Backburn vs Ant Laboratory
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Backburn
This offline strategy game lets you plan up to six turns ahead in wildfire scenarios. Compare different decisions, manage resources, and learn from your choices in a fictional environment. Rehearse before advancing to make every turn count.
- Plan six turns ahead
- Compare strategy branches
- Manage resources and crews
- Offline gameplay
- Thirty authored incidents
- After-action reports
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NEW IN 5.0: SEE THE NEXT TURN, UNDO A MISTAKE, TAKE A DAILY INCIDENT • Forecast: the map outlines every cell the fire will reach on your next Advance, and rings any structure that turn would lose. Change an order and the forecast redraws. It is exact for one turn because the game is deterministic. • Undo: step back any order placed since the last Advance, from a single line cell to a burnout. Undo never rerolls the fire. • Daily Incident: one new incident per date, generated on your device. An authored map with the wind turned 30 to 60 degrees and a fresh random sequence, the same for everyone that day. Your first finished attempt counts; practise as often as you like. Build a streak and share a plain-text result card. • Recruit, Standard or Veteran: Recruit slows the fire for learning, Standard is the campaign as you know it, Veteran spreads faster, spots more and makes engines work within two cells of their water target. • Service Record: nineteen commendations, from regime specialist to seven-day streaks, computed on your device. • Field Training that waits for you to act, briefings that introduce each new resource, iPad keyboard shortcuts, VoiceOver map summaries and high-contrast overlays. Make the next turn count. Backburn is an offline wildfire incident-command strategy game for iPhone and iPad, with thirty authored incidents and tools for trying, reviewing and learning from your decisions. COMMAND THE MAP Select and move resources, build line, place water or retardant, burn out from completed line and evacuate housing groups. Each Advance passes twenty minutes. Working crews tire; HOLD lets them recover. An authored weather schedule shows when winds shift, gust fronts arrive, inversions lift and spotting pressure rises. REHEARSE BEFORE ADVANCING Decision Desk resolves the next turn in two copies: your current orders, or crews held in place. Strategy Lab explores up to six turns of three fixed policies. Neither changes your incident or its random sequence. PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF Every campaign incident and the Daily Incident save their map, orders, weather, clock and random state. Resume from the menu, briefing or Daily screen. Completed incidents can be reopened to review the report. COMPARE YOUR ATTEMPTS A restart keeps one previous attempt per scenario. Compare both recorded timelines and their acres, structures lost and line completed at the same turn. LEARN FROM ACTUAL RESULTS After-action reports state recorded growth, losses, injuries and score, plus any commendation earned. Passing a scenario and extinguishing all fire are different outcomes. The Field Guide explains the real rules, including the forecast, difficulty and Daily Incident. Thirty incident maps across grassland, chaparral, conifer, peat and interface fuels, with seeded spread and spotting, resource rosters and housing groups. Play in landscape on iPhone or iPad. No account, advertising, subscription or in-app purchases; gameplay works offline and progress stays on your device. Backburn is a fictional strategy game with a surface-fire model adapted for play. It is not a real-world fire forecast, emergency tool or professional training. The in-game forecast predicts only this game's next turn. There is no live weather feed, online leaderboard or app-managed cloud synchronization.
Ant Laboratory
Simulate and study a living ant colony in a detailed virtual environment. Observe diverse species, manage their habitat, and witness their complex social behaviors and survival strategies.
- Simulate 7 ant species
- Manage habitat conditions
- Observe ant behaviors
- Study colony growth and survival
- Conduct experiments
- Export data via CSV
- Explore island environments
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Ant Laboratory is a living ant colony to watch, and a laboratory to study it in. Release one queen into a glass ant farm, watch her colony grow, then follow it out across an island of its own. Begin with one queen Choose from seven species: black garden, fire, wood, leafcutter, carpenter, harvester and turtle ants, each with its own nest, diet and habits. Turtle ants live in a network of old wood, with soldiers guarding the doors. Release the queen and watch the first workers emerge. Every ant in the farm is simulated: nurses feed larvae, diggers carve tunnels and rooms, foragers follow scent trails and undertakers clear away the dead. Follow one worker with the Ant cam, examine her, or lift her into a dish under the lens. Hunters and gatherers Meat-eating ants chase live crickets and fruit flies, call their nestmates and drag the prey home together. Leafcutters cut up the leaves you give them. Offer seeds, sugar, strawberries or blueberries, and follow the food home. With the port open, a wolf spider may wander in, and a carpenter ant can carry the zombie-ant fungus home. Close the port to keep it out. A living ant farm Habitat sets light, water and warmth. Warm one end or water one side, and nurses carry the brood to where it grows best. Mist by hand, or let the mister do it. Give the colony a winter rest. Mould grows where it is damp, springtails graze it, and undertakers carry spoilt food away. Knock on the glass and the ants startle. Keep it, or let it out When the colony fills the farm, you choose. Keep it contained, and it grows on slowly for years. Or open an access port to an island grown from a seed, and close it again when you like. Workers found outdoor nests linked by trails, among rival colonies. Your young queens found daughter colonies, and every nest's card says how it began. Zoom from the island down to one ant, or dive inside a nest. Seasons, weather and water A year passes in a little over an hour at 1×, with falling leaves, snow and frozen ponds. Night falls slowly on the island. Waves break on the coast and streams run clear over stones. Outdoors, storms, drought, fire, rivals and predators shape its life. With the port closed, the ant farm stays sealed and safe. Study the data Field notes record measured changes. Charts follow population, births and deaths, jobs, food, climate and territory. Run an experiment: the Lab tells you what to watch, then shows what happened. The family tree shows how the colony spread. The field guide draws each species at true size. Records export as CSV. They follow a simplified simulation, not real ants. The lodge The ant farm stands in a small field station, with windows onto your own island. Tap what is in it: the food jar, the books, the lamp and its light switch. The radio plays the developer's own tracks. The computer now runs ANT OS, the lodge's own system: a journal, ant facts that name their sources, and a Games folder with Ant Arcade, Aphid Ranch, Leaf Cutter and The Long Way Home, a platformer about a lost scout ant. Quiet sounds Wind, rain, insects, birds, streams and surf follow the place, season and weather, most recorded by the developer. Close to the glass, you hear the ants. The only music is the lodge radio and the little tunes in the games. At your pace Pause, or speed up to 25×. Cinematic mode films the colony, and Hide interface gives a clean view. While you are away, the colony waits where you left it. Keep several colonies, each on its own island. Works with iPhone Duo: tabletop mode Fold or unfold it mid-game and play carries on. Half open on a table, the colony fills the top half, with the controls below. Closed during play, the outer screen shows just the ant farm. No ads. No accounts. No data collected. Pay once. Play offline. Your colonies are saved on your device.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Ant Laboratory at 100% against Backburn's 0%. Ant Laboratory also leads on chart position (#78 vs unranked) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). Backburn's advantage is price ($0.99 vs $4.99). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Backburn costs $0.99 and Ant Laboratory $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Backburn ships an update every 4 days, Ant Laboratory weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Backburn | Ant Laboratory |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | — | 4.1 (7 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 0.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 7 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #78 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 118 MB | 74 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Robert Corbin | Jahoward Hutchins |
Customer experience
Backburn
Ant Laboratory
In-app purchases
Backburn
No in-app purchases
Ant Laboratory
No in-app purchases





