Some of our Kelowna Animation grads have been working hard over the past several months on a real-time tactics game called Army Antz. The style of the game can be described as “bright and colorful cartoon style with detailed art.” The team of animators and digital artists working on the project recently did a campaign on Kickstarter, which is a funding platform for all kinds of different creative projects. Although the project’s goal of $10,000 wasn’t achieved, the campaign still created buzz for the game, and made us excited to play in the future!

Animation grads Jonathan Myshrall, Chad Winstone, Keaton Bitz, and Trent Trombley (who’s now an instructor!), are creating Army Antz as a part of a TKO Gamez – “an indie developer group of freelance artists from around the world.”

Animation grad and project lead Jonathan Myshrall, tells us more about the game below:

The Background of Army Antz

Hey Kickstarter’s, my name is Jonathan and I’m the designer of Army Antz and this is how it all started. A cold snowy day just lying on the couch surfing the web on my phone having a retro day of old 80′s toys.

I came across these old “Army Ants” toys made by Hasbro that I used to play with as a child back in 1987. This stuck in the back of my head for a while. I also was checking out old Sega games and saw another one of my old favorite games I played every day called “General Chaos” made in 1994. This made a spark in my head and the idea of Army Antz started to come alive.

About the Project:

Army Antz is a real-time tactics game, that will be built with the Unity 3D engine. We are going with a cartoon look for the game with toon shaded colors. Army Antz will feature lots of fun with single or multiplayer online play with many characters, each with their own class of weapons to choose from.

We want you to be able to play it on your big TV right from your iPhone or iPad with your family or friends using your Apple TV. Our current goal is creating our finished project for the iPod/iPhone/iPad/Android. Then after port it to the PC/Mac, maybe one day on XBox, PS3 and Wii.

The Story:

Jump into the park with Army Antz dressed as World War 2 soldiers. It’s an all out war between Blue and Red Antz for supremacy over the park. Defeat the opposing antz to gain land and power for your home colony.

Game Play:

Our game will be a real-time tactics game. The main objective is to take down the other team. You will be tapping away at the screen to direct your team further into the battlefield, but don’t rush, cause if you don’t strategize, you just might not make it back. Take out the other players weakest link or group your team up and take the biggest Ant down. It’s an Onslaught War. For the best example for game play check out “General Chaos” for Sega 1994!

Tags: animationanimation industryanimation kelownaanimation training BCgame designgame devgaming