Empires of the Undergrowth

The game is charming, well written and rewarding to play. Until about the fifth time you spend an hour and a half on a mission with no mid mission save system, no warning of the gotcha twist they are throwing at you, and especially late game any large predator that sprints its way into your resourcing ants will lock you in an unrecoverable failure spiral, again. And again. The limited control you have over your colony is cute until it leaves the food you desperately need to replace your casualties from a no warning base invasion marching blindly into two giant lizards clipped on top of each other in a choke point. I have rarely felt my fortunes turn so rapidly or my evenings felt so wasted as another gaming session with no progress except for my blood pressure. A rare miss for Hooded Horse as a publisher.