plz add ants
Floppy ragdoll rpg sandbox with physics-based combat · By
The Wawsp Queen as a character has grown on me, so I would welcome this particular dynamic.
I can't help but hope it's a touch more interesting than that. After all it seems the Wawsp Queen already is angry at almost anything she talks about. Something about her opinion of ants needs to set it apart from her usual insults.
Ants could be an interesting role. As Sam's Jam says, with Wawsps and Cuddlebugs existing, an ant counterpart seems fair.
A question I have is whether the ants would hunt enemies and bring them to the nest like the Wawsps do for theirs, or if they'd just be focused entirely on hurting the player and no one else, like the Cuddlebugs. I'd be surprised if it's the prior, and I'd be even more impressed if even then the ants somehow manage to stand out from the Wawsps. Perhaps by hunting larger prey, or hunting prey in a different way?
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As for world-building, I imagine if this happened the ant queen would likely just be a clone of the Wawsp Queen - in gameplay, and in writing. That's a shame because there's some potential for making a distinction between Wawsps and ants.
For gameplay, an example I can think of is that while the ants might lack the Wawsps flight they might be faster and do more damage on impact, and/or have an attack that deals damage over time; while the queen, if she must be fought, could be more of a zone-controlling character, with a weak attack for each of three general distance ranges the player could be in compared to her, contrasting with the Wawsp Queen's more aggressive barrage of missiles and charging.
For world-building, a thought I have in mind is that the Ant Queen, if we get to meet her and see a decent number of lines from her, might be more passive-aggressive with her insults, compared the Wawsp Queen's more in-your-face aggressive insults.
Benevolent bugs are an underutilized concept in storytelling. I could get behind this.
Perhaps an ant biome could be its own distinctive town, with unique NPC's. If these interpretations of ants would be neutral or benevolent, and assuming they're sapient like the Wawsp Queen is, they could be tolerant enough to give the player a chance to come in, talk. With characters like the cheat control guy and Hogan already in the program, I'll bet some unique activities and resources could be in the colony. If stores with separate money are ever implemented, the ants might have one or two that take a different sort of currency; maybe food for their larvae or globules of a particular dirt or something.
I have a vested interest in this myself. I like that we have a couple more female characters now- the Wawsps, Queen included, plus the Hydrangela- but I thirst for more. Creepy double entendre not intended. If they're their own kind of quirky, I'm curious to see what other ladies might populate Juice Galaxy - and if at least a couple of those are giant friendly ants, so be it.