Terrarium Tycoon

The game

A cutaway glass jar on the bench, packed with layered sand, and a colony of twelve ants that does all the heavy lifting. You point at the sand and the crew marches over and chips a tunnel out, cell by cell; foragers queue up to the roof hatch and haul grain down to the granary, the queen lays brood in whatever nursery is open, and the two brass dials on the right — humidity and provisions — start drifting the moment you stop watching them. Clear enough sand, keep both needles in their green bands and seal the jar for a bigger one: each new jar multiplies what the colony brings in, up to Jar V.

How to play

• Click (or tap) the sand inside the jar to order a tunnel dug — the nearest workers walk over and chip that cell and the ones behind it into open tunnel.
• Keys 1 MIST, 2 FEED, 3 VENT, 4 SEAL on desktop; on phones the same four are the buttons under the jar.
• MIST adds humidity (9 s recharge), VENT dries the jar out, FEED spends 14 grain from the hopper to top up provisions at jar I (it costs more in bigger jars).
• Keep HUMIDITY in 45-75 and PROVISIONS in 40-85. Every dial out of band drains colony vigour; at zero vigour the jar goes quiet and the colony is lost. Both in band and vigour climbs back.
• Dig into the damp clay bands to lift humidity on its own, and uncover chambers — some dug cells become new nurseries or granaries, which raise the colony cap.
• The ants work without you: hauls and buried seeds add to GRAIN, and the queen lays an egg every few seconds while both dials sit in band.
• When GRAIN reaches the target for the current jar (60 for jar I), press 4 / SEALED: the sand is replaced, the colony keeps its ants and yield rises ×1.55 per jar.
• Goal: reach JAR V, the Metropolis. There is no point score — the panel tracks colony size, grain hauled, sand cleared, active dig orders and grain per second.
• P or ESC pauses, M mutes; R or Enter seeds a new colony after a run ends.