Picnic War
A game for one giant hand. Two ant colonies fight over your lunch, and you decide who eats.
Screenshots
Screenshots supplied by the seller.
Description
Picnic War is a live ant war on a red gingham blanket. Two colonies, the Reds and the Blacks, send out scouts, find the food, lay scent trails and bring crumbs home to raise more ants. When their trails cross, they fight. Nobody tells them to. It all comes out of simple rules for each ant.
You pick a side and play the giant hand above the blanket. Scatter crumbs to feed your favourites, lay a fork across a supply line, spray the enemy pantry or drop a whole sandwich and watch both armies turn. A tug-of-war bar shows who's ahead, and a war correspondent files dispatches from the front.
Turn on Show scent to see the real trails forming and collapsing, and speed things up to twelve times. A typical lunch ends in about two and a half minutes at normal speed, when one colony is gone. Every lunch plays out differently.
Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with a canvas, no server and no running costs. The simulation is fast enough for hundreds of ants on a phone-sized screen, and it's a ready-made base for a bigger strategy game or a classroom demo of how ants find food.
Condition
Development stage: Working prototype (seller-declared)
Seller-declared: provided by the seller, not independently verified by SellMyVibe.
- Solo creator
- Mainly AI-generated
- Under one month in development
- Mobile-friendly
- Tests included
- Setup guide included
- Demo available
What works
- Two ant colonies that forage, lay scent, fight, age and breed
- Raids on enemy pantries
- Pick a side, with a win and loss tally for the session
- Crumbs, fork, bug spray and tidy-up tools, by mouse or touch
- Drop a sandwich anywhere at random
- Scent view that shows the live trails
- Speeds of 1x, 4x and 12x, plus pause
- Live score, tug-of-war bar and clock
- War dispatches from the front
- 14 tests covering movement, fights, raids, spray, trails and that every crumb is accounted for
What’s unfinished
- No levels, campaign or high scores
- Your tally resets when the page closes
- No sound
- Touch painting hasn't been tried on a real phone
Included assets
Full source code
Test suite
Documentation
Technologies
HTML, CSS, JavaScript (ES modules), Canvas, Node test runner
Setup requirements
Upload the files to any static web host. To try it locally, run python3 -m http.server and open http://localhost:8000. Run the tests with npm test (Node 20 or newer).
Dependencies and ongoing costs
None. It's a static site that runs free on any web host and uses system fonts.
Known limitations
The player influences the war rather than commanding ants directly. Balance was checked by running six simulated wars, which split evenly, not by people playing it.
Listings are reviewed for completeness and clarity before publication. Approval is not a guarantee of quality, ownership, security or commercial success. Read the details and ask questions before buying.