Show HN: Symbiants – digital ant farm / mental health companion

Re:Show HN: Symbiants – digital ant farm / mental health com... by SeanAnderson on Thursday November 02, 2023 @01:54PM (#38117482)

Yeah, that's totally fair and has been brought up to me before. I agree, but I also think it's important for users to feel like they have stake in the game. Do you have suggestions for how to better walk that line?

Also, on a technical level, this is an idle sim which runs client-side. I don't have the ability to simulate an arbitrary amount of in-game time in a fixed amount of real-life time. So, while the intent is to have the ants get hungry, the simulation pauses after 24 hours of away time. So, in practice, the ants stop growing rather than starve unless you check on them repeatedly and also don't take the time to feed them.

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Re:Show HN: Symbiants – digital ant farm / mental health com... by Obscurity4340 on Thursday November 02, 2023 @05:06PM (#38120143)

Imma go ahead and agree altho maybe people wouldn't mind if there was a post-dated way to make sure there's a food reserve that they "know" how to tap into but that is maybe not preferential for their predominant nutritional/existential needs and appetites.

This way, people have an incentive to "tend to their garden", even if/while depressed, but there's not the worse case scenario where their lack of tending to it results in the mass death of all their new friends

Edit: win/win/win/win (you+player+digital ants+society

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