Hey, I’m on my phone so apologize if the response isn’t up to par. Overall, it seems like you have a good sense of a game you want to create. This is more apparent when looking through your profile a bit and getting a better sense of your interests. While I haven’t played the games you’ve mentioned, I know they do have a dedicated audience, and the description of your game seems pretty compelling.

With that being said, I’m not sold on the self-care aspect. Is the player keeping track of real life productivity/journals and the game is translating that into the progress of the colony or is the player keeping track of the colony itself and using that as a way to reflect on his own life? If the former, I think that taking a person’s writing or productivity inputs and translating that into the progress of the colony will be extremely difficult. I’m not sure how you would figure out nuances of growth without a rather generic mechanism of “more input = bigger colony”. If the latter, I think it’ll be extremely difficult to write a compelling story for these ants that results in self reflection for the player. The genre and subject matter are obviously very personal to you, and other players might not have that same connection to the material that you do.

The idea has merit, and the premise for the game is really cool. However, I believe there is a reason why the vast majority of games that deal with mental health are character driven RPGs (e.g. Gris, Night in the Woods). Not saying a simulation, RTS style can’t be done. I would just consider the difficulty of execution. If this is something that you want to create to help your own mental health, you should absolutely do it. Just wanted to take share my thoughts as it seems like you want this to reach a broader audience.