Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense Review

Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense takes the ever-popular iOS line drawing mechanic and intelligently marries it with simple realtime strategy. Players have three main types of ants at their disposal – workers, melee warriors, and ranged. After selecting an ant type, players simply draw a line from their anthill onto the field and ants begin to stream out along the player-defined path. With this simple setup, players can easily do things like direct workers to gather resources, instruct warriors to protect the worker line, and place a "backup force" of ranged attackers. Slick!

Anthill has a straightforward campaign mode to work through, and a survival mode has been added post-release to aid replay value.


Tactical Trail Defense remains fun from beginning to end. But for anyone familiar with strategy games, that end will come too quickly. I'm a bit of a strategy game aficionado, and I was able to clear almost all of Anthill's stages with three stars on my first attempt. The game is clearly balanced for a more casual audience, limiting my personal fun factor.

I appreciated how much developer Image & Form did with such a simple formula, though. The campaign features enough mission variety to fully explore the line drawing insect war premise.


Tactical Trail Defense looks and plays great. The entire experience is a little too simplistic to recommend unequivocally, however. Gamers new to the strategy genre will enjoy the experience immensely, as will genre veterans looking for a new twist on old ideas. I would love to see an expert mode that truly puts my line drawing defense skills to the test. Regardless, it's great to see developers finding new and clever ways to remix and combine popular App Store conventions.

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