LOCUST

You are the swarm, not the insect.

Tens of thousands of locusts fly as one cloud over two kilometres of sun-baked farmland, and you steer it. Travel high and you are fast, safe and blind to detail. Drop below feeding altitude and the wheat goes down under you — a bare swath opening in the crop and staying open, still there when you come back around.

Everything you eat becomes more locusts. A bigger cloud strips a wider swath, which feeds faster, which grows the cloud again. But a swarm is always burning itself: stop eating and it thins, and below twenty-two thousand it comes apart and disperses. Standing still is dying. That is what keeps you moving.

Two rival swarms — Black Wind and Ochre Host — are working the same farm, and a field they take is gone. The sun drops from late afternoon to dusk over four minutes, and when it goes down, whatever tonnage you have is what you have. Highest on the farm wins.

Controls

Control	Keyboard	Gamepad	What it does
Move	W A S D	left stick	up/down throttles, left/right rolls the cloud into a turn
Climb	Space	south button	haul out of the crop, back up to travel altitude
Dive	Ctrl	east button	drop into the field and start feeding

Everything goes through the input map, so a controller or a touchscreen works the same way. Hold dive rather than tapping it — feeding lasts as long as you stay low.

The swarm turns by banking, and it builds and sheds speed rather than being pointed. A hard turn scrubs energy, so the fastest line across the farm is the straight one. Climbing costs speed; diving hands it back.

Reading the screen

• Top left — how many locusts you have, and how close you are to dispersing.
• Top middle — time to sundown, and the sun sliding down the bar with it.
• Top right — the harvest board: you and both rivals, live.
• Bottom left — altitude, with the band where feeding starts. FEEDING in green means the crop is going down under you right now.
• Bottom middle — tonnes taken.

Worth seeing

• Dive from travel height straight into a full field and watch the swath open behind you.
• Come back around later — the ground you stripped is still bare.
• Let the cloud grow past seventy thousand and see how much wider it cuts.
• Crop dusters work the farm, and they patrol the richest ground.
• Stay out too long: the swarm thins, the warning comes up, and you have to find crop before it comes apart.
• Watch the light. The round starts in a warm late afternoon and ends at dusk, with the sun on the horizon and the clock red.

Every player who joins is their own swarm, so the race can be run against people as well as against the two rivals already on the farm.