From out of left field comes Swarm, by IndieBird. Warning: if you have any sort of phobia about insects or creepy crawlies, do not play this game! Your skin will be itching within seconds of start. Caveat Emptor.

For everyone else, Swarm is about as pure a game as one could imagine. There's really only one mechanic: move your swarm of ants around the screen by setting waypoints. Yet given that, it's fiendishly addictive, and virtually begs for a more involved sequel.

Essentially, the playing field is a sheet of gridded paper with various little drawings on it. Of primary interest are the two hives situated across from each other, one red, one blue. Yours is the red one.

From each hive issues forth a never-ending stream of ants. Your ants will march steadily toward whichever waypoint has focus; the red flag with a circle around it. You can have multiple waypoints, but only the one connected by a line to the hive will call the ants toward it. The line's arrow indicates the ants' direction.

The object of Swarm is to eradicate the enemy hive by sending over enough ants to attack it and deplete its 30 health points. Each ant that hits the hive dies in the attack. You can keep track of how many health points each hive has by looking at the top of the screen.

At various times during gameplay, new icons will appear in the playing field. The first one is a bug, which indicates a spawn rate increase. In order to capture the icon, you need to direct the swarm toward it with a waypoint. Once 20 ants have reached the icon (destroying themselves in the process), it will begin to pulse in red. After a few more seconds, it will begin to move toward the hive. Once it reaches the hive, you will gain its benefit. In this case, this means that the hive will generate ants at a faster rate.

The other two upgrades are a lightning bolt icon, which confers rapidity to both your swarm and the icons themselves as they travel to the hive; and a shield icon, which makes your ants tougher. All three upgrades can be contested by both sides, and it's not uncommon to have a back-and-forth match.

Despite its seeming simplicity, I've only once been able to "Zerg rush" the enemy hive, and that was because they were busy going for an upgrade at the time. At all other times, the placement and frequency of upgrades ensured a more drawn-out affair, which resulted in tons of ants of both sides being massacred wholesale.

Though it's possible to have multiple waypoints on-screen vying for your ants' attention, I found it much more effective to control just the one, moving it around to where I needed the swarm's focus. As mentioned, this concept deserves more in-depth consideration, with different goals, landscapes, and enemies. I still play it, but I can easily imagine something more complex eating up way too much of my time.