Android · Game · Closed playtest, applications open
A game about looking after small worlds in a kid's bedroom.
Keep an ant farm, a fish tank, a terrarium and a reptile vivarium on one desk. Every animal has real needs, and the ants run their own colony.
From Dust is a game about looking after small worlds in a kid's bedroom. You keep an ant farm, a fish tank, a pill-bug terrarium and a reptile vivarium on the desk, and you walk around the room in 3D to visit each one.
In the ant farm, a little colony lives in the tank and runs itself: the ants dig, forage and raise the brood. Your job is to look after them. Each ant has a small brain based on real ant behaviour, and you can tap any ant, take control to steer it yourself, then hand it back.
The other tanks teach their own lessons. The fish tank is a water-chemistry game, and every reptile comes with a care card of real husbandry facts. Milestones in any tank earn stars that unlock new fish, reptiles, ant species and vivariums.
Vivarium is now called From Dust. The game is in development and isn't released yet. Applications are open for a closed playtest on Google Play.
We're taking applicants for a closed playtest of From Dust on Google Play, for Android phones only. Google adds testers by email address, so I need the email of the Google account that is signed in to the Play Store on your phone.
Use the button below and write the email address of the Google account on your Android phone. A Gmail address works. I can't add you without it.
I add your address to the tester list and reply to confirm. You may also get an email from Google saying you've been selected.
Once you're selected, open the From Dust page on Google Play on your phone, signed in with the Google account you gave me, and install it.
Keep the game installed and stay opted in for at least 14 days in a row, and open it now and then.
Send feedback: what confused you, what broke, which tank you loved.
Why 14 days? Google requires a closed test with at least 12 testers who stay opted in for 14 days in a row before a new developer's game can be released on Google Play. Applying doesn't count for anything by itself. Only testers who are still opted in for the whole 14 days count, and if too many leave early the 14 days can start over. I only use your address to add you to the tester list.
Screenshots
Highlights
Each ant gets hungry, grows old, picks up a job, rests and reacts to danger, based on real ant behaviour.
An ant farm, a fish tank, a pill-bug terrarium and a reptile vivarium, each with its own save.
Milestones in any tank earn stars that unlock fish, reptiles, ant species and bigger vivariums.
Classic loam, sand dune, clay and rock, and a deep garden, each digging and drying out differently.
Black garden, harvester, carpenter, fire and leafcutter ants, each with its own strengths and appetite.
The menu is a first-person room. Look around, tap a tank and you walk over to it.
Spiders, rain that floods tunnels, day and night, and a kid who taps on the glass.
Every tank autosaves, with a gentle, capped catch-up for the time you were away.
Each reptile has a care card of real husbandry facts, and the fish tank teaches the nitrogen cycle.
How to play
Pick Feed, then tap the surface or a tunnel to drop seeds. Your supply refills slowly.
Mist the tank now and then, because a dry tank makes the colony grumpy. Tap a dead ant to pick it out, because a messy tank makes the colony miserable.
Heat adds a warm mat that keeps the brood cosy at night.
Colony sets what the workers do, split between foraging, digging and nursing.
Tap any ant to look at it. Control lets you steer that ant yourself, and Release hands it back.
In detail
Ants get hungry and eat at the nest, or beg a mouthful from a fed neighbour. They age, and now and then one falls ill and walks out of the nest to die alone, unless a treat cures it. Young ants nurse and old ants forage, and each ant's personal response thresholds shrink with practice, so ants drift into specialties.
A coloured dot over an ant shows how it feels: red is scared, green is unwell, yellow is hungry, blue is resting.
Queens lay eggs that pass through larva and pupa stages. Nurses feed larvae, foragers haul seeds home and diggers expand the nest. Soldiers eat twice as much, and without nurses the brood starves.
A few undertakers carry corpses to a midden away from the entrance, nurses carry brood out of floodwater, and the nest stays warm while the surface follows day and night.
Fish make waste. Waste becomes toxic ammonia, and friendly bacteria in the filter turn it into nitrite and then into harmless nitrate. Six water-test tiles show temperature, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, oxygen and pH, green when it's good, yellow when to watch and red when it needs help now.
The bar along the bottom offers Feed, Net, Siphon, Care and Shop, and you spend coins in the shop, where stars unlock new species.
Start with a leopard gecko, then unlock a crested gecko at 2 stars, a bearded dragon at 4 and a ball python at 6. Each needs a different habitat, so you read its care card first: warm and cool temperatures, humidity, what to feed it and how to handle it.
Feed, Mist, Water, Clean, Gear and Pet keep it healthy, and time is compressed, so a game day lasts a few minutes. The terrarium next door is for pill bugs: keep it damp, leaf-littered and mould-free.
Found a colony with the forgiving black garden ant, then unlock harvester ants at 2 stars (big seed loads, slow digging), carpenter ants at 4 (strong tunnellers, smaller colonies), fire ants at 6 (fast, fierce, hungry) and leafcutter ants at 8, which farm a fungus garden if you keep the soil damp.
You can build more vivariums, migrate a colony to an empty one, merge colonies, and host a peaceful or territorial neighbour colony.
Pet mode is the default. A Rival colony switch in Settings turns on war mode: red ants, raids, and a win or lose ending. The Settings also have a Glass glare switch and a way to erase all saved tanks.
The main menu is a real first-person 3D room built from simple shapes and procedural textures, lit by a sun and a ceiling lamp that follow the real clock.
Questions
Not publicly yet, but we're taking applicants for a closed playtest. Email me the Google account you use on your Android phone and, once I've added you, you'll get a link to install it from Google Play.
Google requires a closed test with at least 12 testers opted in for 14 days in a row before From Dust can be released on Google Play. Being on the list isn't enough: only testers who stay opted in for the whole time count, and if too many leave, the 14 days can restart.
It's built in Unity, with touch controls made for phones. Playtests run through Google Play, so you need an Android phone.
No. Pet mode is the default, where you look after a colony. War mode is an optional switch in Settings that adds a rival red colony.
Yes. Every tank autosaves to your device every 20 seconds and when you leave it, with a gentle capped catch-up for time away. Settings can erase all saved tanks.
It's built on real research. The ants follow real ant behaviour in simplified form, each reptile has a care card of real husbandry facts, and the fish tank models the nitrogen cycle.
More are planned. The bedroom knows nothing about the animals in it, so new kinds of tank can be added without changing the room.
From Dust is in development, and we're taking applicants for a closed playtest. Apply to play it early, or have a look at the projects you can use today.