.

A grown leafcutter ant nest beneath a meadow at sunset in Ant Architect
Plate I. A grown nest at sunset.

No. 1 · City builder

Build an underground city, one tunnel at a time

A newly mated queen lands, sheds her wings and crawls into her nursery. Everything below the meadow is yours to plan. Pick a room from the card dock, drop it on the grid, and watch your diggers carve it out of the soil one crumb at a time, hauling every load up to the mounds outside.

Run tunnels between leaf stores, fungus farms, egg chambers and queen chambers. Pheromone rooms push the colony's reach further into the dirt, down through topsoil, sand, red clay and grey stone.

  • Fig. 1 Fungus Farm
  • Fig. 2 Leaf Storage
  • Fig. 3 Egg Chamber
  • Fig. 4 Queen Chamber

No. 2 · Ant colony simulator

Raise a leafcutter colony, from leaf to fungus to egg

Leafcutter ants farm. Workers climb the broad-leaf plants, cut visible pieces from tip to stem and stack them in leaf stores. Gardeners mulch spare leaves into fungus beds, where they slowly ripen into mushrooms. Nurses carry fungus to the queen, and every three meals become a new egg. Every ant eats, every day, so a nest that outgrows its farms will go hungry.

  1. Leaf
  2. Fungus
  3. Egg
  4. Ant
Leaf cutter
Gathers leaves, tends the farms and feeds the queen.
Digger
Excavates every tunnel and room and delivers building materials.
Warrior
Patrols the nest.
Queen
Lays the eggs and pitches in wherever the colony is short-handed.

No. 3 · Roguelike runs

A roguelike city builder: every seed is a new draft

A seed reward offering three bonus cards in Ant Architect
Plate II. A seed's bonus card draft.

Each world is generated from a seed: its boulders, stones and buried log fall differently every time. Seeds lie scattered through the soil, and digging into one stops the clock and offers a draft of bonus cards: new ants, new rooms and new upgrades. Keep one, or spend dark dirt to reroll.

Where you dig decides what you find, and what you find decides the colony you build. No two nests grow the same way.

No. 4 · Screenshots

A colony that never sits still

A sprawling Ant Architect nest of tunnels and fungus farms
Plate III. Surface to clay.
Placing a room from the Rooms dock in Ant Architect
Plate IV. Planning rooms from the dock.
Close view of fungus farms and ant trails in Ant Architect
Plate V. Farms and trails.
An Ant Architect colony at night under the moon
Plate VI. The night shift.

No. 5 · FAQ

Questions about Ant Architect

What is Ant Architect?
Ant Architect is a pixel-art city builder about a leafcutter ant colony, made by Bus Built Games. You plan tunnels and chambers underground, and your ants dig them out, cut leaves, farm fungus and raise new ants.
Is Ant Architect a roguelike?
It is a city builder with roguelike runs. Every world is generated from a seed, and seeds buried in the soil offer a random draft of bonus ants, rooms and upgrades, so each colony grows differently.
What kind of ants are in Ant Architect?
Leafcutter ants. Workers cut leaves from meadow plants, gardeners mulch them into fungus farms, and the queen turns fungus into eggs. Diggers excavate the nest and warriors patrol it.
When does Ant Architect come out?
Ant Architect is coming to Steam. A release date has not been announced yet.
Where can I follow Ant Architect?
Follow Bus Built Games on YouTube, TikTok and Facebook at @busbuiltgames, or email busbuiltgames@gmail.com.