Ant Trail – Draw the Path for the Ants

How to play Ant Trail

Winter is coming and your ant colony needs to fill its stores. Ants are brilliant workers, but they only go where the scent tells them to. In Ant Trail you draw the path for the ants: a pheromone trail from the anthill to the food. The colony follows it out, picks up a piece of leaf and carries it all the way home. Your job is to plan trails that are short enough to be quick and safe enough that no ant gets eaten on the way.

1. Press on the anthill and draw a trail to a pile of leaves. The trail snaps on when it reaches the food.
2. Steer around grey rocks and blue puddles: trails cannot cross them.
3. Keep away from spiders. Their red circle shows how far they can reach.
4. Press Go! The ants start marching and the winter clock starts ticking.
5. Watch the rain clouds and redraw a trail if a storm is about to wash it away.
6. Store the target amount of food (🍂) before winter (❄️) to complete the level.

Tips for a well-fed colony

• Short trails win. Every ant walks the trail twice, there and back, so trimming a metre off the trail saves time on every single trip.
• Give spiders a wide berth. A trail that only just misses a spider’s circle is risky; ants wobble slightly as they walk.
• Time the patrols. A patrolling spider moves along a fixed line. Cross its beat near the end of its patrol, or route around it completely.
• Plan for the rain. The dashed circles show exactly where puddles will form. Draw your first trail around them and you will never need to redraw.
• Split the work. When there are several food piles, a trail to each one keeps the ants busy and the food flowing. The colony shares out the workers between trails.
• Watch your scent bar. On some levels there is only just enough scent for the direct route. Use straight lines where you can.

Fourteen levels from spring to winter

The first levels teach the basics: one trail, one food pile and no danger. Soon rocks block the direct path, spiders guard the shortcuts and patrolling spiders sweep across the field. Rainstorms arrive mid-level and wash away careless trails, and later fields combine everything with several food piles and very little scent to spare. One level even dares you to march straight through two patrols and accept a few losses. Every level has a tested solution, so there is always a way to get the food home in time.

How real ants find food

Real ants really do this. When a forager finds food, it walks home laying a chemical trail called a pheromone. Other ants smell the trail and follow it, and each one that comes back with food adds more scent, so good routes get stronger. Short routes are refreshed more often, which is how a colony gradually settles on the quickest path without any ant knowing the whole map. Scientists have even borrowed the idea for computer algorithms that find short routes through networks. In Ant Trail you get to be the scout that lays the first trail.

Reading the field

The bar at the top shows how much trail scent you have left, and the counter shows food stored, seconds until winter and ants still available. Each pile of leaves shows how much food it holds. Plan your trails before you press Go, because the clock only starts then, but remember that you can still draw new trails while the ants are marching. A new trail to the same food pile replaces the old one, so you can fix a mistake without wasting scent.

More path drawing games

Enjoy planning paths? Try routing a delivery van in Delivery Route, trace your way out of endless mazes in Draw Through the Maze, or bring a whole car park home inParking Path.