Deck Pets: Ant Farm

Deck Pets: Ant Farm

Ant Farm turns your Stream Deck into a formicarium, a slab of soil between glass seen from the side, with the outworld along the top where the foragers work. You do not keep one ant; you keep a colony.

You plan the nest. Pick a queen and she digs her own first chamber. After that, press any key of soil and choose the room to dig there: brood, a food store, a midden, or your species' own store. The workers tunnel to that key and hollow the room out, a chamber filling the whole key, with what is in it drawn inside: brood in piles, the queen among her eggs, stores heaped up. Up to four rooms can be planned at once; press a planned key twice to cancel it. Status says when the colony wants a room, and a bigger colony has a use for more. Or set Rooms to on their own and the workers dig as they grow.

The queen lays eggs; eggs become larvae, larvae become pupae and pupae become workers, a few days each. Six species to found, unlocked level by level:

Black garden ants, the hardy starter

Carpenter ants, big workers and majors

Harvester ants, which raise their larvae on seeds and keep a granary

Honeypot ants, whose repletes hang in a honey room

Leafcutter ants, which grow a fungus garden on the leaves you give them

Weaver ants, which nest in outworld plants instead of digging, so they need plants

Sugar fills the dish the workers run on. Food puts out what the larvae grow on: an insect for most, seeds for harvesters, leaves for leafcutters. Water damps the nest up to the range your species likes and never past it. A full midden, a wet nest or food left to rot slowly grows mould, which kills brood. Clean empties the midden and the mould it fed goes with it; the anti-mould spray is in the shop from level one, and the Mould setting can switch mould off.

The workers dig at the pace of real ants, or up to ten times faster with the Digging setting. At 100 workers (a medium formicarium or bigger) the colony raises winged queens for a nuptial flight. Keep one to found a colony in an empty formicarium, or in a second formicarium from level 4; or sell her.

Honeydew buys queens, bigger formicaria with room for more chambers, a feeding dish, a water tower, a vented lid, a heat mat, plants, moss, sugars, backdrops and fills: sand, garden soil, red clay or blue gel, which never needs watering. Every queen is Common, Uncommon, Rare or Legendary, and a Rare queen's flight can hold a named one-off, one per species, never sold.

In Simulation the queen can die: a colony left without sugar starves her, and days of a dry nest wear her down. In Casual she is safe, though workers and brood can still dwindle. Illness is off unless you turn it on. Time slows down while Stream Deck is closed, so a weekend away won't cost you the colony.

Everything happens on the deck: the shop, the colony, the flights, the settings, even typing a name. Press a chamber to see what is in it. Press Status and the whole formicarium is laid out a fact to a key. On a Stream Deck + the dials feed, water, clean and look along the chambers. There are layouts for the Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo and Mobile, and the formicarium can stretch across several decks.

Deck Pets: Ant Farm 1.0.12

First release. Ant Farm puts a formicarium on your Stream Deck. Pick a queen, then press a key of soil and choose the room her workers dig there: brood, a food store, a midden or a species' own store, each a chamber filling its key. Or set Rooms to on their own. Six species: black garden, carpenter, harvester, honeypot, leafcutter and weaver ants.

Fill the sugar dish, feed the larvae, keep the nest damp but never wet, and empty the midden before it grows mould. At 100 workers the colony sends out winged queens: keep one to found a second colony. Honeydew buys bigger formicaria, kit, fills and backdrops, and every queen has a rarity, up to six named one-offs.

Play it as a simulation, where the queen can die, or in Casual, where she is safe. Digging runs at real speed or up to 10x. Layouts for every Stream Deck, dials on the +, and a formicarium that can span decks. It never goes online.

Back up save keeps dated copies; Reset save backs up first.

Adds support for the Corsair Galleon 100 SD: the habitat, shop, settings, status and every other page are now laid out for its 12 keys, and both dials work on both layers.