Antline : Rewind

Inspiration

Ants are legendary for collective cooperation, but what happens when an ant is completely on its own? We wanted to explore a fresh mechanic: temporal cooperation—where a solitary forager uses time-rewind not just to fix mistakes, but to create a live ghost echo of its past footsteps, transforming single-player foraging into a collaborative time puzzle.

What it does

Antline: Rewind is a 3D mobile web game prototype built with Three.js and deterministic simulation:

• Spatial Temporal Puzzles: Spring-loaded tins and gas burner valves require simultaneous multi-point actions. Players step on a lever to record pressure, rewind time, and let their past echo hold the mechanism open while they harvest rations.
• Dual Economy & Colony Crafting: Gather loose crumbs across the kitchen counter and crack sealed tins for high-tier rations. Return to the colony nest to craft Carapace Shields, Speed Runners, Echo Time Anchors, and Timeline Reserve upgrades.
• Dynamic Kitchen Hazards: Dodge telegraphed rolling pin sweeps, falling boiling drops, sizzling gas burners, and an aggressive wolf spider predator that chases your echo.
• Endless Pantry Mode: Replayable progressive waves with randomized burner placements, regenerating tap water hazards, and escalating difficulty.

How we built it

• Engine: Pure Three.js with custom procedural geometries, shaders (thin-film oil interference, caustic water refractions), and static batching for mobile 60 FPS performance.
• Simulation: Deterministic 30 Hz simulation loop with 8-second fixed-step snapshot history, reversible state trees, and recorded path echo reproduction.
• Audio & Haptics: Rich soundscape featuring synthesized and AI-generated SFX (burner ignition, valve clicks, steam venting, sizzling iron, crunching crumbs), ambient theme music, and mobile haptic feedback.
• Architecture: 100% self-contained single-page bundle without any external CDN dependencies, fully playable offline in any modern mobile browser.

Challenges we ran into

• Ensuring the rewind timeline accurately restored all dynamic elements (loose pickups, hazard timers, spider pursuit trajectories) without creating exploit loops or duplicate resources.
• Achieving stable, jitter-free camera follow on mobile touch thumbsticks across rapid directional changes.
• Keeping the entire offline distribution (including 3D models, textures, sound effects, and music) under 5 MB.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Fluid 60 FPS performance with zero frame drops on mobile devices.
• Seamless, intuitive two-body time mechanics that feel satisfying on both touch screens and desktop keyboards.
• Complete visual polish: realistic kitchen lighting, caustics, smooth rigged ant walkcycles, and minimal HUD.

What we learned

Building time-reversal mechanics requires treating time as a first-class spatial dimension in physics and game state design.

What's next for Antline: Rewind

Expanding the prototype with modular kitchen countertop biomes (the Pantry, the Stove, the Sinks), cooperative multiplayer pheromone trails, and deeper colony tech trees on early-access Meta Horizon creation tools.

Built With

• antigravity
• chatgpt
• codex