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Langton's Ant

Langton's Ant

by DawnTree

Price Free
Avg Players 0
Released Aug 29, 2020
CasualChoose Your Own AdventureFree To PlayIdler
View on Steam ↗

Media

Video
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Langton's Ant is a cellular automaton simulator where simple rule-based movements generate intricate, emergent visual patterns. You adjust parameters to watch how a virtual ant's behavior creates complexity from minimal inputs, making it more of an interactive visualization tool than a traditional game—appealing to those interested in mathematics, chaos theory, and generative art.

About this game

What players are saying

▲ Recommended 1 hrs
Well worth the price: 79 MB of HD.
8 found helpful Steam ↗
▲ Recommended 2 hrs
8 found helpful Steam ↗
▼ Not recommended 0 hrs
Langton's Ant is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this software. This is a random image generator that creates a simple pixel pattern depending on parameters provided to the software application.

For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, and then repeats that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".

This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.

Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam:

Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing

It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a software application being published in the wrong place.

Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.

There are no gameplay loops in this software, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. It's a software application and as such has no merits as a video game for gamers. Because of this, I cannot recommend this non-game software as a game to gamers.
4 found helpful Steam ↗

Reviews are by Steam users, hosted on Steam.

Latest updates

Final Update

2071 days ago
This will probably be the final major update as I don't believe there is much else that can be done with Langton's ant, it is a very simple program at heart and I have already made fundamental changes to it. UPDATES: - Basically in this update, I added in a tutorial so new players can learn to use the program. - Added a codebox that generates the current code of your creation which you can share with the community (I keep my codes in a text document in the images folder for easy access). - I also added a ton of error checking. If game-breaking bugs are discovered I will do my best to resolve them, post issues in the discussions! Okay, that's it, have fun, tell your friends!

Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.

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