AntVentor – Basic Tips

Just some of my own advice for AntVentor.

Tips to Basics

All credit goes to Mandrag0ra!

Achievements

Roly-poly

You unlock this one automatically by having the guard look at the postcard WITHOUT having a bed of sawdust or whatever to sit on.

Exploiter

This is unlocked when you straighten the spoon out. Because you’re “exploiting” that ants labors by sticking the spoon in the way.

Distractor

This one also unlocks automatically by distracting the guard and giving him a bed to sit on which you get by using the spoon. The bent spoon is found all the way to the right lodged in the wall and to unbend it you have to go to the upper room where an ant is bashing a rock and place the spoon there to be straightened.

Then you have to collect all the dust piles. There’s one right under both of the “upper apartments”. The guard will need to be distracted to obtain the pile under where he usually stands. If you’re fast enough, you can do all of these actions in one go (get ROLY-POLY achievement and complete the actions needed to proceed in the game).

Sneaky thief

The last pile is in the far right room, you have to wait til the ant closes his eyes all the way then use the spoon on the pile which gives you the thief achievement.

Delegator

Use the dog thing on the spider thing 5 times.

Coward

On the tree branches you have two paths you can take, either up or down. Both paths have crows. The bottom one has a crow in a nest. Ant man will run away when you get too close to it. Do this over and over until you get the achievement.

Clumsy

Don’t even pay attention to this one. It happens automatically by you tripping and falling repeatedly. If you somehow manage to not get this and you’re almost done with the game you could probably just walk in circles, walk around the map until you trip enough times.

DJ

Another story based achievement. You have to listen to the ipod’s different tracks until the spider starts dancing which will be the 3rd song.

Sycophant

You get this by giving grandma a glass of water.

Syco means fig, phant means “to show” so “fig revealer”. It’s Greek and it means someone who is of service to others.

Stinky

You get this by farting. The way I got this was by repeatedly trying to move the acorns in the tree but there’s several locations in the game that trigger this reaction in the ant man. You can also try moving the sleeping pills at grandma’s house later in the game. You only need to trigger this 5 times to get the achievement.

Interesting note: I wasn’t actually able to get the achievement from just the acorns. I got 4/5 and had to wait til I got grandma her water because I guess there was one more time I would have to poot in the game which is trying to pick up the sleeping pills with my scrawny ant limbs.

Bully

You get this by being a bully. I don’t know if they’re suggesting the player is being a bully or the ant is being a bully. When the ant man rolls his eyes at you enough times you get this achievement. I was able to easily cheese this by using the stone/pebble/rock on the dog’s food bowl over and over. There’s probably other ways to get it too.

Smart pants

You get this by completing the game.

Sluggish

This requires you to spend 150 minutes in the game I believe (because there’s a counter that says ?/150) which is how you can check on this achievement. It’s not hard to beat this game in less than that so if you want to cheese it just go afk while in the game or what I did was I started a new game after I had already beaten it and did some of the first puzzles until I was able to easily afk.

Do note that you won’t get the achievement if you aren’t actually in the game. Id est, you can’t get it by just sitting at the title screen, you have to actually be in control of the ant. How early into it you can actually get this counter to go, I’m not sure (as in, could you not even click off the tutorial before it’s already counting down?). I, personally just played until I left the ant hill and just stood there afk to write my review and make this guide.

General Tips

Some of the items you can collect will sparkle at you like in a HOG (Hidden Object Game). Always be on the lookout for objects hidden in the scenery because you will need to use all of the items to complete the game, pretty sure. For instance, I hadn’t noticed one of the branches could be collected at first and you actually needed it to turn it into a bow & arrow to shoot the crow to get the ipod.

Some solutions will require you as the player to interact with the environment in some way, other times the ant man is needing to interact with the environment. This can be counter intuitive at times. You might have to use your god powers as the player, like when you click on the root to distract the guard. You might have to combine items in your inventory to make a new contraption that the ant will use or the ant might have to be near something in order to perform some action like when you have to cut the rope next to the acorn.

The cursor is your friend. The cursor will change depending on the type of action you can perform in that section of the screen. For instance, it does a little walking legs animation to show that if you click there you will try to walk to that point on the map. If it has a finger pointing in a certain direction you will try to go to the next map in that direction. If the hand is pinching, you can pick up that item. Use the information given by the cursor to better understand what you are able to do.

You might hover over all the objects in a scene to check whether they are items you can collect or not. Maybe you see a flower and you want to try to pick it up, well if the cursor doesn’t change to the “pinching” motion, that might not be an item you can collect so there’s no reason to click. Do note, however, that sometimes this can be finicky and maybe it is something you need to collect but perhaps it has a small hitbox so you have to align your mouse just right in order for it to let you pick it up. I didn’t really run into that issue that often but if you are moving your mouse too quickly across the page, you could easily miss the hitbox or scroll over too fast and not notice that the cursor did actually change.

Speed Tips

Objects that can be used in the environment will glow yellow so if it doesn’t glow yellow you can’t use that item in that particular area. You could technically brute force the solutions to puzzles by just trying all the items on different areas of the map. If you know for a fact you’re going to have to use some sort of item on that particular area, you could just try all the items and that could be quicker than trying to figure out the logic for yourself. This, however, spoils the fun.

If you want to speed things up, try double clicking. If you double click while walking, the ant man will actually start running. Don’t spam the mouse though because it triggers the running animation over and over. Just double click the farthest point, wait for your character to move a bit closer then double click again. Also don’t try to hold the mouse button, this is pointless because the game only registers the clicks.

If you double click when you are switching between maps you will instantly travel there. This won’t work however if you click before the cursor switches to the pointing finger. One example of this is the vine that leads down to grandmas house. If you try double clicking too soon your character will do it’s “climbing down the vine” animation. If you wait until the cursor changes to pointing downward you will skip that animation and it will load the next map right away.

I would recommend patience in this game because it is a rather slower paced game and you’re just going to frustrate yourself if you try to make it go faster than it’s designed to go. Make it a leisurely stroll through the park rather than an achievement hunt, or “I have to get to the end of the game as fast as possible”. Experience the journey and enjoy!