Another simulator by
Maxis. This was perhaps my second favorite (after the classic,
SimCity). The basic idea was to start a colony of
black ants in a SimBackyard, and eventually take it over, driving both the enemy
red ants and the
sims away.
The world consisted of a large backyard and a randomly generated house, divided into plots. When you were in "ant" mode, you could direct the ant's movements by becoming the yellow ant (which was actually white on my Macintosh Classic), then directing that ant around to find food and enemies. Once you found your target, you would call your comrades (in increments, like "call 5 ants" or "call 50 soldiers", if I remember correctly). Once you had established a colony (you could become the queen to step up egg production, become a worker to lead foraging expeditions, or lead a war party with a soldier), you would create mating pairs (a group of young queens & drones with wings), who could populate neighboring plots.
War was very interesting; you would send a queen into a lightly populated enemy territory at first, building up the colony, then attacking with soldiers. If successful, you could carry off the enemy's larvae for food. If unsuccessful, you would attempt to build up another plot and try again.
Control of the colony was done by adjusting behavior (between nesting (creating more baby ants), foraging, and soldiering) and egg production (between workers, soldiers, and queens & drones).
The best part of this game was the fact that it taught me a lot about ant behavior. You had to wait a while before crushing the red ants, because mature ant colonies produce stronger ants than young colonies; that a good colony behaves like a single organism rather than individuals. When left on its own, the simulator would expand your holdings in the yard based on normal ant behavior.
As is obvious, I was a bit obsessed with this game for a chunk of my childhood. I still bend down to look at colonies and remember stuff I learned from the manual to this game. Excellent toy.