Today marks World Earth Day, an occassion where we mark the importance of our planet and the factors that are impacting it. But with human-made issues such as climate change, pollution, overpopulation, lack of sustainability, and conflicts, it's a stark reminder not to take our planet for granted.

That's why we're taking part in Earth Appreciation Fest 2024, which contains both post-apocalyptic games that remind us of what we stand to lose, and nature-based games to help celebrate the incredible bio-diversity of the planet we call home.

You can check out the full range of games taking part in Earth Appreciation Festival here.


Psst! Don't forget Empires of the Undergrowth is also exhibiting at WASD 2024, where you'll be able to try out the latest build of the game from 25th - 27th April!

Every couple of months we like to do a vlog. This is a big one, both literally and metaphorically. It's a big roundup of all the tier 5 news that has been announced over the last few weeks, with a few new tidbits thrown in, as well as having its very own big creature reveal. I was holding one back especially for vlog 10 - and I'm glad I did!

[previewyoutube=SuLCpe0RKcY;full][/previewyoutube]

The thumbnail might be my finest work.

The vlog's main focus is Empires of the Undergrowth, but it also has a short section about the other games published (but not developed) by Slug Disco Studios - if you'd like to skip that, then the timecode is 04:00.

Empires of the Undergrowth is now 35% off until April 29th. Command a colony, build, and battle in the bustling world of ants. Every decision, from food collection to frontline combat, matters in the undergrowth empire.

[previewyoutube=WHFamaHashM;full][/previewyoutube]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

Just in case the change in the winds isn't perceptible to all yet, Ill spell it out - we're approaching a point where we'll soon be ready to announce our release date for version 1.0 of Empires of the Undergrowth. Official reveals for the setting and species you'll be encountering have begun, and so this newsletter will focus firmly on that.


What wonders await in the savannah?

The reveals began at the start of the month and since then we've been doing regular posts on our social media (X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Discord), usually on a Saturday. A few other content creators are also getting involved in the fun this time around! Let's go through everything that has been revealed so far and give it some in-depth discussion.

The Matabele Ants

The final ants that the player will control in the campaign is the Matabele ant, a large and fierce termite-eating species Megaponera analis. They live in sub-Saharan Africa. We did a 'Creature Feature'-style short video about it, which also begins to show off some of the environment they live in - the grassland savannah.

[previewyoutube=HxC-m0B-E_I;full][/previewyoutube]

These ants habitually pillage nearby termite nests - indeed, they are entirely dependent on them (in-game other creatures will be consumable to them, but yield very meagre pickings compared to termites). As obligate termite eaters, they inhabit spaces where they can conduct dusk and dawn raids on nearby mounds.

One of their most interesting qualities is that they are an extremely rare example of helping behaviour in insects. For almost all other eusocial insects, colony members that are wounded in a conflict are left to die. However, Matabele ants that are not mortally injured release a distress pheromone, which attracts their sisters. They're collected and brought back to the nest, where they are nursed back to health.


A Medic ant - someone call an antbulance!

Although the healed ants aren't as strong or fast as their unscathed broodmates, in this way the Matabeles can significantly reduce their foraging losses and have many more productive ants in the colony. In Empires of the Undergrowth, this whole process is represented by a special Medic class of ant that will take injured Matabeles home, where they will be revived in short order to live a second life with some reduced stats. In this way, the Medic class allows you to increase your population beyond its tile limit. It's the Medic class that you'll be able to unlock for your formicarium.

Termites

Absolutely central to tier 5 is Macrotermes bellicosus, an African termite. Termites evolved from a cockroach-like ancestor, as opposed to ants who evolved from a wasp or wasp-like ancestor. The Latin 'bellicosus' means combative, or war-like. It's a slightly misleading name in some respects - although they do not usually seek conflict with their neighbours, they are well-prepared for it and have evolved multiple defensive castes involving major and minor soldiers. They build iconic cathedral-like mounds out of clay and saliva, which are cunningly crafted to provide an ideal internal temperature for their brood in spite of the baking daytime savannah temperatures.


Mulch gang for life

They take refuge in their mounds during the warmest parts of the day, and conduct most of their foraging activities when the temperature is more forgiving. They collect mulchy lignocellulose (drying plant material) from the surface, which they process into edible fungus through a partial digestion process. In-game, this gives them a similar yet slightly more complex food production pipeline to tier 3's leafcutter ants.

Termite reproductives mate for life - the queen becomes huge and immobile as she grows, and unlike ants that only mate once during a nuptial flight, a termite king lives alongside his queen for their entire lives. In the 5.x levels this rare example of insect monogamy will be represented by the termite king acting as the queen's fierce protector in her laying chamber.


Some of the only real lovebugs in nature

The Matabele-wielding player will need to conduct raids on termites at opportune times, whilst striking a balance - how many termites should they take, without over-harvesting their most important resource? A dead termite colony cannot produce useful food in the future, after all.

African Stink Ant

One of the two auxiliary ant species that the player will encounter in tier 5 is the African stink ant, Paltothyreus tarsatus. These relatives of the Matabele are not as dependent as they are on the nearby termite hills but termites still represent an important part of their diet.

[previewyoutube=-Zky-Am9bH8;full][/previewyoutube]

Living in a network of shallow tunnels near the surface, stink ants usually hunt or scavenge alone. However, when the odds are against them they will attract more of their nestmates over a significant distance with their powerful pheromones. It's these potent pheromones that give the ants their name - they smell strongly sulphurous to human noses.

Sun Spider

Just in case anyone was worried about us forgetting about one of the best things from the last tier (titan-class enemies), we've got you covered. One of the titans you'll encounter in tier 5 is the sun spider (Zeria keyserlingi). We gave one of our favourite YouTube content creators Frazzz a bit of a preview of the sun spider in a special Battle Arena build - the video gives a great representation of their look, animations and abilities. Check it out!

[previewyoutube=Sea4ODMe_Sg;full][sun spider video by Frazzz][/previewyoutube]

Solfugae (sun spiders), otherwise known as camel spiders, achieved an almost cryptid-like status on the internet in the 2000s due to many unfounded myths about them. The idea that they could kill a dog, or are as dangerous as cobras, or perform facehugger-like jumping attacks at camels are all entirely unfounded but fun to read about.


Death awaits you all, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!

They are in fact venomless, and the most harm they could ever do you is give you a relatively medically insignificant bite. Perhaps it's their unsettling appearance that makes them so memorable - they're arachnids, but not true spiders and nothing else looks quite like them. They're also capable of running very fast for invertebrates, and have a habit of scuttling towards people's shadows in an attempt to get out of the direct sunlight.

Of course, if you're the size of an ant, they represent a much bigger existential risk. Keep an eye out for them in the savannah!

Common Earwig

Everyone who's ever dug around in the dirt as a kid (or indeed as a grown-up enthusiast) will be familiar with earwigs. This species is Forficula auricularia, an originally European / Asian native that has spread to almost everywhere that humans inhabit, including the parts Africa where the 5.x levels take place. A common nocturnal and subterranean enemy, it can use the pincer on the tip of its tail as an additional attack vector when it encounters prey or predators.



This enemy comes in a male and female variation, indicated by the shape of the tail pincer.

African Tiger Beetle

Would it even really be a proper Empires of the Undergrowth update without a new tiger beetle? Tier 3 excluded, obviously. This is Dromicoida elegantia, and like all tiger beetles it is a fierce predator with excellent vision, fast motion, and powerful slicing jaws. It will feature as one of the regular enemies roaming the savannah.



The Savannah

The tier 5 levels take place in the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa. African savannahs are grasslands with open-canopy tree populations. Daytime temperatures can be brutal, and most species must take refuge in the shade in the hottest parts of the day. For termites this means retreating to their naturally air-conditioned mounds. It is a place of clay-rich soil and impressive biodiversity. Savannahs are far from deserts - standing water is often found there, and flowing water is available seasonally with most rainfall confined to a wet season.


An overview of one of the 5.x levels, WIP

At some point in the coming weeks Ill do an environmental showcase for the savannah levels, as we get closer to the artwork being completed for them.

That's everything that's revealed so far about tier 5 - but there's a lot more to come. The round-ups in newsletters and vlogs will continue, but our social media (X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Discord) is the best place to get news quick.

ANTCON 2024

Unless something happens in the meantime theres a very strong possibility that myself and one other Slug Disco team member will be going to ANTCON 2024 in Carmarthen, Wales in May. That team member is unlikely to be one of the EotU devs - its an understandably very busy time for them! Tickets for the event are sold out, but if you managed to snag one then we look forward to seeing you on the Saturday. Last years event was great fun - check out the travelog we recorded.

Screenshot Central

As always, if youd like to submit a screenshot to this part of the newsletter the easiest place to do that is on the appropriate channel of our Discord. Hit F9 (by default) to enter photo mode, and hold shift whilst you do that to uncouple the camera from the ground plain, allowing for some creative angles.


Army ants climb a bullfrog from WarriorAntGaming


Foam washes over the beach from Zvistic


Two different tiger beetles clash from Akilay Williams

Ant-icipation Rises

A final note from me as I close up this newsletter and get back to the ultra-busy period of time the Slug Disco team is currently in - we are indeed approaching the end of the long early access journey, and the one thing that has been able to sustain us through that is you. Your patience and understanding has allowed this tiny team of three old friends to slowly craft their dream game, and that dream is nearly fully realised. Now, back to it.

Mike
Senior community manager

Hello! From now until March 21st, you can save 35% on Empires of the Undergrowth, and get great deals on all other games published by Hooded Horse during the Steam Spring Sale. Come check the game out!



[previewyoutube=UhMEkuqT5o0;full][/previewyoutube]

Empires of the Undergrowth is participating in the Digital Tabletop Fest: Roll of the Dice, hosted by Auroch Digital.



This festival celebrates tabletop-inspired games and the incredible game studios behind them. From March 7th to March 11th, you'll find demos, previews of upcoming titles, panels from developers, and game discounts, too.

If you've been anticipating playing Empires of the Undergrowth, it is currently 35% off until March 10.

Survive, build, conquer, and rule over the ant hill today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530

The final chapter of the story is not too far away, so let's talk about the final ant species you'll be playing as in Empires of the Undergrowth. The video below is a creature feature style one to reveal a little about the ants and their environment, and their eating habits.

[previewyoutube=HxC-m0B-E_I;full][/previewyoutube]

In the expansive savannah of sub-Saharan Africa, the sun scorches the earth during the day and creatures find different ways to survive. Some dig; some build spire-topped cathedrals.

Some of the diggers feed on the builders. Large, powerful, and specialised, Megaponera analis - the Matabele ant - feeds almost entirely on termites. They habitually conduct sweeping raids of nearby mounds at dawn and dusk, when the heat is more forgiving.

We'll be doing fairly regular reveals on our social media from now on (, Facebook and X / Twitter and of course our Discord server) so those are the places to follow along if you want news as fast as you can get it - but we'll be doing round-ups in newsletters and vlogs, too. The newsletter coming in a couple of weeks from this post will be packed with tier 5 stuff!

Making this game has been a wonderful, long, life-changing journey that is now nearing its end and we're glad you made it with us.

From now until March 10th, you can save 35% on Empires of the Undergrowth. Come check the game out!

[previewyoutube=WHFamaHashM;full][/previewyoutube]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

We've decided internally on a release date for Empires of the Undergrowth - it's now full steam ahead to meet it! We'll be doing some creature and setting reveals for the final tier soon. This vlog, while necessarily short, should plug the gap between calm and storm.

Note that this vlog also deals with news about 2 other games that Slug Disco publishes - if you'd rather skip that, the timecode is 3:53.

[previewyoutube=UZjGSKeculo;full][/previewyoutube]

Hi everyone!

Empires of the Undergrowth is currently on sale for 20% off. At the end of the sale, the price of the game will be raised to reflect advancements made during Early Access. We wanted to provide advance notice in case anyone would like to purchase the game at the current discounted price.

Thank you for all of your support!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

[previewyoutube=ihLRjXkTQjQ;full][/previewyoutube]

So, were in Empires of the Undergrowths release year now! Thats a terrifying and exciting concept. If you watched last months vlog, youll have seen that weve managed to narrow down the release window of the game to a slight 12 months. Well done us.


The Nian Beast encounters firecrackers in the New Year's Feast level. From Orion (Dilphy) on our Discord

Just a reminder that Novembers newsletter contains the roadmap that should cover what to expect as we approach full release of the project - so refer back to that if youd like some clarification on whats happening over the coming few months. Ill try to keep this newsletter relatively brief - in this time shortly before we start revealing stuff from the final tier, news is a little slight. However, next time should be full of exciting reveals! Theres definitely a few things worth discussing now - lets dive in.

2024 Release

So, the big news I spoke about in the previous vlog at the end of last year is that Empires of the Undergrowth will be releasing in 2024! Upon this announcement being made, the memes almost immediately began saying things along the lines of One second before 2025 confirmed!, which I must admit made us giggle.

[previewyoutube=e8joCmJMFKY;full][/previewyoutube]

I dont want to narrow down the launch window any further just yet, but I will say the aim is definitely for this to not be the case. Our internal decision on the release window is getting surer by the day, and as is always the case the rest of the team is holding me back from just blurting everything out! Believe me, Ive been biting my tongue for months.

Creature Features

In the lead-up to us revealing stuff for the final tier, weve started doing semi-regular Creature Feature videos on our YouTube channel. We hope these can introduce the critters from the game to everyone, and might even be mildly educational at the same time. Were aiming to go through the game, highlighting some of the creepier crawlies as we go. Who knows what will happen when we reach the end of the existing campaign?

[previewyoutube=PN_N-U_RKlc;full][/previewyoutube]

Daily Devlog

Now would be a great time to join our Discord, where Ive recently started a new channel called Daily Devlog. A few times a week, I will go into Empires of the Undergrowths source control (software we use to keep track of code and assets as they are being developed) and see what has been committed recently.


I get to use [REDACTED] at work without working for the government. Neat!

This is a fun way of keeping track of what were up to in these last few precious months before release, and although I wont be posting direct spoilers there (at least not until weve officially revealed something) its well worth a look if you're curious about what our small team gets up to on a day-to-day basis.

New Years Feast Now Active

Our annual New Years level, fittingly dubbed New Years Feast, is now active and ready for play. Click on the Chinese lantern that has appeared on the main menu to jump in - itll be here all the way until the end of February (covering the Lunar New Year too) so youve got plenty of time to get those spicy new achievements before Spring comes around.

[previewyoutube=5Kz-w3A_4k0;full][/previewyoutube]

We like to take a fanciful approach to our holiday levels, as opposed to the more reality-based settings of the documentary levels in the campaign.

The fire ant queen is making her famous New Year's Eve hotpot, but her daughters have forgotten to bring her the ingredients for the broth. Help them find the correct spices in time for the New Year celebrations, whilst making liberal use of festive firecrackers to clear enemies and shorten your path. Rescue lost invitees to diversify your colony!

Map Contest Over and Out

Thank you to everyone who has played since the Custom Game & Achievements Update went live just before the Christmas break! I thought now would be the right time to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who sent in a map suggestion - although we could only pick 2 winners, it was a joy going through the submissions and seeing all the wonderful ways in which your brains work.

[previewyoutube=Bj0msTbh1JY;full][/previewyoutube]

Custom game maps Strawclutch (designed by Noctazar) and Imprisoned (designed by ) are of course now in the game forever, as a testament to the creativity of our players. We may well do some more contests like this in the future - but likely after full release at this point. Time for us to crack on!

Heres a list of everyone who sent in a valid entry, in no particular order. I hope your imaginations are working overtime for the next one.

[table]
[tr]
[td]Meatboi Hucklebert[/td]
[td]Tom S[/td]
[td]Ungar[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Saladsquid[/td]
[td]FishingFam[/td]
[td]Deplaudablefish[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Owlenstein[/td]
[td]Bifskit[/td]
[td]VoltronexGaming[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]hmega[/td]
[td]Shaon B[/td]
[td]Alexmadness[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Eric S[/td]
[td]Adam Isak[/td]
[td]MOSASAURUS[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Samy U[/td]
[td]Marcelo287xp[/td]
[td]Solstitium[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Flisgonk[/td]
[td]Skye_Cat[/td]
[td]Doople[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Noctazar[/td]
[td]Peeps[/td]
[td]SkyWanderer[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Hell_wolf[/td]
[td]Mates[/td]
[td]That one Mutter Trucker[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]MrBag15[/td]
[td]Flisgonk[/td]
[td]Reptile42YT[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Cody B[/td]
[td]Leviathan[/td]
[td]Meep[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Zac D[/td]
[td]Jackowacko[/td]
[td]RoGaVil[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Dino nerd[/td]
[td]Heolx[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Cam H[/td]
[td]CFG_DOOM_BOOM_ENDER[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]A lava guy[/td]
[td]Sidekick9,500[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Wiz Jo[/td]
[td]Antbzk64[/td]
[td]200[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Diego O-C[/td]
[td]Pug[/td]
[td]Jeffy[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Owen H[/td]
[td]TheRealStormCZE[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Yarik[/td]
[td]NilasG24[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Nich B[/td]
[td]W.D gaster[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Antwarmaster[/td]
[td]Vincent H 2005[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Scraptainred_xi[/td]
[td]OOGA BOOGA[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Daniela O[/td]
[td]Pogonomyrmex Badius[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Someoneudontno[/td]
[td]Gloomy[/td]
[td]Tuyfhe[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Pierce L[/td]
[td]Light_Rider3000[/td]
[td]ants[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Eleanor B[/td]
[td]Dani1005[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Sebastian R[/td]
[td]Orion (Dilphy)[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Ihasahat[/td]
[td]Dule75[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Nicholas L[/td]
[td]Mr. Tank Gaming YT[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Meh[/td]
[td]DioAron[/td]
[td][/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
[h3]Honourable Mentions[/h3]

A map design built in Minecraft!

Ungar, who made a 15 minute video describing their idea: https://youtu.be/DgM5AqXvFZs
Heolx, for cheekily submitting a Heart of the Swarm map.

Buglife charity donation

Back in April of last year, we had the enormous privilege of being part of the organising team for Steams Earth Appreciation Festival and associated sale. Empires of the Undergrowth was of course featured, and we donated a portion of our revenue from the event to our favourite UK-based invertebrate conservation charity, Buglife. We were able to raise 2224, which gets doubled up via the Big Give No Insectinction Campaign to 4448.


Click the logo to visit the Buglife blog entry!

I had a quick chat with Nikki Banfield, Communication Officer for the charity, and with my answers she put together an article about our donation, what some of the money will be used for, why we chose Buglife and what weve found inspiring in our time developing Empires of the Undergrowth.

Read the article on Buglifes blog here!

With the help of our players, we hope to be able to do more charity drives in the future for conservation concerns close to our heart like this one. Thank you so much to everyone who participated, and everyone whos bought the game - please know that youve helped put us in the position where we can support a charity we love.

Thank You

Thanks for reading our first newsletter of 2024 - things are about to get very exciting! Before I see us out with Screenshot Central, Id just like to thank each and every one of you for being with us on this long journey to make our dream game, from early beginnings so long ago to now going through the process of preparing something fully realised to completion. We would not have been able to do this without the understanding and kind patience of a community who genuinely want what is best for us, and are willing to wait for quality.

Youve made Empires of the Undergrowth what it is, and made us what we will continue to be.

Screenshot Central

Always a treat getting to this point of the writing - share your screenshots on the Steam Community tab, or more easily (for me) you can join our Discord and post them up in the appropriate channel. Remember - if you hold shift while you press the photo mode button (F9 by default) you can uncouple the camera from the tile grid, allowing you to get some lovely snaps.


Attacking big-headed ants from WarriorAntGaming, who has posted whole sagas on our Discord


Fire in the swamp from Vanguard on our Discord


The Nian Beast being formidable from Orion (Dilphy) on our Discord

The recently-implemented automatic crash reporting system in Empires of the Undergrowth has highlighted some issues that have been lurking in the dark for a long time, that weve now been able to root out and patch up. This update deals with the most pressing of those.

[h3]0.320034 Notes[/h3]

• Fixed a crash when a titan-class creature is near the edge of the map
  
• Fixed some creature fringe cases causing other crashes
  
• Fixed several rarer crashes
  

• Cramped extra level will no longer trigger 3.2s achievements
  
• 'Multitasking' can now be completed if the pinecone on the island has been deleted
  
• Fixed an issues where 'Clever Little Ants' always failed even when nothing got hit
  
• New Years Feast achievements should now register
  
• 'Full House' counting issue fixed
  

• Fix for velvet worm attacking itself
  
• Closed the New Years Feast nest entrance
  
• Christmas hats removed from invisible queens on a few levels (Festive Spider, etc)
  
• Beetles Rise Up no longer stuck on impossible difficulty
  
• Creature stats resynchronised between campaign & custom games
  

Welcome to 2024! This patch fixes some issues with achievements and extra levels that have cropped up over the Christmas break - and I thought Id throw in a reminder about the New Years Feast level as well, which is now active and playable through until the end of February. Its a little early for Chinese New Year, but we figured we should be early with something for once.

[previewyoutube=5Kz-w3A_4k0;full][/previewyoutube]
[h3]"The fire ant queen is making her famous New Year's Eve hotpot, but her daughters have forgotten to bring her the ingredients for the broth. Help them find the correct spices in time for the New Year celebrations, whilst making liberal use of festive firecrackers to clear enemies and shorten your path. Rescue lost invitees to diversify your colony!"[/h3]

This patch is somewhat urgent because of the achievement issues, and we hope this resolves the last of them. For that reason, it is being rolled out in stages as we can compile them - starting with Win64, then moving onto Win32 and Mac as soon as theyre ready. This might take a day or two.

Version 0.320032 Patch Notes

[h2]Achievements[/h2]

• Cramped extra level will no longer trigger 3.2s achievements
  
• 'Multitasking' can now be completed if the pinecone on the island has been deleted
  
• Fixed an issues where 'Clever Little Ants' always failed even when nothing got hit
  
• New Years Feast achievements should now register
  
• 'Full House' counting issue fixed
  

• Fix for velvet worm attacking itself
  
• Closed the New Years Feast nest entrance
  
• Christmas hats removed from invisible queens on a few levels (Festive Spider, etc)
  
• Beetles Rise Up no longer stuck on impossible difficulty
  
• Creature stats resynchronised between campaign & custom games:
  
  • We have some time scheduled coming up to spend a few days just playing custom games & may make some custom game-specific creature changes in a future update
  
  

Hi everyone, get Empires of the Undergrowth for 20% off during the Steam Winter Sale! Command swarms of warriors at an unprecedented scale of warfare. Lead ant colonies against the many fearsome threats of the insect world:

Check out this game and Hooded Horse's other published games during the Winter Sale until January 4.

[previewyoutube=UhMEkuqT5o0;full][/previewyoutube]

Happy Holidays! From now until January 4th, you can save 20% on Empires of the Undergrowth, and get great deals on all other games published by Hooded Horse during the Steam Winter Sale.

With Empires of the Undergrowth's early access journey coming near to an end with v1.0 arriving in 2024, now is a great time to come check the game out!



[previewyoutube=ihLRjXkTQjQ;full][/previewyoutube]

New custom game / freeplay maps! Achievements! New difficulty options! More generous mission rewards! This major update for Empires of the Undergrowth brings in a whole bunch of new stuff, and also puts us in good stead for the final chapter and full release coming in 2024. Thanks so much to everyone whos been helping to test all the additions over the past few weeks.

[previewyoutube=Bj0msTbh1JY;full][/previewyoutube]

Headline Features

• New Custom Game Maps! The 2 winners of our summer map design contest have been completed & added to the game, as well as one more
  
  • Imprisoned, based on a design by - a swampy area that floods & drains, opening up easier access to other resources & colonies
    
  • Strawclutch, based on a design by Noctazar - tightly-packed nests around central resources in the swamp ensures intense skirmishes with neighbours. Comes with a map option for wider-spaced nest locations
    
  • Sand Spit - a sandy peninsula designed for a 3v1 setup, where the single colony has an uphill battle ahead of them
  
  
• Achievements! There are now over 100 achievements for all aspects of the existing story mode & seasonal levels
  
• Reworked Difficulty Settings! More resolution in lower difficulty settings with more linear gradation as they increase
  
  • Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme & Impossible are the new difficulties, with new Easy a little easier than the old, & Extreme being where old Hard was. Impossible is the new name for what used to be Insane
  
  

• Mission rewards increased significantly:
  
  • Rewards for a repeated play of a mission increased
    
  • Rewards for playing on higher difficulties increased
    
  • Consolation rewards for a defeat increased
    
  • Easy, Medium & Hard - although these difficulties are easier than before they provide the same rewards they used to
    
  • Extreme - although as difficult as Hard used to be, it will provide the same rewards that Insane did
    
  • Impossible - although as difficult as Insane used to be, it will provide more rewards than Insane did
  
  

• Pine woods tree frog now climbable
  
• Uber hermit crab is now climbable
  
• Uber red velvet ant is now climbable
  
• Uber mole cricket is now climbable
  
• Young velvet worm is no longer climbable
  
• Improvements to climbing points on hermit crabs
  
• Small harvestmen now become food on death
  
• Jumping spiders now become food on death
  
• Ladybirds now become food on death
  
• Young praying mantis can now only be harvested by 1 ant
  
• New beach creatures now spawnable in Battle Arena
  
• Level 3 leafcutter mediae & majors can now remove a phorid fly ever 2 minutes (down from 3)
  

• Leafcutter colonies in custom games now start with 19 queen tiles, meaning more workers / minims & increased fungus capacity
  
• Creature resource quantity slider added to freeplay options, allowing players to make creatures in their game drop more or less food if they like
  
• Restart button added to custom game defeat screen
  
• When spawning attack waves, freeplay director will now choose larger creatures to spawn if none can be found in the smaller creature options
  
• AI harvesting process now considers the average of total & ants alive when deciding where to harvest & not just enemy ants alive
  
• AI colonies on Towhead & Embankment will hide for a time after a flood
  
• More creatures should spawn at the start of a custom game when using singular spawning
  
• Environmental enemies ramp up faster in singular spawning (including skirmish)
  
• Adjustments to nocturnal / diurnal spawn timing in custom games
  
• Freeplay now starts with a default save name
  

• Default FPS is now set to 60
  
• Updated beach loading screen to use new assets
  
• Arcade button graphics updated
  
• Improvements to the living sea urchin decorative asset
  
• Seaweed models updated in 2.1 & 2.2
  
• New hat for the sand bear wolf spider
  

• Many updates & fixes for existing languages
  
• Support added for the following languages:
  
  • Hungarian
    
  • Italian
    
  • Portuguese
    
  • Turkish
    
  • Traditional Chinese
    
  • Ukrainian
  
  

• New early game objectives added to 3.1 The Harvest
  
• The idea here is that the early objectives act as a mini tutorial, so the player has a good-sized leaf & refuse chamber before encountering the enemy colony. Shouldnt interrupt established gameplay otherwise
  
• New narrator dialogue added regarding leafcutter refuse storage
  
• Formicarium Challenges now have names instead of numbers
  
• Visual pulsing effect when the queen is at low health & has recently taken damage (can be disabled in Advanced Options)
  
• Minor Improvements can no longer be applied mid-mission
  
• If a creature cannot transfer to the surface it is now killed instead of just being left underground to try again (for example, when exiting an enemy nest after water has risen)
  
• Creatures no longer heal in the formicarium after purchasing an ability
  
• Formicarium Challenge 3 (now called Possibly the Final Experiment):
  
• Easy difficulty now slightly easier
  
• Enemy queen no longer has abilities on Normal as well as Easy
  
• Mole crickets & praying mantises no longer have food reduction on harder difficulties
  
• Adventure: leafcutter supermajor can no longer climb creatures or carry food
  
• Extremis: food from killed creatures increased
  
• Extremis now uses newer ability icons
  
• The Culling: tripled food from spawned creatures
  
• The Other Foot:
  
• More time given on Impossible (previously Insane) difficulty
  
• Food drops from spawning creatures build up & spawn with the next drop
  
• The Crucible demo level now has difficulty settings
  
• Spider levels:
  
  • Added sound effects to spider abilities
    
  • Increased healing from Devour by 17%
    
  • Increased max health gained by Bite level
    
  • Hungry Spider: reduced uber wolf spiders attack damage (down from 410 to 150)
    
  • Hungry Spider: added some queen corpses with 60 food each near the uber wolf spider
    
  • Festive Spider: early game a bit less difficult with more food
    
  • Festive Spider: waves rebalanced in several spots
  
  

• Fixed environmental creatures with singular spawning not attacking each other
  
• Enemy colony health bars are now properly hidden in fog of war
  
• Adventure-specific UI elements no longer overlap the huge whip spider health bar
  
• UI elements no longer visible when photo mode is on during a victory animation
  
• Fixed depth of field for cinematic cameras in several places
  
• Minor improvements are now applied to fire ants at point of purchase
  
• Adaptations panel jelly value will now update on purchase of minor improvements
  
• Formicarium Challenge 4 (The Final Experiment) victory camera positioning fixed
  
• Fixed some old beach style level tunnel exit to use the old one
  
• Fixed the wrong loading screen showing in some situations in a custom game
  
• Fixed some huge creatures & hybrids appearing to resurrect after a formicarium reload
  
• Fixed long creatures adorably chasing their own tails (sorry!)
  
• Fixed a crash when colony 2 was empty in a custom game
  
• Hermit crab shells & spider hats no longer receive decals
  
• Pressing Esc during difficulty selection will no longer lead to a UI overlap
  
• Fixed an issue with dragonflies that could cause a slowdown over time
  
• Fixed a problem in Festive Spider where an upgraded tower could be knocked back
  
• Fixed a crash when a creature firing a projectile was deleted before the projectile lands
  

This is very likely to be the final update to the optional beta before we set it live later this week, unless theres something that needs urgent fixing. Please test if you have some time - and thank you to everyone whos been doing that over the last few weeks!

A bunch of fixes for some achievement issues that have arisen in testing, and a few other bits and bobs. The achievements should now all be localised for all of our supported languages on Steam, and a Win32 build is now included.

Version 0.320031 Patch Notes

• Fixed the I Love Sashimi achievement - turns out this one was just properly glitched
  
• Fixed No Entry and The Way Is Shut achievements (bonus point to the first person who tells me the reference)
  
• No Entry now stops checking once it has been failed, less nagging
  
• The Free Willis achievement will now say the correct one has succeeded / failed
  
• Stopped At Arm's Length achievement always succeeding
  
• Moved an underground food item in 4.1 preventing all food being gathered (relevant for Toad In The Hole achievement)
  
• Separation Of Duties achievement now checks the ladybird health to make sure it escaped from damage and was not just leaving with an aphid
  
• Rearranged some other achievement stuff
  
• Fixed a movement problem for ereptor colonies in a loaded custom game in Imprisoned
  
• Fixed an issue on Imprisoned where rising / falling water notifications were the wrong way round if saved on the highest or lowest water point
  
• Fixed an issue on Imprisoned where colonies hiding would not happen on the lowest water level when water is about to rise
  
• Fixed a rare simultaneous defeat & victory situation in freeplay
  
• Fixed dwarf salamanders in 4.1 not being properly eaten by the bullfrog
  
• Fixes for AI colony hiding process
  

Finally, doing the achievements in the beta will count on Steam! The 100+ new chieves have been properly hooked up into Steams systems and will now register permanently if you get them during the optional beta.

Remember: Steam achievements are permanent and cannot be reset once accomplished.

If youre not participating in the beta yet and would like to, please see the initial post for instructions on how to join: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/463530/view/6939545579750168983

Changes

• New achievements will now be registered on Steam! Theyll need to be repeated if youve done them in the optional beta already
  
• All achievements now have lovely new square icons
  
• Extremis now uses newer ability icons
  
• Singular enemy spawning in freeplay increased when day / night cycle is disabled
  
• Level 3 leafcutter mediae & majors can now remove a phorid fly ever 2 minutes (down from 3)
  
• Several changes to Festive Spider:
  
  
  • Early game a bit less difficult with more food
    
  • Waves rebalanced in several spots

• Fixed a bunch of achievements that werent triggering properly
  
• Fixed a problem in Festive Spider where an upgraded tower could be knocked back
  
• Moved some food in demo level The Nest to keep it out of a cavern wall
  
• Imprisoned leafcutter plant spawns repositioned to ensure full leaf access
  
• Minor improvements are now applied to fire ants at point of purchase
  
• Adaptations panel jelly value will now update on purchase of minor improvements
  
• Larger velvet worms can now be climbed properly
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when a creature firing a projectile was deleted before the projectile lands
  
• Imprisoned now uses a different UI timer to prevent interference with other timers
  

Vlog 8 is here, and it's been increasingly clear to us over the past several months that we're finally approaching the full release goal for Empires of the Undergrowth. The long road of early access is drawing to a close, and release plans are being worked on.

We will be releasing the game fully during 2024.

[previewyoutube=e8joCmJMFKY;full][vlog][/previewyoutube]

This vlog goes into a bit of detail about where we are with it, and while we're not ready to commit to an exact date (and never will do unless we're sure we can meet it) I hope you can gather from my enthusiasm that it really is a-comin'.

Current roadmap (published November 2023):

Another few fixes for the latest optional beta update!

V0.320022 Patch Notes

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed an AI base building issue in Imprisoned
  
• Gave wolf spiderling the frog hat
  
• Fixed a rendering issue with level 2 tiles that receive -2 refuse debuff
  
• Fixed an issue with the effect of refuse tiles on upgrade points at distance -1
  
• Fixed an issue where leafcutter initial resources were deleted on saving & loading if there were no non-leafcutter colonies in the game
  
• Fixed an issue on Imprisoned where creatures on islands without a colony on them could fail to spawn
  
• Fixed ants being stuck in certain situations
  
• Fixed several aphid issues
  
• Sand Spit now displays its map info when loading a custom game
  

• If a creature cannot transfer to the surface it is now killed instead of just being left underground to try again (for example, when exiting an enemy nest after water has risen)
  
• Updated localisations
  

An update to the optional beta has been released.

There's an experimental change to leafcutters in custom games in this one: potentially very game-changing and will need a lot of testing!

To test out this substantial change, start a fresh custom game. Remember that it's experimental and subject to change.

V0.320021 Patch Notes

• Leafcutter colonies in custom games now start with 2 rings of queen tiles, meaning 19 starting workers / minims & increased fungus capacity
  
• Fixed an issue where saving & loading would cause all tunnel exits to be set to the same one if using the alternative exits in Strawclutch
  
• Added translator credits
  

A whole bunch of fixes and changes in this latest iteration of the currently running optional beta, including some experimental surface tunnel options for Strawclutch.

If youre not participating yet and would like to, then please see here for details on how to join.

V 0.32002 Patch Notes

[h2]Changes[/h2]

[h3]PLEASE NOTE: youll need to start a new game on Strawclutch or Imprisoned to notice most of these changes - so do that![/h3]

• Strawclutch:
  
  • Alternative surface tunnel locations can be chosen with the map option in the freeplay menu - this is experimental, so wed like some feedback on this. Itll significantly change the way Strawclutch plays. Is random in skirmish
    
  • Added in some food items to show the shape of the cavern in front of the nest exit
    
  • Adjusted positions of aphid plants
    
  • Player is no longer blocked by an enemy when tunnelling to the surface
  
  
• Imprisoned:
  
  • Water level change timings changed
    
  • Rising water no longer destroy resources it touches
    
  • Additional surface resources added
    
  • Dragonflies will now land on either side of the islands they inhabit
    
  • Dragonflies will no longer land if they are unable to reach their target after landing
    
  • AI colonies will now hide before water rises
    
  • Repositioned caterpillar plants
  
  
• AI colonies on Towhead & Embankment will hide for a time after a flood
  
• AI colonies & creature swarms attempting to invade a nest do extra checks for a valid path
  
• AI colonies stealing aphids now do more checks to make sure theyre reachable
  
• Significantly more creatures should spawn at the start of a custom game when using singular spawning (including skirmish)
  
• Environmental enemies ramp up faster in singular spawning (including skirmish)
  
• Adjustments to nocturnal / diurnal spawn timing in custom games
  
• Remaining translations for this patch added
  

• Fixed environmental creatures with singular spawning not attacking each other
  
• Strawclutch & Imprisoned now default to swamp creatures for map appropriate choice
  
• Fixed weird pathing issue in Strawclutch underground
  
• Fixed an issue where praying mantises on patrols might not despawn
  
• Fixed the initial creatures in pack spawning not appearing
  
• Fixed enemy counting for objective in The Crucible
  
• Fixed camera focus issues in Strawclutch & Imprisoned
  
• Fixed an issue killing dragonflies when loaded too high off the ground
  
• Fixed an issue with dragonflies that could cause a slowdown over time
  
• Fixed AI digging issues in Imprisoned
  
• Fixed some missing grass textures
  

From now until December 13th, you can save 20% on Empires of the Undergrowth. Come check the game out!

[previewyoutube=WHFamaHashM;full][/previewyoutube]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this years Steam Awards are underway and wed like to ask for your support by nominating Empires of the Undergrowth for the Labor of Love Award.



In the years since Early Access release, weve continued to improve Empires of the Undergrowth with huge, game-expanding updates - but were not done yet. We know all too well that our tiny team takes their time on the major updates, but we do that in the name of quality - and your kindness in supporting that allows us to take a considered approach. We couldnt be more grateful, so this isnt just our labor of love - its yours too!

Over the past year, weve been working on the following:

• A whole bunch of changes to custom games, including Skirmish - a new way to play freeplay maps.
  
• More up-to-date artwork for the beach and rotting log levels, bringing them in line with the visual fidelity of the more recent parts of the game - our aim is not just to finish the game, but have it be at its best possible quality too.
  
• Extended the climbing system to many more creatures in the game, really helping us settle into the skin-crawling feeling of ants crawling over everything!
  
• Working towards completing the systems and artwork for our final release, tier 5 which will feature 3 new campaign levels set in an as-yet unrevealed location. Then a final climactic formicarium challenge which the scientist has been preparing your colony for!
  
• Bug fixes (ha!)
  
• And many more updates!
  

With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this years Steam Awards are underway and wed like to ask for your support by nominating Empires of the Undergrowth for the Labor of Love Award.



In the years since Early Access release, weve continued to improve Empires of the Undergrowth with huge, game-expanding updates - but were not done yet. We know all too well that our tiny team takes their time on the major updates, but we do that in the name of quality - and your kindness in supporting that allows us to take a considered approach. We couldnt be more grateful, so this isnt just our labor of love - its yours too!

Over the past year, weve been working on the following:

• A whole bunch of changes to custom games, including Skirmish - a new way to play freeplay maps.
  
• More up-to-date artwork for the beach and rotting log levels, bringing them in line with the visual fidelity of the more recent parts of the game - our aim is not just to finish the game, but have it be at its best possible quality too.
  
• Extended the climbing system to many more creatures in the game, really helping us settle into the skin-crawling feeling of ants crawling over everything!
  
• Working towards completing the systems and artwork for our final release, tier 5 which will feature 3 new campaign levels set in an as-yet unrevealed location. Then a final climactic formicarium challenge which the scientist has been preparing your colony for!
  
• Bug fixes (ha!)
  
• And many more updates!
  

Weve fixed and changed a few things in our ongoing optional beta - if you arent participating yet and would like to, see the previous post for details on how to join.

V 0.32001 Patch Notes

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• 3.1 Hard achievement now correctly says Boundary Dispute rather than Shoot the Messenger
  
• 2.1 Extreme with challenge mode will now spawn tiger beetle larvae
  
• 3.2 Sitting Ducks achievement now only fails if an ant tile is upgraded to 3, not any tile
  
• Formicarium Challenge 3 Extreme difficulty now possible
  
• Fixed uber praying mantis, spiny devil and whip spider not being climbable
  
• Fixed an AI chamber building issue in Sand Spit
  
• Fixed an AI construction layout issue in Imprisoned
  
• Fixed amphibians using their swim animation underground
  
• Removed a floating seed in Strawclutch
  
• Pressing Esc during difficulty selection will no longer lead to a UI overlap
  
• Small beach wolf spider given correct hat
  

• Formicarium Challenge 3:
  
  • Easy difficulty now slightly easier
    
  • Enemy queen no longer has abilities on Normal as well as Easy
    
  • Mole crickets and praying mantises no longer have food reduction on harder difficulties
  
  
• Tooltips on freeplay sliders will now appear faster
  
• Uber mole cricket now climbable
  
• Added latest localisations
  
• Added some decorative rocks to Imprisoned
  

• Ghost hybrids from older saves
  
• Enemies stuck in nest entrances on Sand Spit
  
• Something activating random caverns in freeplay
  
• Issues with dragonfly landing and dying on Imprisoned
  
• Wrong rewards displayed on easy in FC1 and FC2
  

With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this years Steam Awards are underway and wed like to ask for your support by nominating Empires of the Undergrowth for the Labor of Love Award.



In the years since Early Access release, weve continued to improve Empires of the Undergrowth with huge, game-expanding updates - but were not done yet. We know all too well that our tiny team takes their time on the major updates, but we do that in the name of quality - and your kindness in supporting that allows us to take a considered approach. We couldnt be more grateful, so this isnt just our labor of love - its yours too!

Over the past year, weve been working on the following:

• A whole bunch of changes to custom games, including Skirmish - a new way to play freeplay maps.
  
• More up-to-date artwork for the beach and rotting log levels, bringing them in line with the visual fidelity of the more recent parts of the game - our aim is not just to finish the game, but have it be at its best possible quality too.
  
• Extended the climbing system to many more creatures in the game, really helping us settle into the skin-crawling feeling of ants crawling over everything!
  
• Working towards completing the systems and artwork for our final release, tier 5 which will feature 3 new campaign levels set in an as-yet unrevealed location. Then a final climactic formicarium challenge which the scientist has been preparing your colony for!
  
• Bug fixes (ha!)
  
• And many more updates!
  

New custom game / freeplay maps! Achievements! New difficulty options! More generous mission rewards! Were close to pushing a large update, and were now at a point where were inviting anyone whod like to test it a bit to do so.

We are adding over 100 achievements to the game in this build - but PLEASE NOTE, if you accomplish them in this test build they will not activate on Steam during the beta. You can use the in-game achievement tracker and victory screens to determine if youve accomplished an achievement goal, and wed very much appreciate feedback on any problems with them.

We are after feedback on all manner of issues that may occur, focusing on glitches, crashes, and balance. Any and all feedback on this optional beta is very much appreciated - please post it to the community discussions! As ever, thanks so much to our closed testing focus group who have been providing feedback to get this patch to this point.

Lets go over a few things related to these optional betas for people who havent participated in them before. Firstly, please note: optional betas are limited to the Steam Windows 64 bit build, and may be missing localisations in some newer or updates areas.

[h3]WARNING: YOU ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO MAKE A SAVE BACKUP[/h3]

We highly recommend making a backup of your saved games before you run an optional beta, on the off-chance that some changes cause them to be corrupted. To see where your saves are stored, see the information in this thread on the Steam forums. Copying the data in that folder to somewhere else will keep it safe from any potential issues.

Code: mapsandachievements

If you would like to join the beta, the code is mapsandachievements. If you dont know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter mapsandachievements

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch

• New Custom Game Maps! The 2 winners of our summer map design contest have been completed & added to the game, as well as one more
  
  • Imprisoned, based on a design by - a swampy area that floods & drains, opening up easier access to other resources & colonies
    
  • Strawclutch, based on a design by Noctazar - tightly-packed nests around central resources in the swamp ensures intense skirmishes with neighbours
    
  • Sand Spit - a sandy peninsula designed for a 3v1 setup, where the single colony has an uphill battle ahead of them
  
  
• Achievements! Over 100 new achievements for all aspects of the existing story mode & seasonal levels
  
  • Please note: in this test build, meeting an achievements conditions will not activate the achievement on Steam, but youll be able to see if you got it in victory screens
    
  • Icons for the new achievements are still in the works, so worry ye not if you spot them defaulting to an older one!
  
  
• Reworked Difficulty Settings! More resolution in lower difficulty settings with more linear gradation between them
  
  • Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme & Impossible are the new difficulties, with new Easy a little easier than the old, & Extreme being where old Hard was. Impossible is the new name for what used to be Insane
  
  

• Mission rewards increased significantly:
  
  • Formicarium rewards for a repeated play of a mission have been increased (increased by 67%), for a defeat have been increased & the rewards provided at higher difficulties are higher.
    
  • Easy, Medium & Hard - although these difficulties are easier than before they provide the same rewards they used to
    
  • Extreme - although this is as hard as Hard used to be, it will provide the same rewards that Insane used to
    
  • Impossible - although this is as hard as Insane used to be, it will provide more rewards than Insane used to
    

• Pine woods tree frog now climbable
  
• Uber hermit crab is now climbable
  
• Uber red velvet ant is now climbable
  
• Young velvet worm is no longer climbable
  
• Improvements to climbing points on hermit crabs
  
• Small harvestmen now become food on death
  
• Jumping spiders now become food on death
  
• Ladybirds now become food on death
  
• Young praying mantis can now only be harvested by 1 ant
  
• New beach creatures now spawnable in Battle Arena
  

• Creature resource quantity slider added to freeplay options
  
  • Allows players to make creatures in their freeplay game drop more or less food if they like
  
  
• Restart button added to custom game defeat screen
  
• When spawning attack waves, freeplay director will now choose larger creatures to spawn if none can be found in the smaller creature options
  
• AI harvesting process now considers the average of total & ants alive when deciding where to harvest & not just enemy ants alive
  
• Freeplay now starts with a default save name
  

• Default FPS is now set to 60
  
• Updated beach loading screen to use new assets
  
• Arcade button graphics updated
  
• Improvements to the living sea urchin decorative asset
  
• Seaweed models updated in 2.1 & 2.2
  
• New hat for the sand bear wolf spider
  

• New early game objectives added to 3.1 The Harvest, the same as in The Crucible
  
  • The idea here is that the early objectives act as a mini tutorial, so the player has a good-sized leaf & refuse chamber before encountering the enemy colony. Shouldnt interrupt established gameplay otherwise
  
  
• New narrator dialogue added regarding leafcutter refuse storage
  
• Formicarium Challenges now have names instead of numbers
  
• Visual pulsing effect when the queen is at low health & has recently taken damage to more urgently telegraph that the queen is in imminent danger
  
  • Can be disabled in Advanced Options
  
  
• Minor Improvements can no longer be applied mid-mission
  
• Creatures no longer heal in the formicarium after purchasing an ability
  
• Adventure: leafcutter supermajor can no longer climb creatures or carry food
  
• Extremis: food from killed creatures increased
  
• The Culling: tripled food from spawned creatures
  
• The Other Foot:
  
  • More time given on Impossible (previously Insane) difficulty
    
  • Food drops from spawning creatures build up & spawn with the next drop
  
  
• Both spider levels:
  
  • Added sound effects to spider abilities
    
  • Increased healing from Devour by 17%
    
  • Increased max health gained be Bite level
  
  
• Hungry Spider only:
  
  • Reduced uber wolf spiders attack damage (down from 410 to 150)
    
  • Added some queen corpses with 60 food each near the uber wolf spider
  
  
• Many new & updated localisations
  

• Enemy colony health bars are now properly hidden in fog of war
  
• Adventure-specific UI elements no longer overlap the huge whip spider health bar
  
• UI elements no longer visible when photo mode is on during a victory animation
  
• Fixed depth of field in tutorial level victory camera
  
• Fixed depth of field in Hungry Spider victory & defeat cameras
  
• Formicarium Challenge 4 (The Final Experiment) victory camera positioning fixed
  
• Fixed some old beach style level tunnel exit to use the old one
  
• Fixed some issues that would cause the wrong loading screen to show in some situations in a custom game
  
• Fixed some huge creatures & hybrids appearing to resurrect after a formicarium reload
  
• Fixed long creatures adorably chasing their own tails (sorry!)
  
• Fixed a crash when colony 2 was empty in a custom game
  
• Hermit crab shells & spider hats no longer receive decals
  

This will be the last newsletter of 2023, with one more vlog to come in December. 2023 has been a formative year for Empires of the Undergrowth with the freeplay / custom game mode being brought much closer to its final form, and the bulk of the systems and level work on the final stages of the game being done.


Fire ants in the swamp from Solstitium on our Discord

The end is, finally, in sight but theres still a stretch to go. To that end, the main feature of this newsletter is an updated roadmap that might take us all the way to release (well have to see how things go!). Well spend the majority of our word allowance going over that.

Updated Roadmap

The Empires of the Undergrowth roadmap gets updated every six months, with the optimistic thought that one of them may unexpectedly be the last one we have to do. Is this that one? We dont know probably not, but hope springs eternal as they say. Feast your arthropod-hungry eyes on this beauty, as we then go through each step in turn:


Now I am become roadmap, destroyer of deadlines

A couple of changes from the last one include using year quarters to refer to time instead of seasons to help our friends in the southern hemisphere, and giving a slightly longer explanation at each station. If theres no ballpark date on a step then thats because were not comfortable putting one there just yet, although we are aiming to get everything done as swiftly as we can. The ordering and timing is, as always, subject to change.

[h2]New Achievements[/h2]

First up is achievements. These have been thoroughly detailed in both the previous newsletter and the most recent vlog, so Ill keep this section brief. In short, more than 100 new achievements are being added for all of the existing campaign and seasonal levels. We still intend to run an optional beta on Steam to test out some of these, and with any luck well have some news on this very soon keep your face orbs unshrouded.

[h2]New Custom Game Maps[/h2]

A while back we held a contest to design a custom game / freeplay map for Empires of the Undergrowth, picking one winner from YouTube / Discord entries and another from Bilibili. We had a good time going over the finalists (in a pre-recorded video for the Bilibili one and a fun livestream for the YouTube one) and ultimately settled on our winners Strawclutch, and Imprisoned.

[previewyoutube=mFpXtCyphGI;full][/previewyoutube]

We have already very nearly completed work on bringing these designs to the game our level designer John has built them, and our environment artist DanC has decorated them. So, lets talk about each one in turn.

[h3]Strawclutch[/h3]

Strawclutch (designed by Noctazar) will, at least in its skirmish form, be a fast-paced map with short overall playtime. The four colony spaces are in close proximity to each other, and in the very middle of the map is a large growth of aphid-bearing milkweed plants. These act as the main food source when played as a skirmish game, and there will be early and repeated quarrels as the colonies vie for control of this territory.


Clutching at straws in the middle of the winning map design by Noctazar

[h3]Imprisoned[/h3]

Our Bilibili winner is called Imprisoned (designed by ), and it features a locking mechanism that will put colonies in direct conflict with each other only periodically, as the water level changes. This had to be adapted somewhat from the original concept to work without fire ant bridges (see later in the roadmap for more information about that) but the basic premise remains the same for most of the time in this map, colonies can only get to each other via a long road, but with the change of the water level there will be fighting.


A lot going on in Imprisoned by

It was a lot of fun running this contest and theres a very strong possibility of us doing more stuff like this in the future, perhaps post-release as part of ongoing content after we reach version 1.0.

There is one more custom game map coming along at the time of this update: Sand Spit, which is designed for 3v1 setups. We detailed this map more back in the July newsletter so have a look back there for some more detailed information (and some pictures). All 3 of these maps will be coming simultaneously, and with any luck will be part of the upcoming beta test that focuses on the achievements as well.

For anyone wondering about other work-in-progress custom game maps that weve shown glimpses of, such as Archipelago and Wetlands they are dependent on fire ant bridging being completed for custom games and well discuss more about this later on.

[h2]New Years Feast Updates[/h2]

The New Years Feast event level will be returning in January and February to coincide with Chinese New Year with a whole bunch of achievements attached. This time around well be making a bit more of an event of it, too with some new cosmetic updates to make the map a bit more thematically pleasing, as well as a much-needed balance pass to bring the map up to speed with the food rebalancing that happened back with the 0.31 update.

[previewyoutube=5Kz-w3A_4k0;full][/previewyoutube]

For those of you who havent played it yet its a whimsical themed level based around fire ants collecting ingredients for a hotpot, with an explosive twist and a fantastical ending. Check out the trailer above for a preview the level will reappear on January 8th, marking its return with a lantern in the main menu.

[h2]Further Custom Game AI Changes[/h2]

Version 0.31 of the game introduced some sweeping changes to the way AI colonies worked in a freeplay / custom game. Whilst theyve been successful in lots of ways, its clear that there are some further things we can do to make it more effective without too much cheating.


In the UE4 Editor, AI colonies look like this for reasons that no-one but Liam knows

One of the issues weve had recently is quite simply just playtime taking time to play the mode exhaustively ourselves outside of the context of just having it working or fixing it. We spend all of our time developing and playing in chunks we listen to a lot of external feedback from testers and players, and implement it based on general consensus. However, this is often lacking the personal context of lots of time just spent playing for the sake of playing.

Our devs have gained good momentum on tier 5 right now and we dont want to disrupt that so weve put aside several days in the new year to do nothing but play custom games and take notes. Rather than immediately run off and fix every issue we come across, as is usually the case with development work, we will absorb the experience in its entirety. We hope this will give us some sounder knowledge for what we should prioritise in making the mode work better.

[h2]Tier 4 Challenge Mode[/h2]

This is another thing that weve spoken about extensively before, so Ill be brief right now tier 4 challenge mode is waiting for the aforementioned tier 5 momentum wave to crest. Once that spike of activity reaches its zenith and dies back down again, the six-spotted fishing spider will finally make its long-awaited appearance, wearing its pirate hat if you want it to.


Yarrr!

[h2]Fire Ant Bridging[/h2]

Fire ant bridging in custom levels is tricky for several reasons. How do we handle multiple colonies competing for the bridging spot, for the most obvious example these problems have been mostly solved, but the more time-consuming issue of allowing fire ant bridges to be save-able in a custom game has not. Once it has been, fire ant bridging will be introduced to appropriate maps.

[h2]New Extra Levels / Custom Game maps[/h2]

We will inevitably hit a period of time where were getting everything finalised and ready, ramping up the marketing effort and preparing for the very scary task of bringing our first project to full release for the entire world. How long this ends up being is complete guesswork right now, but it is likely that at this time there will be enough of a gap to squeeze in an extra level / custom game map or two.

John (level designer) told me recently that hes had some ideas that hes itching to try out, but hes being very good and concentrating on getting the game to 1.0 right now. This period of time is when he might have a few spare hours to bring these to fruition.


Archipelago on hold for the time being

It might be here that custom game maps Archipelago and Wetlands make their appearance they both have some aspects to them that will require input from all 3 of the devs to work, though, so well have to see how we do with the implementation of fire ant bridging in custom games.

[h2]Version 1.0[/h2]

Finally, after years of work, we will be here and this is now a real horizon-loomer. Final release will feature the last 3 story / campaign levels (the fifth tier will have 3 levels, instead of 2 like the others) and the ultimate formicarium challenge that the scientist has been preparing your colony for. I hope youre all ready.

Screenshot Central

Time for some pretty Empires of the Undergrowth screenies! If youd like to be featured in this section at some point in the future, the easiest way is to join our Discord and post on the screenshot channel there. Other than that, Ill occasionally trawl through the community tab on Steam to see whats been going on there. By default, press F9 to enter photo mode (hiding the UI) hold down shift while you do that to uncouple the camera from the floor for some neater angles.


The big-headed ants overlooking an uber beach wolf spider from Dolly on our Discord


A pleasingly picturesque view of 4.2 A Bridge Too Far by Orion (Dilphy) on our Discord


The army is on the march in the formicarium from GoldenUngy on our Discord

For those of you who have joined us since last time, welcome to our infamously difficult Halloween level, which will earn its conquerors the rarest achievement in Empires of the Undergrowth. To celebrate this time around we've made an updated 4k trailer with the newer environment artwork. Enjoy!

[previewyoutube=ENeIl3JvsB8;full][/previewyoutube]

The Hungry Spider's cobweb appears around Halloween and on full moons, and he's absolutely ravenous. Help him grow and defeat his enemies in a gluttonous fury as he stalks a web-shaped map. His hunger causes him to constantly lose health - quickly unlocking the 'devour' ability is paramount as it'll keep him alive. Take down bigger and stronger prey, upgrading his abilities as you go.

We find this level just as tough as everyone else does - and in fact our very own community manager Mike likes to attempt this level once a year on stream, and this year he's upping the stakes by bringing a ridiculously spicy challenge into the mix. At 10pm UK time, on Saturday 28th October, for this year's attempt.

It's the 1 year anniversary of the Slug Disco vlog! In this episode, Mike talks about the Empires of the Undergrowth map contest results, progress on tier 5, achievements, roadmaps, and a probably stupid idea he had for his yearly attempt at EotU's Hungry Spider level.

The brutally difficult Hungry Spider will be returning, by the way, on October 25th.

As is usually the case, this is also a general Slug Disco vlog with mentions of the rest of our publishing charges - if you'd like to skip these and go directly to the EotU good stuff, skip to time code 2.29.

[previewyoutube=hjDNxy1FKCI;full][/previewyoutube]

Get the video to 500 likes to make Mike suffer, if he fails at Hungry Spider again!

Hi everyone! Empires of the Undergrowth and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out!

Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale

[previewyoutube=bwcg7R7QfIE;full][/previewyoutube]

Welcome to September, the worst month of the year (or so I'm told). I'll do my best to ensure you don't have to listen to Green Day on repeat to get through it, with some lovely news about achievements, map contests and difficulty changes coming to Empires of the Undergrowth. If you think that'd cheer you up, read on.


Leafcutter ants swarm over a huge whip spider in this shot from Steam user Bananta

As the art team and two out of three of our devs press forward with tier 5 work, one of our devs has been making changes to the difficulty options to Empires of the Undergrowth which were detailed in the most recent vlog last month. Before we get onto all the ins and outs of that, let's talk about the recent map contest!

Map Contest

In August we launched a map contest, mainly advertised on YouTube (you should absolutely subscribe to our YouTube channel - we post a whole bunch of great stuff there).

The contest closed at the start of this month, and we have had in the region of 200 entries all told! The brief was to submit an idea for a freeplay or custom game map, which we will then judge and turn our favourite into a fully-fledged map in the game.


John and Mike discussing map designs, whilst John makes an example map (which we will be finishing and adding to the game also!)

We want to do the judging live, so our current plan is to do a livestream at some point towards the end of this month. It would have been earlier but several of our team members are away for the Tokyo Game Show at the moment (more on that later in the newsletter). The exact timing of this is yet to be nailed down but we hope to stream at a time where most people can watch live in some form, hopefully on a weekend.

We're going to have to cut down the entries to 20-30 for the final judging, or we'd be there all night trying to get through 200! Please know that we appreciate all of the entries, and I'll do my best to make sure everyone who sent in an entry is credited for it, even if the entry doesn't make it into the final selection.

Keep an eye on our socials, and on here, for news of when the judging is happening! Remember - it'll likely be a weekend towards the end of this month or the start of October.

Difficulty Changes

A common criticism of our difficulty choices is that the jump between them is not very linear, and in particular that the difference between medium and hard is more than a little unfair - with hard being closer to insane than to medium. We've decided now is the time to get the difficulty selection in its final working order before we finish the project, so one of our three devs has spent a lot of time recently working on that whilst the others crack on with tier 5.


Handy chart showing intended difficulty changes relative to the old standard

As you can see in the chart above, the intent is for difficulties between 'easy' and the new 'extreme' (which sits where the current 'hard' difficulty is) to be a gentler slope upwards. There's lots of reasons for this, and we hope the renaming of 'insane' to 'impossible' gives more people pause for thought if they want to attempt it on a first try (perhaps we should gate off this hardest difficulty on a first playthrough - what do you think?).

The increased resolution in the options outside of the toughest one will, we hope, allow people to make a more appropriate choice for their early playthroughs with better-fitting options for their skill level. There will be four options to choose from outside of the toughest - easy, medium, hard and extreme. We know plenty of people have chosen hard for the first playthrough of a level which, by no fault of their own, lies outside of their current skill level, being 'insane-lite' in some respects. 'Hard' should indicate challenging but achievable with sound game knowledge if not level-specific knowledge - we think that should now be the case.

See the vlog linked below for the full video form of this discussion - the segment begins at 2:38. Also, a reminder that the vlogs also come bi-monthly, in between these newsletters.

[previewyoutube=zBBYukekqrI;full][/previewyoutube]

Achievements - Nearly There!

We spoke about the achievement additions in the previous newsletter, but we've now had the huge list of new ones in testing for a week or so and they should be arriving in the next patch (tentatively scheduled for October)! We've tried to include a selection of nice standard ones (complete level X on difficulty Y, that sort of thing, similar to the existing ones) along with quite specific challenges for the more adventurous. Here's a small selection of what you can expect (artwork pending), specifically some of the more interesting ones for 2.2 Queen of the Hill. Which ones will you be going after first?


If you don't get the Lord of the Rings reference, we can't be friends

Tier 5 Progress

Although were not ready to officially reveal the setting and theme for the fifth and final tier of the formicarium story, I can talk a little about how its progressing. As were bringing to a close the tying-up of other loose ends for the project (freeplay, achievements, etc) most of the dev team is currently working solidly on the fifth tier, and a good 70% of the source control commits that come in are related to it.

After revamping the beach assets for the July update, our environment artist has recently sent in his first completed models and textures for the as-yet unrevealed fifth tier setting. Several more creatures are completed, including some of the more exciting titan-class ones and some others that have novel mechanics associated with them.

New systems (which along with artwork always represent the biggest time sink for a new tier) are coming together and beginning to work in unison, and the species weve homed in on for tier 5 requires several of them! One such new system involves a local-scale dynamic change to the environment occurring in one of the levels.

Internal discussion has led to the consensus of a more controlled build-up to how we release information about tier 5 compared to previous marketing cycles. Although as the community manager Im itching to get that information out there, I understand the teams desire for a firmer marketing regimen given that itll be the last of the truly huge updates as we leave early access. As soon as I have the goahead to start sharing more concrete information, I shall!

Gamescom

Last month, the team travelled to Cologne, Germany to attend Gamescom. Empires of the Undergrowth was represented there as part of the Hooded Horse booth (they're our co-publishers on EotU) - a member of our team was manning that section most of the time! I had my camera with me, and took enough videos to cobble together a travel vlog which was fun to do. It was great to meet some of our players, old and new, from the continent and chat about the game with them. It was also lovely to meet our colleagues from Hooded Horse in person for the first time (for most of us)!

[previewyoutube=MSUClz7gJzs;full][/previewyoutube]

We like to use these public events as a way of gaining a little hands-on feedback from new players, as well - as work-from-home developers, we don't very often get the opportunity to directly observe people who are completely new to the game interacting with its systems, so we take that chance when we can. One thing that came from this particular event is some changes that will be made to 3.1 The Harvest - we'll be introducing a few early game objectives for that level, which should serve as something of a mini-tutorial for leafcutters (very similar to how The Crucible, the leafcutter demo level, works) as well as fully implementing some cut narrator dialogue about refuse chambers. Look out for that in the next update.


EotU developer Matt and environment artist Dan C at Gamescom

Slug Disco were also there with Robert Kaufmann, developer of Horticular - a beautiful garden-building pixel art game that Slug Disco is publishing, but not developing. Horticular was at the Indie Arena Booth, and Robert also got the chance to meet a whole bunch of you and gain some valuable feedback. Horticular development is continuing apace and we're really excited to see everyone's reaction to the finished game - it really is a remarkable project that we're very proud to be representing.


The Horticular station at the Indie Arena Booth

Gamescome is absolutely gigantic, the largest such event in the world, and its 2023 incarnation was an unforgettable experience as the world emerges fully from the shadow of COVID-19 that has loomed for the past several years. Its always great to have the team together and we cherish those times that we can do that. Were not quite done with events this year, which leads us on to

Tokyo Game Show

TGS kicks off a few days from the time of writing, and Slug Disco will be represented there with three of our other publishing projects - Horticular and Adapt will be together at the dedicated Slug Disco booth, and Ecosystem will be there as part of the Indie Select 80. Our co-publishers Hooded Horse will be there, too.

Although we don't have a Slug Disco booth for Empires of the Undergrowth, if anyone is there and has a strong urge to play it we will boot it up for you - tell Liam and Dan that Mike sent ya and they'll oblige. If youre nice.

Screenshot Central

Weve had some beautiful screenies of the beach environment since its release in July, and so this month for Screenshot Central well focus on that.

If youd like to submit a screenshot, the easiest way is to join our Discord and post on the appropriate screenshot channels. You can also upload to the Steam Community page, and I will occasionally look through there. To get great screenshots, hold shift whilst you enter photo mode (F9 by default) - this will uncouple your camera from the ground and allow you to get some better angles on the action.


Attack of the crabs from BrickyGraph631


The beach in all its glory from Orion (Dilphy)


A wood ant queen safe in her burrow from Pumadog

From now until September 4, you can save 20% on Empires of the Undergrowth at the Steam Strategy Fest. Come check the game out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHFamaHashM

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

In Slug Disco Vlog 6, Mike goes over changes to the difficulty settings for EotU and also the map contest that is currently running. We're expanding difficulty to have 5 options instead of 4, with better gradiation between the lower ones - this should help people who want to step up or down to a different difficulty get a better feel for that.

Except for the most difficult, of course, now renamed to 'Impossible'. That's just as punishing a challenge as it ever was!

Dan also gives a brief update about 3 of our other publishing projects - if you want to skip the section about the other 3 games and get straight to the EotU content, the timecode is 1.44.

[previewyoutube=zBBYukekqrI;full][/previewyoutube]

Thank you everyone who has supported, tested and played the recent release! We're very happy with the reception, and it sets us in good stead to press forward to the completion of the campaign. There are some issues that have cropped up, and those are at the forefront of the next patch that is likely to come in a few weeks, along with some other stuff.


A six-spotted tiger beetle swarmed by fire ants by Gimpsimian on our Discord

This newsletter will mainly concentrate on what you can expect from that next patch, and what is more likely to trickle in over some smaller patches afterwards. The team is very keen to press forward with completing tier 5 now, so that is their primary focus - but there are some other things that will be coming very soon.

The 0.31 Update

This was an unusually large update - the patch notes themselves took over an hour to write up! There were some fairly large changes to the game, and we're glad to say the changes have (mostly) been well received. There's always anxiety when pushing an update that makes some fundamental changes and of course we didn't expect everything to be universally accepted across the board, but things went better than expected in that regard.

[previewyoutube=4xT3aETtJow;full][/previewyoutube]

Whilst everything is now in place with respect to the freeplay AI changes, it's clear that there's still some work to do there and we'll detail that in its own section after this one.

Almost everyone seems to be enjoying the new beach artwork - with one exception, the dead fish asset! The new one is higher fidelity and is more fitting for the rockpool setting, looking partially decomposed and consumed. I think the fact that people can no longer imagine dropping the fish straight into a hot skillet with some chilli oil and crushed garlic may account for some of the disgust!

[previewyoutube=2n7FVzGGMvc;full][/previewyoutube]
Billy Bass is so done

Theres a few more tweaks to come for the beach art - some seaweed has recently been added, and we want to make some changes to the living sea urchin before we move it to make it a bit more visible! You can currently see the sea urchin by going into photo mode and looking at the far east of the map in 2.2 Queen of the Hill.


A sea urchin!

While we're on the topic, I thought I'd just write a paragraph about our versioning convention. Although the build number of the most recent release starts in 0.31, that does not mean the project is only 31% complete. When we release the final campaign levels we'd be at version 0.4 with the current rate of versioning, but it'll just be that during testing - when we release it completely to the world, what by this convention would be 0.4 will be 1.0.

It was never a linear or particularly well-documented convention. If this all sounds convoluted and weird, that's because it is.

Further AI Improvements

The new custom game AI system is vastly improved over the old one in all aspects - it can plan attacks, help allies, guard resources and make analytical decisions on when to attack or defend. As part of this, we felt some confidence in changing the way cheats are applied to AI.

Cheats were always intended to help make up the shortfall that an AI colony has compared to a human player, and wed hoped that the much more capable AI would need significantly less help. Whilst this is generally true, its clear that theres some ways to go in optimising the AI and helping it with getting the best out of its new brain.

Its now a modular system, and new behaviours (processes) can be bolted onto it. Liam, who has coded the new system, would like some feedback on how it can be improved, but there is a caveat - he is keen to continue working on tier 5 from now on and therefore additional time he gives to the custom game AI needs to be carefully thought out.


AI leafcutter colony underground construction

An example of a process that would likely help out the AI is one that would allow it to harvest food from defeated colonies - that would take quite some time to implement, so decisions on making new processes like this will be more carefully considered before being put into development. However, some changes are very quick to make and these are likely to come first.

We are interested in feedback on the ordering and priorities that individual colony types should have. An example of this was done during the beta test - leafcutter ants were told to only make minor workers until their first chamber is completed, and this better organises their priority list. These kinds of changes are very quick to make.

If you have suggestions (for all kinds of colony) please post them on our discussion boards with an appropriate title. Ill be collating the feedback and presenting it to Liam, who will decide which simple changes are best and which are worth investing some more development time to make new modular processes.

Coming Soon

The roadmap we released back in May has been mostly fulfilled, and when the time comes to update the roadmap again we'll be expanding and detailing what's left to complete to get us to 1.0.


Done that, done that, haven't done that...

It's looking very much like the "true interim update" that is detailed on the left-hand side will indeed be broken into several updates that will come over the next few months. Some things are just around the corner, and well detail those now.

[h2]Achievements[/h2]

A full achievement list for the rest of the currently existing game is very close to being ready, so this is one of the first things that will arrive! There will be achievements for all of the campaign levels, as well as some special ones for seasonal levels. Perhaps we can tempt you back to the Festive Spider level later this year with this one?

[h3]Some Naughty Some Nice - beat the Christmas spider level with at least half the gifts remaining under the tree.[/h3]

...or maybe youd prefer this one for 4.1 inspired by a classic British dish?

[h3]Toad In The Hole - tunnel out all underground food by the second night and beat the level on hard difficulty.[/h3]

All told, were shaping up to have well over 100 achievements for those of you who like to go hunting. Theres both the more standard ones (ie, beat level X on difficulty Y) and the more fun ones like Toad In The Hole detailed above.

[h2]Freeplay Maps[/h2]

There is at least one freeplay map arriving shortly, but it isnt the one thats on the roadmap. That one - Wetlands - is currently awaiting the completion of being able to save fire ant bridges in a custom game.

Thats a more complicated task than it may appear, and for that reason we may release a beta version of a swamp map that has fire ant bridging with the proviso that level saving will, initially, be disabled for it.

That way, we can gather some feedback about how bridges (and competing fire ant colonies trying to build bridges) work in a custom game before the saving system is fully completed - do you think thats a good idea? Would we be better off just waiting until things can definitely be saved, or would you be okay with testing a custom game map without being able to save it? Let us know in the discussion forums.

[h3]Sand Spit[/h3]

So lets talk a little about the map that is much closer to being completed, and its a quite uniquely shaped one - Sand Spit, which is designed with skirmishes in mind (although you can absolutely play any freeplay setup on it) in a 3v1 format.


Sand Spit from the player's side (work in progress)

The player colony lives on a spit of land protruding from the edge of the mainland. With this unusually asymmetrical layout, the map still has the characteristic lower ground that is awash (pun intended) with resources that carry that inherent extra flood risk.


Sand Spit overview (work in progress)

As you can see from the top-down overview, the map is clearly intended to be played against 3 enemy allies - their nests are close together and theyll be gathering resources mainly from the same area. You can absolutely alter the setup to have every colony for themselves, but itll be a little cramped over there on the mainland if you do that!


Sand Spit from the enemy alliance's side (work in progress)

Well update you all on the progress being made on getting fire ant bridge saving working closer to time - but for now, Sand Spit is very close to completion and its looking very likely itll be arriving sooner rather than later.

[h2]Not Coming Immediately - Tier 4 Challenge[/h2]

For the time being, tier 4s challenge mode is being pushed a little further down the schedule.

Its an important addition and we want to do it justice, but we thought we should let you know that the plan is currently to circle back round to the fishing spiders debut once the current development push for tier 5 is further along. All 3 of the developers and our environmental artist are now focused on the final formicarium tier - we dont want to lose the good momentum weve recently been building on that front.

SimFest 2023

Starting on the date of publication (20th July, 2023) Empires of the Undergrowth will be taking part in SimFest 2023 on Steam! The game is currently at a historic discount of 20% off, and if youve somehow read all the way through this newsletter without owning the game already then firstly, I salute you, and secondly I thought I should let you know about that!



Most of Slug Discos other publishing projects are also involved in the festival - Ecosystem, Adapt and Horticular are all present and correct.

Gamescom 2023

Empires of the Undergrowth will be at Gamescom 2023 in Cologne, Germany next month! The entire team will be there, so if youre attending then please drop by to say hi. There will be more details in next months vlog which will be closer to the time.

Screenshot Central

If youd like to submit a screenshot for this part of the newsletter in the future, by far the easiest way is to join our Discord and post on the appropriate screenshot channels. You can also upload to the Steam Community page, and I will occasionally scroll through there looking for some standouts. To get great screenshots, hold shift whilst you enter photo mode (F9 by default) - this will uncouple your camera from the ground and allow you to get some better angles on the action.


A green lynx spider is mounted by fire ants from NappyB_TheDankest


Ratatouille - EotU edition from Gimpsimian


The amblypygid's end, also from Gimpsimian

Empires of the Undergrowth is featured on the front page of Steam today, with its first ever 20% off sale. The discount will run until July 29th. Come check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

It's time for a big overhaul of freeplay, a whole bunch of new art, and a campaign rebalance! Welcome to Empires of the Undergrowth version 0.31, and thank you to everyone who has helped test it for the past week and the focus group who have been on it for the past month or so.

Watch the video for a breakdown of the major new features!

[previewyoutube=4xT3aETtJow;full][/previewyoutube]

This is part 1 of the update - we are immediately launching into finishing work on part 2, and now that everything is in place and working, we can work on improvement and tweaking. So, once you've given it a spin, head on over to the discussions and let us know what you think could be done to improve the AI and balance of the custom games in general.

Patch Notes - July 14th 2023

[h2]Headline Features[/h2]

• Smarter AI - much cleverer freeplay colonies, with a new modular AI system
  
• Freer Freeplay - new freeplay features, new uber creatures!
  
• Skirmish Mode - quick-to-setup game vs AI colonies based on freeplay
  
• Prettier Artwork - for beach story & freeplay levels, & some creatures!
  
• Campaign Balance - the campaign has been rebalanced with many changes
  
• Mount Your Enemies - many more enemy creatures can now be climbed by your ants!
  

• Freeplay now lives in the Custom Game menu with the new Skirmish setup mode.
  
• Freeplay AI completely reworked
  
  • Much more intelligent building & food collection priority
    
  • Assists allies under attack & plan coordinated attacks
    
  • Guards resources, steals aphids, harrasses opponents
    
  • Nest designs tailored to species & room location
    
  • New build priority system for different species
    
  • Build orders adapt to storage & battle needs
    
  • Will hide from rising water on applicable maps
    
  • Customisable temperament & reactions
  
  
• Streamlined setup mode called Skirmish
  
  
  
  • Quick battle setup vs computer-controlled colonies
    
  • Emphasises colony vs colony combat with conquest victory condition
    
  • Preset landmarks & creature spawns
    
  • Generally shorter form games
    
  
  
• New landmarks
  
  • Huge creatures (whip spider, great blue skimmer or bullfrog)
    
  • Caterpillar plants
    
  • Relocatable aphid plants (rosemary in beach levels, fewflower milkweed otherwise)
    
  • Carnivorous plants
  
  
• New uber creatures
  
  • Bombardier beetle
    
  • Red velvet ant
    
  • Eastern newt
    
  • Narrow-mouthed toad
  
  
• Beach tiger beetle & beach wolf spider are now custom game / extra level only creatures
  
• The above have had stats & abilities changed to differentiate them from the new campaign creatures taking their place (see below)
  
• Freeplay can optionally use the fixed landmarks from Skirmish
  
• Freeplay now has the option of spawning environmental creatures with roaming patrol routes
  

• Food has been added into both levels
  
• 1.2 slave maker attacks will now have level 2 & 3 ants amongst them
  
• 1.2 slave maker attacks will get harder more rapidly on hard & insane
  
• Challenge mode cricket attacks will be more frequent on harder difficulties
  
• Funnel web spiders now become food items rather than harvestable corpses on death
  
• Enemies in top-left of 1.2 will now attack the queen on being unearthed
  

• More food added to the undergrounds of both levels
  
• Has higher level enemy ants on the map & in attack waves
  
• Notification about creature mounting moved to 2.1
  
• 2.1 underground caverns added
  
• 2.1 has more daytime surface food
  
• 2.1 has a new food arrival event with new narrator dialogue
  
• 2.2 aphids now produce food throughout the night
  
• Melee wood ants speed increased to 320 up from 300
  
• Melee wood ants given 30% AoE resistance
  
• Reduced number of challenge mode beetle larvae in some areas
  
• Creature changes
  
• Beach tiger beetle replaced with northern dune tiger beetle (same stats as old beach tiger beetle)
  
• Beach wolf spider replaced with sand bear wolf spider (same stats as old beach wolf spider)
  
• Larger variant of hermit crab added
  

• Level 2 & 3 huge whip spider added for hard & insane in 3.2
  
• Significantly increased health of huge whip spider
  
• Huge whip spider now has a health bar like the bullfrog & great blue skimmer
  

• Aggressive creatures now drop a little more food
  
• Pervasive fire ant free hatch timer improved to 1m30s (from 1m40s)
  

• New decorative beach assets: rippling beach sand, flowering bindweed, samphire plants, water weeds, limpets, scallop shells, sea-smoothed rocks, sea urchins
  
• New artwork for the 2 replacement beach creatures: northern dune tiger beetle & sand bear wolf spider
  
• New model for black ant queen
  
• New water look for beach levels
  

• Food has been added into most extra levels in line with the food value changes
  
• The Hungry Spider now has 80% thorns resistance
  
• Aggrandise
  
  
  
  • Different levels of huge whip spider final boss added depending on difficulty
    
  • Removed extra whip spider juveniles from the final boss
    
  • Fish no longer loses resources on harder difficulties
    
  • Huge whip spider will no longer ignore players ants on the way to the queen
    

• Realistic Mode removed & replaced with Advanced Options for control of individual things it did
  
• Seasonal costumes option added in Advanced Options to allow them to be disabled
  
• Point values have been reassessed & updated (this affects enemy creature spawning & score)
  
• User interface updated in multiple places (adaptations, level select, options menu, achievements) to use up more screen space & allow more space for language & UI scaling
  
• UI scaling slider added to the menu to allow manual increasing of UI scale (good for handhelds & TVs)
  
• Updated harvesting spots on some dead creatures so no more ants are harvesting than there is food available
  
• Minor performance improvements & reduction of visual artefacts on resources
  
• Changed the Battle Arena tile set to the new beach one
  
• Localisation additions & changes
  
• Updated enemy mounting button icon
  
• Tooltips will now show when the game is paused
  

• Fixed some visual effects remaining on creatures after death
  
• Fixed an issue where attack points could sometimes be unreachable causing attacker to wait on the floor by them
  
• Uber velvet worm can now be harvested by 8 ants at a time
  
• 1.1 & 1.2 player colony now black in colour
  
• Fixed an issue in Tug Of War 2 that would lead to the enemy colony spawning black ants
  
• Decals now correctly delete when a tile is downgraded or deleted
  
• Fixed an issue where ants would not rotate for a short while after collecting a queen egg
  
• Fixed an issue where ladybirds may not land if they are not being observed by the player (quantum ladybird wave function now collapsed)
  
• Fixed an issue where loaded eggs would only appear after the game had started
  
• Fixed a pontoon construction point in 4.2
  
• Numerous text & AI scaling fixes
  
• Matched the colour select UI more closely to the in-game colours
  
• Queens will no longer perform pain animation on loading
  
• Salamanders & newts will still be rendered when just off-screen
  
• Aura effects should display better on inclined surfaces
  
• Lynx spider should no longer do its climbing animation when walking
  
• Fixed a wood ant firing sound issue
  

• There are some localisation issues causing problems with custom game setup. We intend to fix this as soon as possible.
  
• There are still some crashes being reported, but we don't have enough to pin down causes. If you experience a crash, please manually email the 3 crash files as attachments to us. Instructions on how to do this are in this thread on Steam. This needs to be done for us to see what's happening - hitting "send and close" on the crash dialogue doesn't work.
  
• Some extra levels are unbalanced, and The Other Foot in particular might not be winnable on higher difficulties. It is possible to beat the level on easy, so if you want the reward before we can fix the level then we suggest playing on easy.
  
• The Besieged victory condition in freeplay currently has very weak or empty early waves until the difficulty increases. Until we patch this, it can be avoided by playing with environmental difficulty set to insane.
  

• Whilst the new freeplay AI is in place and working, it is not yet as optimised as it could be. The system is very easily tweaked, however, so we'd love to hear your suggestions for it - please post on the forums.
  
• Similarly, freeplay creature statistics are now divorced from the campaign and can be tweaked without altering the difficulty of a story level. If you have ideas for making creature stats and abilities more balanced, let us know. This applies to both colony ants and environmental creatures.
  

Optional beta V0.31005 is out. Unless theres something catastrophically wrong with it, this is likely to be the final patch before we set the update live for everyone, but please dont stop giving feedback on bugs and balance!

If you haven't taken part in this beta yet and would like to, follow the instructions in the original post.

Once it goes public, we will be working hard on part 2 of this large update and implementing more changes, with a particular view to improving the AI further and fine-tuning freeplay / skirmish balance. Might even chuck in a new freeplay map or two whilst were at it.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed uber mole crickets giving no food on death
  
• Fixed a crash related to AI processes
  
• Fixed a common custom game crash
  
• Custom game creatures with a UI health bar will always display it when taking damage from the player, and not from other colonies
  
• Fixed lingering status visual effects in Battle Arena
  
• Beach asset graphical fixes
  
• Root aphid graphical fixes
  
• Rearranged some leaves in Embankment
  

• Added samphire plants to 2.x & The Dunes
  
• 1v1 custom games will now always be on opposite sides of the map
  
• Updated Basin tunnel exits to be from the Ecuador art set
  
• Updated 1.x, 2.x & wood ant variant video thumbnails
  
• Seasonal levels back to their regular scheduling

Optional beta V0.310046 is out. If you're not participating in the optional beta yet and would like to, follow the instructions in the original post!

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed northern dune tiger beetles spawning as allied to the player
  
• Fixed destructible barriers not sinking into the ground
  
• Fixed destructible barriers disappearing on load
  
• Fixed aphids staying when their plant is deleted
  
• Woodlice and woodworm will no longer invade nests
  
• Fixed defeated colonies in a custom game not dropping the resource type of the colony that dealt the killing blow
  
• AI nest entrance digging will now save and load correctly
  
• Creatures will now continue to spawn if day/night cycle is disabled
  
• Carnivorous plant landmarks no longer count towards max number of landmark spawns
  
• Fixed a broken patrol route in The Dunes
  

• Uber red velvet ant poisonous thorns reduced to 40% damage (down from 60%)
  
• Text will auto-wrap on all play menu buttons to help with overlapping issues in Russian & Spanish
  

Optional beta V0.310045 is out now.

IMPORTANT! Start a new freeplay save & do not play older ones

Please start a fresh one before playing further. Older saves will have issues that have now been corrected with saves from this patch onwards, and will no longer provide useful data for testing issues.

Wed suggest deleting the older saves so you dont load them any more. Or you could keep them as a really weird souvenir if you like, I dunno. Just don't test with them.

If you're not taking part in the beta yet and would like to, see the original post for instructions on how to join (the beta code is newbeachtesters).

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• All new uber creatures now have 8 harvesting spots
  
• AI colonies will no longer steal aphids from the player if they are allied to them
  
• Landmarks will no longer spawn in weird places like underground
  
• Caterpillar & aphid plants will remove resident caterpillars & aphids when deleted
  
• Fixed simultaneous winning & losing in a custom game (Linning? Wosing?)
  
• More sensible handling of landmark spawning & deletion
  
• Basin barrier invisibility issue fixed
  

• AI colonies prioritise food storage higher when space is low
  
• Will emphasise food storage near the start of a game
  
• Queen workers will not leave the nest in mature colonies
  
• Leafcutters wont build ant tiles other than workers until their first chamber is completed
  

If you're not participating in the optional beta yet and would like to, see the original post for details on how to participate.

Thanks for the feedback on the optional beta! Our Discord server has been a particularly active hive of activity over the last several hours since it was released, and we thoroughly encourage you to join - the devs are currently very active there, responding to bug reports and collating feedback. Theyre friendly devs, too, as long as John has had his 7 hours of sleep!

Weve addressed some of the more pressing issues that have cropped up in this patch (V0.310044) - this is the first of what we anticipate to be several patches during the testing period. The most urgent fix here is a translation problem that was causing large issues with freeplay setup in non-English languages.

Again, the reports are very much appreciated. These optional betas are vital to catching issues that need a much bigger sample size than we can manage with internal quality control and the small focus group - were so glad youre choosing to be a part of it!

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed translation issue affecting freeplay setup in several ways
  
• Large tiger beetle defeat line restored in 2.1
  
• Fixed an issue preventing creatures from fighting among us themselves
  
• Woodlice and woodworm should no longer appear in attack waves (terrifying though they were)
  
• Fixed overlapping issue on level select screen
  
• Disable Colony Attacks button should now work as intended
  
• Reordered some landmark spawning on game begin / load
  
• Fixes for some loading & saving crashes
  

• Remastered beach underground applied to the first formicarium
  
• 2.2s escaping queens can no longer be picked up by tiger beetle larvae
  

A large update is imminent - large enough that were running an optional beta to test it out before we make it permanent. Theres a complete reworking of the freeplay / custom game mode AI, a new streamlined setup mode called Skirmish, major rebalances for the campaign, a big extension to the enemy mounting system, and lots of new artwork to replace older assets.

We are after feedback on all manner of things in this very extensive update, mainly focusing on glitches that crop up, crashes, and balance. Any and all feedback on this optional beta is very much appreciated - please post it to the community discussions! Thanks so much to our focus group who have been providing feedback to get this patch to this point.

Please note that optional betas are only accessible on the Steam Windows 64 bit build.

WARNING: This beta changes many things about freeplay mode, including how it is saved! Old freeplay saves will no longer be loadable.

IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED TO MAKE A SAVE BACKUP: We highly recommend making a backup of your saved games before you run an optional beta, on the off-chance that some changes cause them to be corrupted. To see where your saves are stored, see the information in this thread on the Steam forums.

Code: newbeachtesters

If you would like to join the beta, the code is newbeachtesters. If you dont know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter newbeachtesters

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch

• Smarter AI - much cleverer freeplay AI! Itll give you a run for your jelly.
  
• Freer Freeplay - new freeplay features, new uber creatures!
  
• Skirmish Mode - quick-to-setup game vs AI colonies based on freeplay
  
• Prettier Artwork - for beach story & freeplay levels, & some creatures!
  
• Campaign Balance - the campaign has been rebalanced with many changes
  
• Mount Your Enemies - many more enemy creatures can now be climbed by your ants!
  

• Freeplay AI completely reworked
  
  
  
  • Much more intelligent building & food collection priority
    
  • Assist allies under attack & plan coordinated attacks
    
  • Guards resources, steals aphids, harrasses opponents
    
  • Nest designs tailored to species & room location
    
  • New build priority system for different species
    
  • Build orders adapt to storage & battle needs
    
  • Will hide from rising water on applicable maps
    
  • Customisable temperament & reactions
    
  
  
• Streamlined setup mode called Skirmish
  
  
  
  • Quick battle setup vs computer-controlled colonies
    
  • Emphasises colony vs colony combat with conquest victory condition
    
  • Preset landmarks & creature spawns
    
  • Generally shorter form games
    
  
  
• New landmarks
  
  
  
  • Huge creatures (whip spider, great blue skimmer or bullfrog)
    
  • Caterpillar plants
    
  • Relocatable aphid plants (rosemary in beach levels, fewflower milkweed otherwise)
    
  • Carnivorous plants
    
  
  
• New uber creatures
  
  
  
  • Bombardier beetle
    
  • Red velvet ant
    
  • Eastern newt
    
  • Narrow-mouthed toad
    
  
  
• Beach tiger beetle & beach wolf spider are now custom game only creatures
  
• The above have had stats & abilities changed to differentiate them from the new campaign creatures taking their place (see below)
  
• Freeplay can optionally use the fixed landmarks from Skirmish
  
• Freeplay now has the option of spawning environmental creatures with roaming patrol routes
  

• All beach, forest & rainforest creatures have had their food quantity recalculated & reduced
  
• All swamp creatures have had food quantities increased to bring them in line with the new values in the rest of the game
  

• Food has been added into both levels
  
• 1.2 slave maker attacks will now have level 2 & 3 ants amongst them
  
• 1.2 slave maker attacks will get harder more rapidly on hard & insane
  
• Challenge mode cricket attacks will be more frequent on harder difficulties
  
• Funnel web spiders now become food items rather than harvestable corpses on death
  
• Enemies in top-left of 1.2 will now attack the queen on being unearthed
  

• More food added to the undergrounds of both levels
  
• Has higher level enemy ants on the map & in attack waves
  
• Notification about creature mounting moved to 2.1
  
• 2.1 underground caverns added
  
• 2.1 has more daytime surface food
  
• 2.1 has a new food arrival event with new narrator dialogue
  
• 2.2 aphids now produce food throughout the night
  
• Melee wood ants speed increased to 320 up from 300
  
• Melee wood ants given 30% AoE resistance
  
• Reduced number of challenge mode beetle larvae in some areas
  
• Creature changes
  
• Beach tiger beetle replaced with northern dune tiger beetle (same stats as old beach tiger beetle)
  
• Beach wolf spider replaced with sand bear wolf spider (same stats as old beach wolf spider)
  
• Larger variant of hermit crab added
  

• Level 2 & 3 huge whip spider added for hard & insane in 3.2
  
• Significantly increased health of huge whip spider
  
• Huge whip spider now has a health bar like the bullfrog & great blue skimmer
  

• Aggressive creatures now drop a little more food
  
• Pervasive fire ant free hatch timer improved to 1m30s (from 1m40s)
  

• The beach environment has been updated to bring it up to the fidelity of the more recent swamp & rotting log environments. 2.1, 2.2 & the freeplay / custom game maps The Dunes & Towhead all use these new assets.
  
• New decorative beach assets: flowering bindweed, water weeds, limpets, scallop shells, sea-smoothed rocks, sea urchins
  
• New artwork for the 2 replacement beach creatures: northern dune tiger beetle & sand bear wolf spider
  
• New model for black ant queen
  
• New water look for beach levels
  

• Food has been added into most extra levels in line with the food value changes
  
• The Hungry Spider now has 80% thorns resistance
  
• Aggrandise
  
  
  
  • Different levels of huge whip spider final boss added depending on difficulty
    
  • Removed extra whip spider juveniles from the final boss
    
  • Fish no longer loses resources on harder difficulties
    
  • Huge whip spider will no longer ignore players ants on the way to the queen
    
  
  

• Realistic Mode removed & replaced with Advanced Options for control of individual things it did
  
• Seasonal costumes option added in Advanced Options to allow them to be disabled
  
• Point values have been reassessed & updated (this affects enemy creature spawning & score)
  
• User interface updated in multiple places (augmentations, level select, options menu, achievements) to use up more screen space & allow more space for language & UI scaling
  
• UI scaling slider added to the menu to allow manual increasing of UI scale (good for handhelds & TVs)
  
• Updated harvesting spots on some dead creatures so no more ants are harvesting than there is food available
  
• Minor performance improvements & reduction of visual artefacts on resources
  
• Changed the Battle Arena tile set to the new beach one
  
• Localisation additions & changes
  
• Updated enemy mounting button icon
  
• Tooltips will now show when the game is paused
  

• Fixed some visual effects remaining on creatures after death
  
• Fixed an issue where attack points could sometimes be unreachable causing attacker to wait on the floor by them
  
• Uber velvet worm can now be harvested by 8 ants at a time
  
• 1.1 & 1.2 player colony now black in colour
  
• Fixed an issue in Tug Of War 2 that would lead to the enemy colony spawning black ants
  
• Decals now correctly delete when a tile is downgraded or deleted
  
• Fixed an issue where ants would not rotate for a short while after collecting a queen egg
  
• Fixed an issue where ladybirds may not land if they are not being observed by the player (quantum ladybird wave function now collapsed)
  
• Fixed an issue where loaded eggs would only appear after the game had started
  
• Fixed a pontoon construction point in 4.2
  
• Numerous text & AI scaling fixes
  
• Matched the colour select UI more closely to the in-game colours
  
• Queens will no longer perform pain animation on loading
  
• Salamanders & newts will still be rendered when just off-screen
  
• Aura effects should display better on inclined surfaces
  
• Lynx spider should no longer do its climbing animation when walking
  
• Fixed a wood ant firing sound issue
  

[previewyoutube=UvPU0OwS59o;full][/previewyoutube]

Vlog 5 talks mainly about the planned summer update for Empires of the Undergrowth - balance changes to the campaign, new uber creatures, new artwork and more.

We also check in on Dan P with some updates to Horticular, Adapt and Ecosystem coming in the near future (other games published by Slug Disco) - if you want to skip that and get straight to the EotU stuff, the timecode is 4:54.

We've had the last of our extra levels in the 'sequel season', so it's time to re-evaluate the road ahead with an updated map. The compressed parts of the previous one are fast approaching, so we can 'zoom in' on that part of it, as it were, to give a bit more detail. Most of this newsletter will deal with breaking down what'll be arriving in the near future.


A bombardier beetle attacks fire ants from NappyB on our Discord

We also have some business news - we've joined with indie publishers Hooded Horse to publish Empires of the Undergrowth! There are also some real-world events we'll be attending soon. More on that later - first and foremost, let's get the new roadmap up and talk through it in order.

New Roadmap

Here's the updated roadmap. Please note that the exact order in which things will happen, as well as the timings, are very approximate - sometimes things take more time than expected, and sometimes they take less. Some of the updates may be clumped together, whilst others may be more spread out.


Graphic design is my passion (click to see full size)

[h2]The End of Sequel Season[/h2]

Starting on the right-hand side in the top corner, we've just had the last of the 'sequel season' of extra levels. The Culling 2 was released on May 1, and it represents the last of the extra levels we had stocked up for you lovely people to play whilst we work on the big stuff. Rather than panic and quickly develop a bunch more of them, we thought we'd wait a while and just concentrate on getting to a point where we've released our planned changes to the existing campaign levels and freeplay mode.

[previewyoutube=NQMPgGBDUTA;full][/previewyoutube]

Sequel season was a really neat opportunity to revisit some of the older extra level ideas, and give them a new spin in the context of the content that has been added to the game in the meantime. Undoubtedly there will be more extra levels (represented towards the centre of the roadmap, after all of the near-future updates are released) but for the meantime we're quite happy with the reception given to the four in this set.

[h2]Campaign Balance Pass & Level Changes[/h2]

The upcoming balance changes to the campaign levels will be arriving sooner rather than later. They shouldn't be thought of as blanket changes - each level has been reworked to accommodate the changed food values (in general less food from dead enemies and more from other sources, except in tier 4 where food from creatures has increased), and in the case of the beach levels some larger changes are being made.

[h2]Beach Creature Changes[/h2]

A new size class of hermit crab has been added which will patrol the beach at night, and aphids will continue to produce honeydew after dark (making them a much more valuable commodity to look after). There's also some stuff that will make use of some previously unused narrator dialogue, making the overall changes to the beach levels far more interesting than a simple food rebalance.


What doesn't kill you, usually succeeds in the second attempt

Apart from the new crab size class, 'beach creature changes' also refers to the changes to the wolf spider and tiger beetle that were detailed in the previous newsletter and vlog - the link here has the right timecode for that moment (at 3:36). These are art-only changes (apart from the food rebalance) to firmly establish the location of the beach levels as coastal Europe.

[h2]UI & Quality-of-Life Changes[/h2]

A host of changes are coming to the menu system and user interface - more menus will be full screen-sized rather than floating boxes, making the visuals less cluttered when navigating them. The old and unhelpfully-named option called realistic mode has been broken down into its component pieces (hiding pheromone markers, trails, and buried food and creature outlines) and added to a new tab on the updated menu, which also includes options for disabling seasonal hats on the queen if you so wish - not everyone wants to look at a Santa hat in December.


Updated level selection menu

The most eye-catchingly obvious of these changes is probably the level launch menu, which looks much cleaner and has some fancy live-rendered ants in it now. You can see this in motion in last months vlog (at 4:41 seconds).

The whole interface itself will soon have an option to set its scale, which is a long-requested feature for both accessibility and display format reasons. Apart from being a must for players with visual perception or eyesight issues, people who want to play on the Steam Deck or to use a controller whilst looking at a TV on the opposite side of the room will soon find text and menus across the game a much more readable experience.

[h2]Art Asset Changes[/h2]

Weve been working since the new year on updating the beach assets to bring them up to scratch with the precedent set for the swamp and rotting log environments. This was detailed more in the previous newsletter - so go and check that out for more extensive details (the same goes for the new black ant queen model).


WIP beach (ignore unfinished nest entrances, etc)

[h2]Freeplay AI[/h2]

We've been hard at work plugging in all the sprockets and widgets to bring the improved AI systems to freeplay. In this quick demonstration video, you can see an AI colony respond directly to a threat near their nest entrance and engage its harassment module to fight off the intruders.

[previewyoutube=YtYkRl-8Eas;full][/previewyoutube]

When it realises the odds are not in its favour, it makes the independent decision to make a tactical retreat before it loses all of its ants. This form of reactive AI was much simpler in its previous implementation for freeplay colonies, and its satisfying to see this coming together now. The work to make this more intelligent AI system saveable in freeplay mode has recently neared completion, so were fairly confident in putting this in the more imminent section of the roadmap. Freeplay games that include AI colonies should be significantly more engaging and more tactically diverse.

[h2]New Freeplay Landmarks & Options[/h2]

The new landmarks that are coming include large creatures (currently bullfrogs, dragonflies and whip spiders) and relocatable aphids on milkweed plants. The new options include the ability to drop some of the early game randomness of the landmarks, making the placement of them more intelligently fair, at least at the start of a freeplay run to allow the player time to build up before the difficulty ramps.

[h2]The True Interim Update[/h2]

Interim Update is the unofficial term weve been using for the large sets of changes coming between the fire ant and final campaign updates, taking the name from a convention we used in an earlier update cycle. Since a good chunk of what was considered part of this update will be ready sooner (and is therefore earlier on the roadmap), well keep the name for everything else that is likely to come a bit later. At that point, well do a dedicated video covering all the changes.


Fishing spider spies you with all eight eyes

The 4th tier challenge mode (featuring the six-spotted fishing spider, Dolomedes triton) and the new freeplay map Wetlands that prominently features fire ant bridge building make up the most anticipated part of this update, but the new uber creatures are sure to be a welcome addition as well. The game will get its full complement of achievements at this point, too (with the exception of some that will come with full release).

[h2]Version 1.0 - New Game Plus[/h2]

The new addition for this part of the roadmap that needs a little more clarification is New Game Plus mode. It was detailed very thoroughly in last months vlog (5:58), so for a full rundown thats the definitive source. For conveniences sake heres a brief summary:

• Upon completing the campaign, youll have the option of converting a save to New Game Plus
  
• That process will be similar to rehousing the colony in the campaign in terms of lost resources and gained royal jelly
  
• All levels will be significantly harder
  
• All ants will be unlockable from the start with your stash of jelly, including the bonus species (bullet ants)
  
• Queen upgrades, species-specific upgrade and minor improvements will all be active in documentary campaign missions in New Game Plus mode to counteract the increased difficulty
  
• The mode can be completed again, in New Game Mode +2, 3, etc to an as-yet undefined limit
  

The Culling 2 - the final level in the 'sequel season' series - is out now in Extra Levels!

[previewyoutube=NQMPgGBDUTA;full][/previewyoutube]

Take command of big-headed ants (Pheidole morrisii) in their first stand-alone level. In The Culling 2, your colony must survive for six nights in the swamp, whilst packs of hostile creatures invade as darkness falls. They will build up over time, eventually becoming overwhelming - even for the best-prepared colonies.

Your hope lies in controlling the amount of enemies before they become insurmountable. Cull their numbers during the day, whilst gathering food to last out the night. Mighty big-headed supersoldiers will help you hold the lines as they charge and crush their enemies with a single bite.

We hope you've enjoyed extra level sequel season! We'll be taking a break from extra levels for a while, as we're concentrating on the freeplay and tier 5 updates for the timebeing.

Hi all,

In the next few days we will making some adjustments to the regional pricing of Empires of the Undergrowth. The USD price of the game is staying the same at $19.99, and the Euro price will remain 19.99 also. The regional discounts in some other currencies will be reduced to become closer to the USD & Euro price.

We thought we should give a heads-up so that anyone who's been waiting to pull the trigger before the regional changes come into effect can make an informed decision. The change will likely occur on Monday 1st May.

With the Earth Appreciation Festival in full swing, we thought it'd be a good time to do a short livestream of Empires of the Undergrowth! Community manager Mike will be playing one of the more recently added campaign levels (4.1 'Cold Blood') for the occasion. Please join in, and ask any questions you like!

[previewyoutube=QfV_RIE7Ffg;full][/previewyoutube]

The Earth Appreciation Festival is now live on Steam! Slug Disco is a co-organiser of the event this year, along with Mechanistry and Straw Fawn.

Empires of the Undergrowth is 10% off in this festival of games that highlight the wonders of nature (such as EotU, Timberborn and Wandering Village) as well as games that deal with human-made issues, such as Frostpunk, Deponia and This War of Mine.



Slug Disco and Hooded Horse will be donating 10% of revenue generated by Empires of the Undergrowth during the event to Buglife, a UK-based invertebrate conservation charity that is very close to our hearts. Invertebrates represent a fundamental part of the ecosystem, and we're very happy to be supporting a charity that works towards their conservation.

We'll check in again a little later in the week with the Earth Appreciation Festival to see how things are going, perhaps with a little round-up video - see you then!

Challenge mode, and game plus, and new artwork, oh my!

After going over some in-person events that have happened recently for a couple of Slug Disco's other publishing projects and an important business move, Mike breaks down recent progress for Empires of the Undergrowth - including the long-anticipated challenge mode for tier 4, and plans for the post-campaign game plus mode coming along with tier 5.

To skip the Slug Disco news and get directly to the Empires of the Undergrowth goodness, start the video at 03:11.

[previewyoutube=cdkz5PqfN28;full][/previewyoutube]

The penultimate level in our Sequel Season is here - the short-form extra level Enemy of my Enemy 2 puts your queen in the middle of a map, surrounded by hostile creatures. All of them must be eliminated to win, but only a small garrison of Royal Guard ants protects the queen.

[previewyoutube=5SK4Kn1cuLE;full][/previewyoutube]

You can't build brood chambers, but you can dig with your mouse. Thankfully, the enemy packs are hostile to one another - and therein lies the key to victory. Tunnel them out strategically, forcing them to encounter one another before reaching the queen.

We think this level will probably benefit from another balance pass in the future due to it being too difficult, but we aren't quite in a position to make a new build of the game for it just yet due to our current work on the campaign and freeplay changes. For now, it will remain an extremely difficult extra level (almost certainly the most difficult, particularly on insane difficulty) but we are curious to see if a meta arises that can reliably beat it before we make any changes!

Extra levels don't take us very long to develop - they're there to give everyone some extra time in the Undergrowth whilst we work on the really big stuff!

We're entering a stage of development where we're making some pretty fundamental changes to both the campaign and freeplay mode, in order to get them closer to their final implementation when the game leaves early access. That's been the priority for our devs in the past few weeks - and we'll detail some of the changes that are coming in this newsletter.


A fire ant about to be entangled from NappyB

On the graphical side of things, there's a new Formica fusca queen model on the way and a change to two of the beach creatures for geographical consistency. We've also been finalising work for the visual improvement of the beach levels. Whilst we're not ready to show that in all its glory we will go through some of the new things that will be making the beach even beach-ier than it was before.

A little later this month we'll have the penultimate extra level in the Sequel Season appearing. Once again, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Well, not quite your friend, it'll attack you, too - but you get the idea.

Finally, in late February I sat our 3 devs down to confront them with the harsh reality that some people don't like their game. This was a giggle, and all in good fun - see the results later!

Campaign Balance Updates

We have been due a large overhaul of the campaign ever since the fire ant update. The food balancing in the 4.x levels is closer to our philosophy going forward for how food from aggressive creatures will work in the finished project, and we are now at a point where it's time to implement this.


Something on your nose? From Dolly on our Discord

To reiterate the reasoning behind this - in the game as it currently stands, colonies often reach a 'tipping point' beyond which nothing can realistically threaten them, and this was not our original intention. Some creatures have methods of circumventing this, such as wolf spiders that can charge past ant lines underground - but these are more like band-aids over a much deeper issue. Once the colony cannot be realistically threatened, things become much less interactive. Enemies arriving in the nest to attack the queen become, instead of a threat, a free delivery.



We balanced the fire ant levels with this philosophy, with aggressive creatures dropping significantly less food for their difficulty than creatures in the 1st and 2nd tiers (the 3rd tier is immune to this due to leafcutters not eating creatures). We accept that the difference is quite jarring and can be disconcerting for a player who is used to a level of resources from fallen critters in previous tiers.

We agree with the overall consensus that we pushed things too far in the other direction when it came to balancing 4.x, so we're going to be increasing food from aggressive creatures a little in those levels whilst decreasing it across the board in the rest of the campaign. Food from other sources is being increased to compensate, but players starting the campaign from scratch should get a much more consistent feel for what they can expect from slain aggressive creatures.

Such a change is going to require tweaking, and we'll be inviting the community to be a part of that when the time comes. It's likely that we will run an extended optional beta.

Freeplay Changes

We originally envisaged the upcoming freeplay changes to be a lesser update, rather than the entire overhaul that it's turning out to be! As we've moved forward with introducing the improved AI systems from the 4.x levels into it, we've come to the inevitable conclusion that, stats-wise, freeplay and the campaign operate on two entirely different levels. If we want to balance plant-harvesting leafcutters against voracious omnivores like fire ants, we're going to need a different set of numbers.

A short time ago, the stats for critters in the campaign and freeplay were divorced from one another, so that they can be balanced separately. How different they need to be will be down to the testing phase, once again, and we are very likely to run another optional beta for the freeplay changes. This is likely to be ready for testing after the campaign balance pass detailed above, so will probably be a separate event to it.

Other changes are also in the works for freeplay - a CSV-driven way of sharing freeplay setups is being implemented (the rarely-used copy/paste method is going to be retired), and this ties into another exciting addition to the mode that we'll detail in a future newsletter or vlog.

Outside of these larger changes, a smaller one that is freeplay-relevant is an increase of the number of harvest points on an uber velvet worm to 8. This was just an oversight with this one particular creature and did not represent where we intend to go on that front!

New Creature Artwork

One of the earliest models made for Empires of the Undergrowth in its current form is the Formica fusca queen. Matt has been itching to have another go at her, and has recently done so. We're sure you agree that the new model is much improved!


The new Formica fusca queen

Since she's a constant, static feature in levels she features in, she was a much more pressing candidate for improvement over other models. Older stuff can always be improved, and we have a priority list for this. Improvements to, or replacements for, other models depends on time.


View from above

We will be making changes to two of the beach creatures for reasons that shall be detailed shortly - both the tiger beetle and the wolf spider will be replaced with similar yet distinct species. Earlier in the project, in the geographical crunch that was necessary to get the game to an initial early access release, the intended location of the beach levels (coastal Europe) was compromised by the inclusion of two North American species - the beach tiger beetle (Cicindela dorsalis) and the beach wolf spider (Arctosa littoralis).



The northern dune

This is now being corrected. The beach tiger beetle is being replaced by the northern dune tiger beetle (Cicindela hybrida). This beetle has different pigmentation to its predecessor, but shares the same behaviour - including an appetite for ants.


The new king of speed on the intertidal flats

The beach wolf spider is being replaced with the splendidly-named sand bear wolf spider (Arctosa perita). An active night-time hunter, it shares the same niche as its American cousin and will also be a one-to-one replacement for it in the campaign levels.

[previewyoutube=07DZYb_oKJA;full][/previewyoutube]

We see no reason to replace the existing species in places such as extra levels, so dorsalis and littoralis will still be around for the foreseeable future! So, in the current plans, the Hungry Spider will remain a beach wolf.


Texture differences between the new (left) and old

Beach Decoration

The art team has been hard at work sprucing up the beach environment to bring it up to scratch with the more recent additions. Environment artist Dan C has been building pebbles, plants and shells, and creating a large amount of sand textures. So much sand.


Sea-smoothed pebbles for your improved beach!

New decorative elements for the beach include limpet and scallop shells, as well as other marine adornments such as seaweed and flowering bindweed.


Lots of new beach assets appearing in the game files now

Please note that in the small thumbnails of the assets in the above editor screenshot they are missing their in-game textures. These are starting to go into the levels now, and our hope is that we can include the beach visual improvements alongside the campaign balance pass beta test.

Enemy of my Enemy 2

Within the next few weeks from the time of writing, extra level Enemy of my Enemy 2 will appear. Like in its predecessor, digging is done with the mouse and no ants are controlled. This time around, the queen is located at the very centre of the map, which puts her at a much more perilous crossroads.


Uh-oh!

Buried enemy packs are hostile to each other, and the order in which you unearth them is crucial. Get them to take each other out before they reach your queen, where a limited number of powerful Royal Guard ants are protecting her. Harder difficulties represent a more intricate puzzle, and as always with these types of extra levels, game knowledge and a good feel for how powerful individual creatures are is paramount.


A red velvet ant threatens the queen, from tester NappyB

As things stand, the higher difficulties of this level are very difficult - perhaps too difficult! Its due a final balance pass, but were not in a position to package another build of the game before it appears (everything is current in bits because of the ongoing campaign and freeplay changes). Well be interested to see if a distinct meta appears to beat insane difficulty before we get a chance to apply a rebalance!

Reacting to Mean Comments

In late February, I sat down with our 3 devs John, Liam and Matt, with the intention of bruising their egos a little. Whilst weve had plenty of support for Empires of the Undergrowth, theres definitely some meaner comments out there and I thought itd be healthy (and definitely not soul-destroying) for them to read through them.

[previewyoutube=4s5qT_7nnoo;full][/previewyoutube]

We all had a giggle making this, and no foul is intended to anyone whose comment is featured in it! Lets be honest, everyone who says we take a long time to do things isnt wrong. There are few combinations as deep-cutting as both mean and witty, as many of the featured comments demonstrate. Youve got to laugh, havent you?

Thanks to our Discord members, and Chinese community managers Kaidi and Lin, for helping me organise and collate the comments for this video.

Screenshot Central

If youd like to submit a screenshot for this part of the newsletter, the easiest way for us to see it is to post it on the appropriate channel of our community Discord. Alternatively, you can post it to the Steam Community which Ill occasionally rifle through. As an absolute last resort, you can email me at mike@slugdisco.com.

To get better screenies, hold down shift when entering screenshot mode to uncouple your camera from the ground plain.


A squadron of salamanders from Bananta on Steam


A swarmed spider from doom guy


One last look at the old black ant queen from heheboiboi999

Our third company vlog is out now, and there's a few juicy details in the Empires of the Undergrowth section. Our creature artist Matt has made a new Formica fusca queen model, and there's some details about upcoming extra levels and large changes to freeplay coming in a major update a bit further down the line.

If you'd like to skip to the meaty EotU content, then the time code is 6:18.

[previewyoutube=b9Sf5x7CIbM;full][/previewyoutube]

Slug Disco publishes several other games other than EotU (but we only develop EotU), and the start of the vlog deals with these as well as some general company updates first.

The Empires of the Undergrowth auto-battler mode is back with a new level. Tug of War 2 continues our Sequel Season of extra levels - with a new set of ants to use, and a whole different set of enemy builds to fight against. Tug of War 2 is a short-form level versus an AI opponent. Army composition is everything in this auto-battler game mode.

You do not control your ants directly - they will all hatch together, in waves, and immediately rush to take down the enemy queen - but your opponent has the same goal. Resources are given at regular intervals, and you'll have to make every seed count. You don't want to be playing catch-up - fall too far behind and you'll quickly find yourself overwhelmed.

[previewyoutube=5LAWGR8SUzc;full][/previewyoutube]

Extra levels are relatively easily-made content (since they re-use existing assets and systems) that we spend a little of our dev time on whilst we work on the much bigger stuff. We always have fun making them, and we're currently in the midst of Sequel Season - follow-ups to previous extra levels, playing on their ideas in a slightly different way.

In other development news, we've made an update to the black ant (Formica fusca) model which will be rolling out with the next update, made some sensible changes to menu options, as well as made large strides towards getting the improved colony AI from the 4.x levels compatible with freeplay. In the next week or so there will be a vlog detailing these developments and more!

Theres a new seasonal level, New Years Feast, and its available now with the latest patch! We like to break from reality with our extra and seasonal levels, and weve had a lot of fun making this one. Play it by clicking on the lantern that has appeared in the main menu.

[previewyoutube=5Kz-w3A_4k0;full][/previewyoutube]
Its almost time for Lunar New Year, and the fire ant queen is making her famous New Year's Eve hotpot for her family and friends. However, in the chaos of the party preparations, her daughters have forgotten to forage for the ingredients for the broth. Help them find the correct spices in time for dinner, whilst making liberal use of festive firecrackers to clear enemies and shorten your path.

Its not just a fire ant level, though - this New Years party has many guests who have gotten lost in the undergrowth. Rescue them from peril and bring them home safely - to show their gratitude, theyll add their species to your colony!

This is a very special seasonal level and we cant wait for you to have a go - so jump right in! There are a bunch of other fixes and changes that also arrive with this patch, so lets break down the full patch notes.

V0.30215 Patch Notes

[h2]Headline Feature - New Years Feast[/h2]

• Help the fire ant queen gather ingredients for her New Years hotpot
  
• Theres an explosive accompaniment to go along with the broth
  
• Rescue friendly ants to add their species to your colony
  
• New artwork & music set the tone of this festive level

• Adventure
  
  
  • Players can now choose between Royal Guard & Royal Decree
    
  • Supermajor abilities no longer cool down when game is paused
    
  • Royal Guard ants are now leafcutter-shaped if used in a leafcutter colony
    
  • Updated some text to say nimble rather than evasive
    
  • Inaccessible leaf made accessible
  
  
• Fixed level selection menu disappearing after winning a formicarium challenge
  
• Fixed a foliage rendering issue
  
• Creature swarming optimisations
  
• Tweaked animation distance optimisations
  
• Rotting Log aesthetic added to tutorial level
  
• Rotting Log aesthetic added to Hold Out & The Nest demo levels
  
• Correct loading screens attached to demo levels
  
• Corrected spelling mistakes here and there
  
• Fixed some text formatting issues in various localisations
  
• Fixed BHA workers showing as wood ants in the UI
  
• UI buttons should now only appear on appropriate levels (creature climbing, etc)
  
• Voice credits updated
  
• Freesound credits updated
  

Hang on a minute, where on Earth did 2022 go? That whole fire ant update thing went by in such a blur. It still feels like it was last week, but it was very nearly six months ago now! Welcome to a brand spanking new year - 2023, which kicks off with several more extra levels in our 'Sequel Season', as well as a surprise or two along the way.


Happy New Year from Medin on our Discord

Before we get into upcoming stuff for EotU and things happening in Slug Disco as a company, I'll just take a moment to thank each and every one of you for making 2022 by far the best year that Empires of the Undergrowth has had, in every reasonably measurable metric. We make this stuff, but it's you who makes it a success and gives us the drive to continue. We hope to carry on with that energy in 2023.

[h2]Sequel Season - Tug of War 2[/h2]

Our Sequel Season of extra levels continues soon, with Tug of War 2 arriving in the next few weeks. Like its predecessor, it is a 1v1 versus an AI enemy where you build up an army with timed injections of resources, which will hatch at regular intervals and automatically battle with the opponent.


It's tuggin' time

The surface layout is a little different than in Tug of War 1 (and with the swamp aesthetic), but the main difference here is the army composition. This time around you'll have access to units such as little black ant soldiers and big-headed ant supersoldiers. This provides a markedly different experience to the first one, and will require different strategies to prevail.

We still have another few levels to go that are a part of Sequel Season, and we'll continue releasing them a month or two apart until we're done. We also have a new seasonal level that is apart from it, so let's talk a little bit about that next.

[h2]New Seasonal Level[/h2]

In the near future there will be a new seasonal level appearing on the main menu. Like the gift and cobweb for the Festive and Hungry Spider levels respectively, a new object will appear whilst this level is available and must be clicked to access it.

Whilst seasonal, the only thing I'll say about this one is that it's not another Hungry Spider one. It'll just appear one day on the main menu - keep an eye out for it, its gonna be a cracker!

[h2]Beach Revamp[/h2]

Now that we've completed our rework of the look for the 'rotting log' levels, our environment artist Dan C has moved on to creating some higher fidelity assets to improve the look of the beach levels. We don't have any finalised things to show you on this front just yet, but rest assured that the beaches will be adorned with a wider variety of plant life and the new sand will be more coarse, rough and irritating than ever!


I know pebbles aren't all that exciting but look, the remastering is happening!

When he first started working on new materials and textures for the swamp levels shortly after joining us at Slug Disco, Dan requested an expansion of Matt's texture system to allow for different looks for the environment - the damp, reflective and swamp-like look of the 4th tier levels are achieved through this expansion. Expect to see that at work with the updated beach environment.

[h2]Freeplay Update Progress[/h2]

Work is continuing apace on fairly large changes to freeplay - probably the most notable of those recently is the addition of large creatures (bullfrogs, blue skimmers and huge whip spiders) as special, rarer-spawning landmarks in the mode. These large creatures, like in their campaign levels, will not represent an existential threat to your colony but do represent an area denial, as well as a food source once theyre defeated.

[previewyoutube=QJbMb1pL1yg;full][/previewyoutube]
Large creatures and fire ant bridges are detailed in this vlog post (4:45)

In the case of the skimmer, they will be a bit trickier - until their home landmark is happened upon by the player, they will be flying around the map - so youll be aware of their presence, but you wont know exactly where their home turf is until you try to walk through it and it lands!

Getting fire ant bridges to properly work and save properly in freeplay is another ongoing area of development (and source of much frustrating busywork) - both pure Solenopsis invicta and gene thief Formica ereptor colonies will be able to build bridges. In the case of the latter only fire ants will be able to build bridges, but the other ant varieties in the colony will be able to use them.

[h2]Tier 5 Reveal When?[/h2]

We've got quite a lot of work on the fifth tier of the formicarium very nearly ready to show off, but we want to make a bit of an event of the official reveal for the focal species for the final levels of the campaign. Several critters are complete and ready to show, but giving away even one of them will spoil a whole lot more by association!

A little while ago, we decided that we will do an official announcement, very likely with a video, showing the new ants and some of the new creatures when we've got some updated environments to show them in. Since we're now working on the beach revamp, that's going to be our milestone - we'll use the updated beach to show off the tier 5 ants, even though that won't be their final environment.

As always, we don't really like doing much in the way of estimates (since we are so frequently incorrect with them) - we much prefer firm dates, or just dropping things out of the blue.

As far as where we're at with tier 5 - the campaign levels are blocked out, and many specific one-off systems needed for them are being developed. Particularly exciting to see has been a sequence of events involving one of the new large creatures that will appear in one of the levels - but that's enough about that for now!

[h2]ICS Recap[/h2]

We spoke about the ICS (Insane Completionist Slugs) Discord server a few newsletters back, but it's worth mentioning them again now. They're a small community dedicated to insane-difficulty completion and challenges that really push the limit in Empires of the Undergrowth, and they're constantly working to beat what was previously thought to be impossible in the game, and more often than not they're succeeding.


The ICS. A noble institution.

Some of the more recent challenges that have been worked on include workers-only runs of the entire campaign in increasingly higher difficulties, and even deathless runs (no loss of colony members) of individual levels - you have to be a specific kind of person to be able to put in the grind for this kind of thing, but if that's what you're into, then the ICS is for you. You can join their server at this link. They're a friendly bunch and you're welcome to join the server just to partake in their community, even if you're not going to do all of the challenges.

[h2]New Community Managers[/h2]

In the past few weeks, we've had two new team members join us - please welcome Kaidi and Lin to Slug Disco, who are joining Mike & Dan P in the community management / marketing department. If you frequent services such as Bilibili, Tieba and Douyin, you're likely to be talking to them in the future if you interact with our official accounts.

[h2]New Game[/h2]

We will soon be adding a new project to the pantheon of Slug Disco-published games. As with all of our games besides Empires of the Undergrowth, we will not be developing it directly, but publishing it - meaning we are using some of our marketing resources to help get the game out to the world.

We'll have a segment in the next vlog by Dan that talks to the developer of this project in a little more detail, and the dev hopes to have a playable demo ready before that time so you can get stuck in. We're not quite ready to announce what the game is just yet - but we will be doing so very shortly. Keep your eyes on our socials later this month for the scoop!

[h2]Screenshot Central[/h2]

Always the best part of the newsletter to write, this time around all of the entries for Screenshot Central come from the Steam Community page. Thats one way to get screenshots to us - another is to use our Discord, which has its own dedicated screenshot channel that is posted on by our regulars. I usually take the weekly Screenshot Saturday post from there.

A little tip - if you hold down shift whilst pressing your photo mode button (F9 by default), the camera is freed from the confines of the arena and you can get some very interesting angles using the controls!


The swarm by zomboss479


A festive wood ant queen from leonardo.balda.01


An ultrawide shot of the rotting log from SHO

Occupation 2 is available now in the Extra Levels section!

The first in our Sequel Season of extra levels - this little black ant mission follows many of the same lines as its predecessor, but with a more urgent twist! Many critters will not wait patiently to be unearthed and will take a proactive approach to challenging your colony.

[previewyoutube=rrW33ibdRfE;full][/previewyoutube]

Extra levels take us very little time to develop, so we release them periodically as some nice bonus content for the community whilst we work on the bigger stuff!

We're currently working on large changes to freeplay, upgrading the art assets for the beach levels and creating the tier 5 levels.

We have several more planned for Sequel Season - stay tuned in the new year.

We're back with another vlog! This time Mike goes over upcoming changes to freeplay, how the Adventure + update went (and some changes coming to Adventure in the future) as well as talking briefly about a new unique seasonal level that will arrive in the not-too-distant future.

Towards the start of the video, our product marketing manager Dan talks about two other games that are published (but not developed) by Slug Disco, Ecosystem and Adapt. If you're not interested in those, skip to timecode 2:28 for the Empires of the Undergrowth meat.

[previewyoutube=QJbMb1pL1yg;full][/previewyoutube]

What could get you more into the spirit of the season than defending gifts against a horde of insects and arachnids using more insects and arachnids?

The Festive Spider is here for the holidays! Touch the gift box on the main menu to play.

[previewyoutube=_IPkapEX60c;full][/previewyoutube]

Help the Hungry Spider keep the gifts safe from the invaders. Be warned - like the Halloween level, this one is punishingly difficult and unforgiving - expect multiple playthroughs to perfect your strategy. This unique tower defense game mode is sure to keep you on your toes well into the new year.

We've made some updates to the free demo - if you've not taken the plunge yet then now's a great time to try out the demo, and if you like it, the game is 10% off for Steam's Autumn sale! This update adds the tutorial level that we recently added to the main game, as well as a limited form of the Battle Arena - a mode where you can easily pit the various critters found in the demo against each other to see what wins.

Demo Changes

• Tutorial added to demo
  
• Battle Arena added to demo with creatures included in the demo
  
• Demo levels The Nest and Hold Out updated to use rotting log textures
  
• New menu added to demo
  
• Various smaller changes from the full game are now reflected in the demo
  
• Support in demo for recently-added languages
  

V0.302036 has been released, addressing a few issues that came up over the last couple of days as well as making some mainly visual changes to the Hungry Spider level.

Patch notes below:

Additions

• The Hungry Spider level now uses the new rotting log tile set
  
• Enjoy the Hungry Spider event for longer - now until Nov 10th!
  
• A few extra pillars for cover and lighting near spawn on Hungry Spider
  
• Queens now have a gentle spotlight on them
  

• Fixed invisible cricket issues in Adventure
  
• Fixed a visual error in 1.2
  
• Tweaked rotting log materials
  
• Removed any possibility for unfinished landmarks to spawn in freeplay
  
• Notification given in the tutorial will always appear regardless of settings
  

Surprise, were doing it now! As it turns out, everything we talked about in yesterdays newsletter is good to go, so here it is! The Adventure + update is available now.

This is a regular update, but quite significantly larger than most of our regular updates. As well as the long-awaited extra level Adventure, weve also put the even longer-awaited velvet worm into its rightful place in the 3.x levels - including previously unheard narrator lines!

[previewyoutube=WZKoG6ORS2A;full][/previewyoutube]

This update also includes a feature that has been overdue for a long time - tutorial mode. New players will be encouraged to first play through the tutorial before diving into the campaign, and even more experienced players may benefit from the refresher course it provides. A redesigned menu integrates this addition into the game, with a new section called the arcade for extra levels, battle arena, and demo levels

Finally, the 1.x levels now have their own tile set - the rotting log will no longer look like sand! A new texturing of decomposing birch wood and crumbly soil will set it apart from the beach. Full patch notes below.

Headline Features

[h2]Velvet Worm[/h2]

• Added to 3.x levels, freeplay, battle arena & new extra level Adventure
  
• Long creature with the ability to spray slimy glue at its enemies that slows them
  
• Comes in 3 sizes of varying strength
  

• A long-form leafcutter extra level with unique mechanics
  
• Build up XP to upgrade your colony & unlock new units
  
• Unlock the uber velvet worm for use in freeplay as a reward
  

• A new 10-15 minute tutorial to explain the basics in a practical way
  
• Goes over digging, hatching, pheromones, combat & more
  
• Both new & experienced players should benefit from this thorough tutorial
  

• More descriptive buttons to guide players to the right place
  
• Will highlight tutorial mode for new players
  
• Added an arcade section for battle arena, extra levels & demo levels
  

• Woody, crumbly textures added for the rotting log environment
  
• 1.x levels no longer use the beach underground tile set
  

• Big-headed ant workers are no longer encumbered when carrying
  
• Camera rotation buttons are now rebindable
  
• Resource, tile & creature info toggles moved to side of pheromone panel
  
• Reworked underground lamp distribution
  
• Hold Out scoreboard changed to match that of Extremis
  
• Added thumbnails for demo levels
  
• Some rewording of objectives & descriptions
  
• Numerous improvements & optimisations to many game processes
  
• Updated localisations
  

• Enemy colony in 3.1 should no longer hide underground permanently
  
• 1.1 victory cinematic reworked slightly to not show the sky
  
• Subtitles no longer overlap if a certain creature is killed too quickly in FC4
  
• Fixed an issue that caused lynx spiders to shrink on loading a freeplay game
  
• Fixed accidental switching of some minor improvements menu descriptions
  
• Status effect particles now present for the hungry spider
  
• Extra level scoreboards now all display the difficulty
  
• Fixed some spelling mistakes
  

We've had a remarkably busy couple of months since the last newsletter, and there's a fair few things to discuss relating to the next update for Empires of the Undergrowth. Most of this newsletter will be going over progress made in matters written about in the previous one. We're currently in a consolidation phase, working on improving under-the-hood systems to increase the efficiency and reliability of many game systems, as well as improving the onboarding process for new players and revamping some of the older artwork. We've also made some fairly extensive changes to the main menu.


A river crossing from Discord user Ice Age 2

Were also very close to introducing a long-awaited enemy to the game the velvet worm, and have several extra levels lined up over the next few months. To preempt the question of when all of the changes detailed in this newsletter will arrive, the answer is in the near future (fingers crossed)!

On the community side of things, weve also made the first edition of a new video series that will work alongside and in tandem with these newsletters. Well discuss the plans for those at the end of the newsletter, after all the game news. Lets get to it!

[h2]Velvet Worm Ready![/h2]

The velvet worm is ready for its debut!

It was intended to complete the menagerie of critters for the leafcutter levels (third tier), way back in the before-times of 2019. However, it was cut for time it has what was at that point a unique way of moving its long, slender body, and this required an inordinate amount of time for our animator Matt to perfect for just one creature. However, the system was brought up to scratch for the fourth tier both the salamander and newt use it. So, now is the time to bring back the slime-launching velvet one!

[previewyoutube=iKHwGbZ5JvU;full][/previewyoutube]

Velvet worms are voracious hunters of other invertebrates they are equipped with twin slime cannons near their mouths, which they use both to ensnare prey by tangling them up in a sticky web of glue, and to deter potential predators. The velvet worm will see its return to glory in the 3.x levels, but you will also be able to fight it in the next extra level to arrive Adventure.


Who would win two dozen angry leafcutter ants or one velvet boi?

[h2]Its Nearly Adventure Time![/h2]

The first of several planned extra levels coming over the next few months, Adventure is likely to yield the longest playtime of any level in the game so far, so ensure you have a couple of hours set aside for it! Adventure is a leafcutter level with a unique XP system and many creative challenges.


Im looking for someone to share in an Adventure. Its you.

Complete the multitude of objectives and engage in combat to increase your XP, unlocking new units and upgrades for your leafcutter colony. Theres a host of dangers, both environmental and colony-based, as well as another encounter with Big Whippy the huge whip spider (in her fourth appearance in a level) and of course several variants of the new velvet worm.

You will also have the chance to raise a unique character, a mighty champion of the leafcutters, but lets wait for the level to be released before I spoil too much youll be playing it soon!

[h2]The Rotting Log[/h2]

During this consolidation phase, before we fully return to our work on the fifth tier, we have an opportunity to revisit some of the older parts of the game and improve them. After completing work on the green swamp, our environment artist Dan C has been focusing on making a rotting log environment up until now, the 1.x levels have borrowed the beach tile set, which is why the environment looks like sand rather than soil and wood.


Have you ever seen something so rotten yet so beautiful in all your days?

Taking inspiration from decomposing birch logs, we think this combination of crumbly wood and soil looks fantastic and finally gives the introductory levels of the campaign their own identity separate to the rest of the game. Its quite possible that some of the extra levels will use this tile set in the future, too. Once the new look for the rotting log is complete, we intend to put some work into bringing the beach levels up to 2022 standards as well.


Some serious isopod action in the rotting log environment

[h2]Main Menu Changes[/h2]

We thought that now was the time to make some changes to the main menu this incorporates the tutorial level in easy view along with a new submenu called arcade this will be the new home of extra levels, the battle arena and the demo levels.


Its a menu, not sure what else to tell ya pal

This new menu format gives us room to describe each menu choice in an aesthetically pleasing way the description will appear at the bottom of it when hovering the cursor over it.

[h2]Tutorial Mode Update[/h2]

Tutorial mode is now functionally complete we are simply waiting on the last of the localisations for it before we include it in a patch.

As detailed in the previous newsletter, by far the most common reason given for someone who requests a refund for Empires of the Undergrowth is our lack of a dedicated tutorial, or proper onboarding. Whilst the in-game tips and hints do teach the entirety of what there is to know about the game, relying on them alone is a large reading task and we realise they are ignored by many players.

Enter tutorial mode. Players will be encouraged to play through this special level (averaging 10-15 minutes) before jumping into the campaign. It gives a thorough understanding of the digging, hatching, food collection, and camera movement systems and a basic overview of combat. The popup tips will remain an integral part of ongoing training as a player progresses through the campaign, and the tutorial reinforces that at one point.


Tutorial mode simple, but educational

The tutorial mode highlights relevant parts of the UI as it goes on, giving visual indicators of what to do (and where). UI highlighting in this way is integral to a proper tutorial system and weve taken significant care to get it right here.

We have also observed during our time exhibiting the game at events that a not insignificant portion of players jump straight into freeplay, which does not come with its own training. New players will be encouraged to play the tutorial and campaign first, but can of course still go straight to freeplay if they wish (an open wiki or trial-and-error approach is still a valid way to play for those who wish to do so).

[h2]Optimisations[/h2]

A less flashy but vitally important part of what we do is profiling and optimisation of the game processes. As we continue, we identify older areas of code and art assets that are suboptimal by various methods. Matt, our engine specialist, has put significant time recently into identifying many systems that could do with having a few bolts tightened here and there. For example, a process that is executed every tick (loop of the UE4 program) might not actually need to be called so often to have the same effect, and profiling helps to identify these inefficiencies.

Whilst this work doesnt have direct evidence to show for itself in the form of a screenshot or video, it means that frame rates should be up across the board. This work is ongoing and is likely to continue as long as the project is still in development.

[h2]Vlogs[/h2]

As mentioned earlier, at the start of last month we put out the first of our vlogs a kind of video form of the newsletter that is intended to be its counterpart. Mike put himself in front of a greenscreen and talked freely about upcoming changes, some of which have been detailed further in this newsletter. Mike also realises hes now typing in the third person and thats really weird.

[previewyoutube=jhAKuBIspI8;full][/previewyoutube]

Note that the vlogs are not intended to replace the newsletters at all, just augment them. Well be doing one of these every other month, in between the newsletters. The next one is due towards the start of December, and Dan P (our product marketing manager) will be joining in that one with a section about Ecosystem and Adapt, two of the other games that Slug Disco publishes.

[h2]Screenshot Central[/h2]

Given that this upcoming update is rather leafcutter-themed, what with the velvet worm and Adventure and all, I thought wed keep with that theme for the screenshots section. As always, if youd like your screenshots featured in a future newsletter or in the weekly Screenshot Saturday hashtag we participate in on Twitter, the easiest way is to join our Discord and post in the appropriate channel. Alternatively, you can upload them to the Steam community or email them to mike@slugdisco.com. F9 enters photo mode (by default) to get some cool angles holding shift whilst pressing it will uncouple the camera from the ground for total freedom.



A moonlight harvest from Ay_Mar


The army is on the march from Xxgamingduo


Purple army ants munching on a dead leafcutter queen from AhYesANTS!

Tucked away in a dark corner of the world, this wolf spider hungers...

[previewyoutube=L3QtFadJryI;full][/previewyoutube]

...and it's up to you to slake his relentless thirst for hemolymph.

From midnight on the 25th October local time, the Hungry Spider will be here for the rest of the spooky season - and he is so very hungry. Access this festive extra level by selecting the spider web that has appeared on the main menu.

Be warned - this level is not for the faint of heart, or slow of pointer - it is intensely difficult and few have ever completed it. Those that do will earn themselves a special achievement as a badge of honour. Even under ideal conditions, expect multiple playthroughs to learn the quirks of the levelling and abilities system.

Slice the carapace, dissolve the innards, suck the juices, chop, melt, drink...

Time to talk about the immediate future of Empires of the Undergrowth, in video form.

[previewyoutube=jhAKuBIspI8;full][/previewyoutube]

This is the first of our new vlog format, which will act as a counterpart to the newsletters, running bi-monthly alongside and inbetween them. We recognise not everyone wants to read a 1,500 word essay to get their Empires of the Undergrowth news, so hopefully this video series fills in that gap!

If you have any better ideas for the vlog's name than just "Slug Disco Vlog" then please let us know.

This hotfix is currently only for Steam Windows 64 bit users but we thought it was crucial enough to get a fix out for our biggest user base as fast as possible. The fix for Windows 32 bit, Mac and other storefronts will roll out over the next few days.

Apologies for the confusing back-and-forth with this one - we released this update last night, but due to a change to aphids for a future update there was the unexpected effect of stripping aphids completely from the 4.x levels, so we had to revert it. All should now be well.

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]

• Fixed fire ants not being able to place pheromone markers on the surface in some freeplay maps
  

A whole bunch of fixes have been made, mainly regarding the fire ant update and freeplay (theres plenty more changes to freeplay coming in a larger update a bit further down the line). Extremis fans will be pleased to know that level is now playable again, and the poor bullfrog will no longer get beaten up by its lunch!

Thanks to everyone whos helped to test this patch over the last few days.

Patch Notes

[h2]4.1 Cold Blood[/h2]

• Bullfrog will now always eat creatures intended to feed it instead of being beaten up by them if they get too close
  
• Titan health bar will no longer appear during feeding events if the bullfrog is dead or has hopped away
  

• Players ants still in the Monomorium colony after it floods will now die
  
• Monomorium nest entrance now looks correct after end-of-level flood cinematic
  
• Reduced Top of the Hill level end requirements on all difficulties
  
• Underground aesthetic updated
  

• A few decals added to cupboard interior after FC4 for extra detail
  
• Fixed an issue where continuing play too quickly after FC4 could cause the end to not properly happen
  

• Little black ants & big-headed ants will no longer be called Atta cephalotes in defeat screen
  
• Fixed a convoluted issue in freeplay causing random leafcutters to spawn in the place of dead queens
  
• Fixed an issue in freeplay where if dead enemy colonies were in the game, creatures would be less likely to attack the player
  
• Fixed an issue where the freeplay setup info would always appear as if 4 players were in the game (1v1v1v1)
  
• Fixed an underground tile that was crashing games in Basin
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause fire ant queens in freeplay to be off the ground
  

• Extra level Extremis will not crash the game any more
  
• Fixed carried aphids sometimes being removed if the ant is distracted whilst picking it up
  
• Fixed refund being prevented for 2nd refuse tile / leaf drop-off chamber
  
• Moving queens in 2.2 can no longer be killed by environmental creatures
  
• Fixed army ants despawning in Beetles Rise Up! which sometimes made the level unwinnable
  
• Fixed autoclicker food duplication issue
  
• Various UI elements made more stretchy to account for languages with longer sentences
  
• Distance increased between Battle Arena lanes to prevent knockback abilities hurling critters into the other lane
  
• Fire ant & little black ant queen mesh repositioned so they should float less
  
• Fixed population totals not being updated when a tile is cancelled before being built
  
• Removed access to a decorative plant that looked appetising to leafcutters in 3.2
  
• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now only ever be visible by their rendered outline; no more accidentally seeing the model poking out somewhere
  
• Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 would never end if all creatures were dead at some point after spider spawn
  
• Can no longer click through augmentations menu to select a tile
  
• Reduced size of fire ant worker eggs so they are not poking out the top of the queen
  
• Cancelling a tile before it is built will now correctly update population totals
  
• Corrected some spelling issues in the Freesound credits
  

• Replaced queen worker chamber crown icon with a flag
  
• Team stripes added to abdomens of fire ants, little black ants & big-headed ants
  
• Reduced size of all little black ant eggs to make them properly little
  
• 'Play More' button removed from 2.2
  
• Couple more first-time playthrough hints added to the first formicarium
  
• Numerous texture optimisations; they should pop in faster
  
• Font update in minor improvements panel
  
• Various animation optimisations added
  
• Some lab decorations moved closer to the formicarium so they can be seen in play
  
• Objectives will now update faster when something has changed
  
• Star power scale is now taken into account for minimap & physical size of buried creatures
  
• When an indestructible tile is made destructible (by, for example, a toad burrowing through it in 4.1) the tile break effect will play
  
• Chinese localisations updated
  
• Credits updated
  

• Under some circumstances, fire ants seem unable to place pheromone markers on the surface in freeplay
  
• On rare occasion, fire ants can get stuck when they're part of a bridge and the bridge is disassembled
  
• Green lynx spiders can rarely get stuck at the base of a pitcher plant
  

Weve made a bunch of fixes and some changes since the fire ant update, so many in fact that we want to run an optional beta before full release to make sure we havent damaged some vital system somewhere. This opt-in beta will run for a short while.

Please note that optional betas are only accessible on the Steam Windows 64 bit build.

If you would like to join the beta, the code is fireantfixtest. If you dont know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter fireantfixtest

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

• Bullfrog will now always eat creatures intended to feed it instead of being beaten up by them if they get too close
  
• Titan health bar will no longer appear during feeding events if the bullfrog is dead or has hopped away
  

• Players ants still in the Monomorium colony after it floods will now die
  
• Monomorium nest entrance now looks correct after end-of-level flood cinematic
  
• Reduced Top of the Hill level end requirements on all difficulties
  
• Underground aesthetic updated
  

• A few decals added to cupboard interior after FC4 for extra detail
  
• Fixed an issue where continuing play too quickly after FC4 could cause the end to not properly happen
  

• Little black ants & big-headed ants will no longer be called Atta cephalotes in defeat screen
  
• Fixed a convoluted issue in freeplay causing random leafcutters to spawn in the place of dead queens
  
• Fixed an issue in freeplay where if dead enemy colonies were in the game, creatures would be less likely to attack the player
  
• Fixed an issue where the freeplay setup info would always appear as if 4 players were in the game (1v1v1v1)
  
• Fixed an underground tile that was crashing games in Basin
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause fire ant queens in freeplay to be off the ground
  

• Fixed carried aphids sometimes being removed if the ant is distracted whilst picking it up
  
• Fixed refund being prevented for 2nd refuse tile / leaf drop-off chamber
  
• Moving queens in 2.2 can no longer be killed by environmental creatures
  
• Replaced queen worker chamber crown icon with a flag
  
• Extremis will not crash the game any more
  
• Fixed army ants despawning in Beetles Rise Up! which sometimes made the level unwinnable
  
• Fixed autoclicker food duplication issue
  
• Various UI elements made more stretchy to account for languages with longer sentences
  
• Distance increased between Battle Arena lanes to prevent abilities with knockback hurling critters into the other lane
  
• Team stripes added to abdomens of fire ants, little black ants & big-headed ants
  
• Fire ant & little black ant queen mesh repositioned so they should float less
  
• Reduced size of all little black ant eggs to make them properly little
  
• Fixed population totals not being updated when a tile is cancelled before being built
  
• Removed access to a decorative plant that looked appetising to leafcutters in 3.2
  
• 'Play More' button removed from 2.2
  
• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now only ever be visible by their rendered outline; no more accidentally seeing the model poking out somewhere
  
• Couple more first-time playthrough hints added to the first formicarium
  
• Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 would never end if all creatures were dead at some point after spider spawn
  
• Numerous texture optimisations; they should pop in faster
  
• Various animation optimisations added
  
• Font update in minor improvements panel
  
• Some formicarium decorations moved closer to the formicarium so they can be seen in play
  
• Can no longer click through augmentations menu to select a tile
  
• Reduced size of fire ant worker eggs so they are not poking out the top of the queen
  
• Cancelling a tile before it is built will now correctly update population totals
  
• Objectives will now update faster when something has changed
  
• Star level is now taken into account for minimap & physical size of buried creatures
  
• When an indestructible tile is made destructible (by, for example, a toad burrowing through it in 4.1) the tile break effect will play
  
• Corrected some spelling issues in the Freesound credits
  
• Chinese localisations updated
  
• Credits updated
  

• Mac package added to the beta
  
• Windows 32 bit package added to the beta
  
• Choice of DX11 or 12 removed - until we implement an engine upgrade, DX11 is the best option
  
• Steam Deck issue resolved
  

Its been a while since the situation has warranted one of these newsletters we said that after the last one in March, we didnt want to spoil anything else and just wanted to concentrate purely on getting the fire ant update ready to go, and so we did! Welcome to the first newsletter as the sun rises in a post-fire ants world.


The Green Swamp

Well be dividing this newsletter into a few sections - firstly, well talk about how the fire ant release went. After that, its time to talk about the future - well put forth a new roadmap to get us to version 1.0, and detail the steps that we will take to get there, including the development of a specific tutorial level to make player onboarding much better.

After some internal discussion, we dont quite feel like we want to talk about the tier 5 species and setting just yet - just know that its been long-planned, scripted, voice-acted, and partially implemented already!

The Fire Ant Update

First and foremost, we would be remiss in our duties if we didnt express a heartfelt thankyou to all of our players for fire ant release day and the days after. We absolutely smashed our concurrent player record, which had been unbeaten since early access launch day in December 2017, and for an entire week we were trending on SteamDBs front page - which is an absolutely mind-boggling occurence for our tiny little development studio.

[previewyoutube=LEQAm0yV3TQ;full][/previewyoutube]
Dad's Gaming Addiction plays 4.2

Its been an utter delight following the content creators as they post (and continue to post) their coverage of our biggest update yet, whether that was Frazzz feeling the ominous presence of the skimmer, Man of the Antz giving the new camera rotation features a good outing, TheGamingBeaver putting in a very good argument for using Pervasive fire ants in 4.1, Drawing_Pin laughing his butt off at the scientists antics or Blitz clearly just living his best fire ant life. As the community manager, seeing the reaction of everyone whos followed and played this game over its lifetime, and interacting with them, is the best part of my job so naturally seeing the reactions to cool new stuff is even better.

[h2]Early 2022[/h2]

Yes, yes, we know. Last year we estimated "early 2022" for the fire ant release date, and that was our original intent but as is always the case with game development, some things take a lot longer to complete than anticipated. We strained credulity of the definition of early until we made a final decision to wait until we didnt have to compromise on the update.

[previewyoutube=LsHKsAv5a3U;full][/previewyoutube]
A fine addition to the soundtrack

July can at best be called mid-year, not early - see what happens when we give even the vaguest of vague hints! During April, we found that we likely could have pushed out the update in late May, which would qualify us for our targeted early 2022. However, we would have had to compromise in several ways here - there would not have been any new music, and the update would have been lacking that final polishing phase that the decision to wait a short while longer gave us.

Were very glad we took the extra time! The update is shining from the extra layers of lacquer we were able to generously apply over it. Thanks so much for the feedback on the new soundtrack - it was music to our ears to hear that the new tracks may have supplanted earlier ones as some peoples favourites.

[h2]Balance[/h2]

Theres been debate on both our official forums and the Steam discussions about the balance of the 4.x levels, and how it differs from the 2.x levels. Whilst weve included many ways for the player to gather food, theres some frustration being expressed about the relatively low amount given by dead creatures this time around.


Just doing amphibian stuff

Weve explained this in several places but its worth putting our reasoning for the change in design philosophy here, agree or not. In the 2.x levels (particularly 2.1 Rising Tide), there comes a tipping point in which the aggressive creatures provide far more food than is lost respawning ants, and the levels essentially play themselves. The game becomes unintentionally un-interactive, and the other methods of food collection are forgotten.

There are a few ways to address this, but outside of altering the food drop value of the creatures, they broadly involve re-working the narrative and creature behaviour in the missions. We very deliberately want the story of a vulnerable nest under attack; not siege. In nature, narrow-mouthed toads are excellent diggers and ants make up most of their diet, so they provide this setting-appropriate pressure in the 4.x missions. If we gave them a more substantial food drop value the problem would exist in these levels also.


The last thing you see before you fail - thanks to Geo ka lala on Steam for this shot

Thats not to say that there isnt room for balance changes here, but its too soon to commit to anything just yet. When a relatively large change is made to a game, rashness is more likely in both developers and players, so we are still very much in the cooling off phase before we have an internal discussion and decide what changes, if any, are appropriate. Were keeping a close eye on those discussions as the dust settles, but for fear of inflaming anything unduly were keeping to low activity in them for now.

Well come back to this at a later date, and perhaps have more to say about it in the next newsletter.

[h2]Tutorial[/h2]

Heres an interesting statistic for you of all the Empires of the Undergrowth refund requests, by far the most common reason given is the lack of a proper tutorial or onboarding system. We have relied too much on the optional tips and hints to provide basic training to the player we have also regularly observed many players completely not noticing or ignoring this system. That is entirely our fault, and the time is ripe to address that.


Early in-editor shot of the tutorial level

At this point in development, where version 1.0 is almost visible on the horizon, we want to make sure new players are not left in the lurch as far as understanding the core mechanics at play with pheromone control, nest construction, food gathering, combat and building goes.

For the next few weeks, the development team will be working on ways to highlight the UI and bring up tutorial dialogue in a way that is not easily missed by the player in a dedicated tutorial level. We hope to take this to the Indie Arena Booth at Gamescom 2022 in Germany at the end of this month, where one of our team will be manning a booth and observing new players with the aim of getting some useful, hands-on feedback. If youre going to be at the event and are in the area, come by and let us know what you think!

Roadmap

Its been a hot minute since we committed to any sort of roadmap, given the uncertainty of the past couple of years and the time it took to push the fire ant update. However, we are in a clearer position now and will be in an even clearer one in the next few weeks. So, here we present our August 2022 roadmap, which is likely to be clarified and updated in the next newsletter. Click to see it in all its glory.


Its not about the destination, its about the ants we met along the way

Youll notice that outside of the bug fixing update that will come next month, we are continuing with our policy of not putting dates, even vague ones, on things although we are certainly resolved to wrap up development up until version 1.0 in a speedier time frame than before, there is still significant uncertainty.

As always, we will give firm dates when we are 100% sure we can meet them, but here are some reassuring words for the remainder of the project: we already have a significant head-start with tier 5 in that its been completely scripted, the voice acting is already recorded, many of the creatures are already modelled and animated, and we have a very clear picture of where we are headed with it.

[h2]Adventure[/h2]

Theres a few things of note here firstly, the long-awaited leafcutter extra level Adventure is visible on the horizon! It will indeed feature the first in-game appearance of the velvet worm a soft-bodied predator of the jungle that was originally intended to be in the leafcutter update back in 2019, but was cut for time. It has now been finished and ascended to its full glory, with help of the long-bodied creature animation system perfected for the newt and salamander in the fire ant update.

[h2]Other Extra Levels [/h2]

Outside of Adventure, youll notice mention of a sequel season for other extra levels. Without giving too much away, were going to revisit some of the ideas from earlier extra levels and come up with new spins on them for example, there is very likely to be a Tug of War II featuring a different set of ants to play with.

[h2]Freeplay[/h2]

The large and (characteristically) vague interim update period is likely to manifest as several updates in a relatively short period of time that address the items listed. Most pressing is an update to freeplay the much more robust and customisable AI systems developed for 4.x will be integrated into freeplay to replace the current inferior one (*sad robot noises*).


Encountering a false bombardier beetle larva in freeplay from BrickyGraph631

Speaking of freeplay now is definitely the time to let us know about issues youre encountering in that game mode, big and small, in time for the time that weve set aside to do our upcoming changes. Let us know in the forums, or on our social media.

[h2]Tier 4 Challenge Mode[/h2]

Weve previously revealed the challenge creature that will plague the swamps in the challenge mode for the 4.x levels its the six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton) that can water-walk in a similar way to the amphibians, and will be a menace to your fire ants bridging abilities. The exact details of how this works are yet to be revealed closer to the time well release a short trailer showcasing her abilities.

[h2]Achievements[/h2]

Currently, there are only achievements for the 1.x levels and formicarium challenge 1. Before we reach the end of the roadmap, this will be addressed and all tiers will have their own unique achievements. If youd like to contribute your ideas of what some of these could be, please get in touch we had a good time streaming some of the development of the 1.x achievements and theres a non-zero possibility that we can do that again in the coming months!

[h2]Speed Running & the ICS[/h2]

Over the past several months, its been delightful to see a completionist / speedrunning community spring up around our little ant game. An offshoot from our official Discord, Insane Completionist Slugs is a Discord server that keeps a track of users who have completed tricky challenges on insane difficulty, and records speedruns for the runnable levels (some levels are on a strict timer and not runnable).


If youre insane, a completionist, and a gastropod mollusc, this is for you

If youd like to join this community then do so, but be ready to prove your mettle! This Discord is run by Solstitium and Heolx, and we couldnt be more gleeful and grateful for their contributions to the Empires of the Undergrowth community.

There is also an Empires of the Undergrowth page on speedrun.com this is not officially affiliated with the ICS server but its somewhere else to submit your runs to! Spreedrun.com is recognised as the go-to site for fast lookup and logging of speedrun records for just about any game you can imagine.

Screenshot Central

Tier 4 has increased the graphical fidelity of the game significantly, and thats led to an absolute visual feast for me as Ive arrived at my favourite part of writing the newsletter. If youd like to submit a screenshot for a future edition of the newsletter, then the easiest way is to submit to the screenshots channel on our Discord where theyre easily seen by the team. F9 enters screenshot mode by default.


A wasp mantidfly perches on a pitcher from Idle309


All pile on the dragonfly from NapoleonBonaparte_the1st


The great skimmer escapes from BrickyGraph631

For the final three, we have to give a special shout-out to Metaxypod, a Discord regular and long-time contributor of art in screenshot form. An exceptional eye for framing and colour makes these screenies stand out from the crowd.


A bombardier beetle sprays fire ants with boiling liquid


Fire ants collect caterpillars


The Throne of Froge

Here's a moment we've been waiting for as long as you have - we're burning with joy to be releasing the fire ant update to everyone! Let's keep this introduction short, because I'm certain you want to dive right into that lovely swamp as soon as you can. Here are the full patch notes for the update.

Patch Notes - The Fire Ant Update

[h2]The Fire Ants Invade![/h2]

Fire ants are nothing if not adaptable to new challenges. These swamplands that young queens, fresh from their nuptial flight, have landed in are not in their native range. The changing, often-flooded environment will test their flexibility to the limit.

• A whole new formicarium tier, featuring 2 new documentary scenarios:
  
  
  
  • 4.1 Cold Blood: a newly-settled fire ant queen must deal with the threat of the amphibians & other denizens of the green swamp
    
  • 4.2 A Bridge Too Far: use the fire ants abilities to traverse water and reach all the resources you can, whilst an ominous shadow looms overhead

• New focal ant species: fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) which come in two soldier variants:
  
  
  
  • Pervasive fire ants will respawn for free after a while
    
  • Vigorous fire ants will have a buff to their stats for a time after spawning
    
  • The tiles of both variants can support 2 ants at a time at level 3

• Fire ants introduce several new ant skills:
  
  • Bridge building: fire ants can build floating pontoons over water to reach resources previously unplundered, but beware of changing water levels!
    
  • Aphid relocation: relocate yellow aphids from distant milkweed plants and bring them closer to home for a reliable source of honeydew, but other colonies may not like that!
    
  • Titan climbing: very large new enemies can be climbed for extra damage!

• New auxiliary ant species:
  
  • Big-headed ants (Pheidole morrisii) have an ancient genetic variant waiting to be awoken
    
  • Little black ants (Monomorium minimum) use a chemical threat display called gaster flagging
    

• New swamp environment
  
• A menagerie of new swamp-dwelling critters with unique stats & abilities
  
• New voice acting from the narrator & scientists
  
• New music for our dynamic conductor system
  

• Surefooted: gains extra attack damage when mounted on an enemy
  
• Evasive: gains a small chance to take no damage from a hit
  
• Last Stand: at zero health, will survive for a short time longer with reduced attack speed
  
• Last Laugh: upon death, the fire ant will deal high damage to its closest enemy if in range
  

• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now display on the minimap
  
• Additions to the minimap & more consistent minimap pings
  
• Woodworm & woodlice will now appear as food on the minimap
  
• Escape key will now close the in-game menu
  
• Made Formicarium Challenge 3 a little easier on Hard & Insane
  
• Holding Insert & PageUp keys now rotates the camera view 90 left & right respectively
  
• Added a quick build / upgrade tool which detects nearby tile type to use, thumb mouse button by default
  
• Delete tool can now be used on tiles where building has not yet started
  
• Added an entirely new set of icons for the Formica ereptor adaptations menu
  
• Added a check for progress file corruption on game startup. If detected progress file is wiped and a new one made
  
• Added victory & defeat images for Beetle Rise Up! & the Hungry Spider levels
  
• Power-scaled creatures will have a star next to their health overlay displaying their scale level (currently only used in freeplay and some extra levels)
  
• Creatures will now correctly display the status effect they are currently experiencing
  
• Renamed worker "evasive" ability to "nimble" to avoid confusion with fire ants
  
• Formicarium level setup rewards on gateway levels now appear as zero before difficulty select
  
• Clicking an active underground minimap tab will now take you there from the surface
  
• The Promised Land demo level reinstated
  
• Moving buried creatures will now throb on the minimap
  
• Dead harvestable creatures in the Battle Arena will now not sink for 2 seconds
  
• Credits updated
  

• Colony rehousing will now give the correct jelly amount for level 3 tiles (previously it was counting level 3 tiles as level 2)
  
• Fixed an issue where wood ants could get stuck in a deployment animation when a line-of-sight check was failing
  
• Huge improvement to render times for all 2D overlays (upgrades, health, food, etc)
  
• Numerous optimisations to swarming, pathfinding & movement
  
• Numerous optimisations to rendering for many individual assets
  
• Fixed an issue in Battle Arena where some ant levels werent working
  
• Fix for a rare pheromone marker crash
  
• Fixed a rounding error causing incorrect number of creatures to spawn in battle arena
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures dying mid-air had their food collection point far from their corpse
  
• Fixed an issue causing underground tile highlighting to stick on some tiles
  
• Connecting bridge in the interlocking formicariums will now load correctly
  

• Updated, fixed and changed many interface & game narration lines in existing localisations
  
• Various menus & UI elements adjusted to allow for translations that were the wrong size for them
  
• Font changes for CJK languages
  
• Added 7 new officially-supported localisations. These are:
  
  
  • Czech / etina
    
  • Spanish / Espaol
    
  • French / Franais
    
  • Korean /
    
  • Japanese /
    
  • Dutch / Nederlands
    
  • Polish / Polski
  
  

• Extra level Extremis is currently crashing on launch (caught this one too late to re-package the project in time; will be fixed for the next patch)
  

Just a very short post to confirm that the launch of the fire ant update won't be occurring at midnight but at 6 pm UK time tomorrow, or approximately 23 hours after this is posted. Converted to some other times this comes out as:

1 pm: US East Coast
10 am: US West Coast
7 pm: Most of Europe
3 am on the 28th: Most of Australia

A quick search engine query should let you convert your own local time from the team's 6pm BST (British Summer Time).

Today we posted a quick tutorial video that should help you quickly get up to speed with some of the major new mechanics introduced with this update. It doesn't spoil anything that hasn't already been revealed, but if you're trying to keep entirely unspoiled you'll probably want to skip this one.

[previewyoutube=jqd791hvD-M;full][/previewyoutube]

Roughly an hour before we launch the game, some of the team are going to do a livestream on YouTube going over some of the new mechanics, changes, and other such things. A quick breather before we push the button! Join us over there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jTm53w8fHk

Hey

Just a quick post to allow streams to appear on the store page during the summer sale and to celebrate the release of the fire ant trailer:

[previewyoutube=-JW8rmLDta0;full][/previewyoutube]

Cheers!

Dan

We are delighted to announce that the fire ant update is coming on July 27th 2022! Grab an eyeful of the updated trailer that shows off the new environment and (some of) the new enemies that come along with it.

[previewyoutube=-JW8rmLDta0;full][/previewyoutube]

A whole new formicarium tier awaits - guide a young fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) queen and her first brood as she invades an unfamiliar swamp environment in two full new story missions. The swamp is swimming with amphibians that are not adverse to a spicy snack!

As well as having by far the most critters weve added in a single update, the 4th tier includes a long-awaited class of enemy: titans. Titans are huge creatures - big enough, in fact, to be climbed. They do not represent an existential threat since theyre too big to invade the nest, but they must be dealt with in other ways and are a challenging obstacle to be overcome.

Fire ants themselves have a unique ability, outside of their incessant stinging - by linking their bodies together, they can form floating pontoons that can cross water, reaching resources previously unplundered. This is a skill that will come in exceptionally handy in the regularly-flooded green swamp.

They come in two very different soldier varieties - pervasive and vigorous. If you choose pervasive, they will spawn for free after the egg has been on the tile for a time. This can be a crucial advantage when food is scarce. Alternatively, vigorous fire ants will have a significant buff to stats for a time after birth. This opens up the potential for aggressive expansion, but beware of pushing too far too fast. At level 3, both variants will be able to spawn 2 ants from each tile.

Once youve conquered the swamp, return to the formicarium where the scientist is far from done with you yet - what dastardly design has he decided is due to your Formica ereptor colony?

Finally, welcome to new people who are finding us through the Steam Summer Sale! We hope you find our little ant game worth your attention, and if youre considering giving it a go youve joined us at a very good time.

Well see you on July 27th for the invasion of the fire ants!

This will be a shorter-than-usual newsletter, just catching up with the last of the things weve posted on our social media before the fire ant update. Were rounding the corner to the home stretch on that front now, and whilst were not quite ready to announce a date (that will come out of the blue one day with a trailer) we are at a point where we dont want to spoil anything else, as we still want there to be plenty of surprises for when the update drops.

Well go over a few things that have been previously announced all of the things shown in this newsletter are from the 4.x missions.

Environment Showcase

Our environments for the fire ant update are near complete, and we put together this short video to highlight some of the artwork by our dedicated environment artist, Dan C. Level 4.1 will be called Cold Blood, and this is the arena in which it is set. The swampland has poor soil so many of the plants here have evolved to be carnivorous.

[previewyoutube=2sA5i-qur_A;full][/previewyoutube]

Venus Flytrap in Action

One such carnivorous plant is the iconic Venus flytrap. The leaves are tipped with traps that exude nectar, attracting ants and flies. Trigger hairs on the inside of the trap cause it to snap shut when touched, effectively turning the traps into stomachs which then digest the prey. The flytrap will act as an area denial obstacle ants will climb it but will inevitably trigger the traps, before re-opening after a cooldown.

[previewyoutube=7UUlc1KyT68;full][/previewyoutube]

Caterpillars & Sweetbay Magnolia

Caterpillars have recently hatched on this young sweetbay magnolia sapling. Such an infestation may well be fatal, but help is at hand the resident fire ants are very glad of the extra protein. Caterpillar-spawning plants will provide a rich food source for your fire ants, as long as you can survive the competition required to keep the supply lines open.

[previewyoutube=ANBua0V29xA;full][/previewyoutube]

Milkweed & Aphids

Milkweed plants are often homes to sap-sucking aphids. The aphids excrete a sweet substance called honeydew, which fire ants find irresistable. The ants will care for their aphid flocks, protecting them from predators, jealously guarding them from competing colonies and even moving them to safer locations.


A fire ant tending to aphids on a milkweed


A milkweed stripped of aphids

Screenshot Central

Lets close out this shorter-than-usual newsletter with the traditional Screenshot Central post! The easiest way to get these to us is to post on the #screenshots channel of our Discord I usually have a look through it once a week or so for great snaps for social media and the newsletters.


A whip spider glows in the moonlight from realpumadog


rmy ants have defeated an uber mole cricket in this shot from Anthony Gaming


A ladybird beetle flies off from SamThePro

The main feature this time is full support for gamepads (Steam Deck, XBox One and PlayStation 4 controllers are all officially supported). If you prefer to play with a gamepad or would like to try it out, now is the time! We are also adding six new languages localisations (we are not updating our store page to say we officially support these yet; they should be considered to be in beta for now). The languages are Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch & Polish.

Theres also some fixes and changes, detailed below, including a fix for Mac so Mac users should be able to play Hibernation now! We have also moved the game files to an encrypted form, so the download is likely to be larger than a regular patch since Steam wont recognise the encrypted files.

Headline Features

• Gamepad support added
  
  
  
  • All standard gamepad buttons now have functions which can be viewed from the options menu
    
  • When using a gamepad, key bindings show gamepad glyphs
    
  • Several notifications have been added or replaced to explain gamepad support when using them
    
  • The Hungry Spider can now be properly controlled with a gamepad
    
  • XBox One, PlayStation 4 and Steam Deck gamepads can be selected from the options menu to display the correct glyphs
    
  • When using Big Picture mode on Steam, or the Steam Deck the on-screen keyboard will display when needed
  
  
• Several new localisation languages added for testing (Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish)
  

• Mac build is now updated to include the Hibernation extra level
  
• Fixed a memory leak in creature despawning
  
• Fixed some minor pathing bugs
  
• Several areas in the game with small text have had their text size increased
  
• Fixed an issue where the mouse pointer would not change until moved in some circumstances
  
• Fixed an issue where brood chamber hover information would come up overground after having it come up underground
  
• Fixed an issue where ants could get stuck on the overground nest exit
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes level setups could drop off the screen at the bottom
  
• Minimap pings will now display more consistently
  
• Fixed an issue where dragging the mouse during a cutscene could cause tiles to tag for digging
  
• Fixed an issue where tiles would be left highlighted when tabbing to surface
  
• Fixed an issue where dead creatures could sometimes be carried off to the side of the carrying ant
  
• Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor would change when hovering over an enemy nest but not change back when moving off it
  
• Added in quick build / upgrade key binding (default to thumb mouse button 1). Hold to automatically select the upgrade or build tool most suitable for where your cursor is
  

Welcome to the year of the fire ant! For those of you wondering how were doing with the 4th / fire ant tier, weve recently gotten the last of the dialogue and voice acting into the game, and sent things off to translators for localisation. Keep an eye on our social media for further public narrowing of our release window. As always we wont give a date until were certain we can hit it. The marketing team have indeed been working on the trailer as the art team completes the detailing on the levels, and were positively itching to show it all off to you but we have to be patient too.


The Year of the Fire Ant is upon us!

Lets talk about a few things that have come up over the last couple of months, including the exciting return of a creature long thought lost to the sands of time the velvet worm.

The Velvet Worm

Velvet worms were cut from the 3rd tier for time, since they used what was at the time a unique animation system for its trailing behind, which was not finished. Since two 4th tier creatures use this (the eastern newt and the dwarf salamander), weve been finishing and refining that system and we feel that once weve done with the 4th tier it would be a shame not to bring the velvet worm back into the fold.

[previewyoutube=1NfAstddE5Y;full][/previewyoutube]

Widespread in tropical South America, velvet worms are voracious, soft-bodied hunters with a special weapon they use to incapacitate their prey. When hunting, they use two specialised slime glands that are either side of the mouth, trapping the target in a sticky web of mucilage. This makes catching and consuming it significantly easier. In nature, it can also use this slime defensively, wriggling free of potential predators.


Two sizes of velvet worm

Like many of the games creatures, the velvet worm comes in different sizes, from a juvenile to an adult of 7cm in length, which makes it one of the Undergrowths larger denizens. Well be reintroducing the velvet worm to the 3.x levels at some point, as well as giving it an appearance in an upcoming extra level called Adventure. Both of these are likely to happen post-4th tier, since right now our focus is to get that complete and out to everyone.

Pitcher Plants

Our environment artist Dan C continues to produce amazing swamp-related items for us, and one of his latest creations is the pitcher plant the second carnivorous plant of the 4th tier. This swamp-dwelling flora has specialised leaves that grow into a jug shape, which it fills with digestive enzymes. The rim of the plant is slippery, making it a treacherous surface for insects to be scaling.


As pretty as a pitcher

The plant attracts victims with enticing scents and sweet nectar and there is a chance that a fire ant may escape with a prize, but the possibility of an unfortunate death is always present and in more ways than one. This pitcher is the favoured lurking spot of the green lynx spider, and its always ready for an easy meal.


Sorry, arachnophobes

The Gaster Flag

One of the peripheral species that will appear in the 4th tier is the little black ant, Monomorium minimum. They will be the smallest ants in the game even the diminutive fire ants will look big besides them! To even the odds, they have a chemical and visual threat known as gaster flagging which will cause a debuff to enemy units caught in it, and they will not use it sparingly. The video below shows them attacking a group of fire ants note the debuff symbols over the fire ant victims heads.

[previewyoutube=OaknqwHQlkQ;full][/previewyoutube]

Steam Deck

We were lucky enough to be sent a little present from Valve a couple of weeks ago, a Steam Deck developer kit. Weve been testing all of the games we publish on it, and Empires of the Undergrowth runs exceptionally well without us having to make any modifications to the game when using Valves Proton system (software which allows a Windows program to run natively on a Linux operating system, like SteamOS that the Deck uses). This is a remarkable achievement for a hand-held PC equivalent, and its clear that Valve has made an exceptionally desirable product here.

[previewyoutube=NkV87jnMAqE;full][/previewyoutube]

There are things were working on to make the experience even better, such as including Valves controller glyphs, having a proper keyboard in the UI and creating an official control scheme. These will eventually get us the coveted Verified tick, but were not sure exactly when that will happen right now. Rest assured, the game works very well right now via Proton, and with some small tweaks and changes coming at some point in the future it will work fantastically.

Testing on the Steam Deck has opened us up to some of the shortcomings that the Linux build of the game has, and it is very clear that the best way to play Empires of the Undergrowth on Linux is through Proton as things currently stand. Well talk more about this over the next few weeks.

Freeplay Balance

There has been some discussion on the forums (both the Steam ones and our official ones) about freeplay balance. In truth, freeplay is not in an excellent spot right now, since weve been focussing our attention elsewhere. This problem is likely to be compounded as we add more creatures and mechanics from the campaign into it.

There are a few reasons for us waiting to make any major changes to freeplay, and the most obvious one is that weve been working almost exclusively on the 4th tier for some time now (with the odd exception of some extra levels here and there, but development time on them is practically nil compared to the campaign. Another reason is that we will be replacing the existing AI in freeplay with a new bot system that has been developed for use in the remainder of the campaign levels. It is significantly smarter than the current implementation, and can more easily be tweaked to play like a player rather than the more rigidly-behaved colonies in the campaign. We hope that it will be possible to make them competitive without having to cheat well see how we do on that front!

The net result of this is that it would be inefficient for us to put much in the way of time into fixing freeplay as things stand, since our focus will switch to a pretty extensive overhaul of it once fire ants are released. This follows our usual development pattern of major release then interim update focusing on freeplay before the next major release.

In short, we hope to be able to make freeplay a much more balanced and enjoyable experience, but not until we reach the interim update period between the 4th and 5th (final) tier. Until that point, we are aware that things are not exactly right where they should be.

Hibernation

Thanks to everyone who played our winter-themed extra level Hibernation over the festive season! Itll be sticking around permanently in extra levels, rather than disappearing like the Hungry Spider event levels. It features a unique resource vegetation and heating tiles, which must be stocked before the depths of winter arrive. If you havent seen it yet, check out the trailer below. The level features custom music and voice acting a first for an extra level.

[previewyoutube=H2rb-MdPLI8;full][/previewyoutube]

I just thought Id clear up a little confusion with this level, since it comes up semi-regularly you must have the specified stored vegetation in your heating tiles at the moment that the mid-winter hits. This is when the narrator says his bleak mid-winter line, and if youre not at the specified level at that point the queen will inevitably freeze. So, thats the targeted time you need to be aiming for!

Screenshot Central

Head on over to our Discord to submit your screenshots, its by far the easiest way when the time comes to write a newsletter Ill choose a few of my favourites to include! Alternatively upload them to Steam Community, or email mike@slugdisco.com. You can get some really nice shots by hitting shift + F9 to unlock the camera!



A whip spider lurks over The Crucible from Demoant


Flight of the ladybird by Mako


One last bit of festive cheer from DilphyThatsMe

A minor patch tonight to correct some small issues that have cropped up. This should resolve a recent freeplay crash related to leafcutters and a more long-standing issue causing problems with the "Play More" feature.

• Fixed a crash related to changes made to resource collection for Hibernation that inadvertently affected leafcutters in freeplay
  
• Fixed an issue that caused UI problems when selecting "Play More" after completing a level
  

We've recently been working with our voice cast to record all the lines for the remainder of the campaign. We realised that we wouldn't be able to hit our planned release of the 4th tier levels this year (see the most recent newsletter for more on this), but we still wanted to do something extra special to see out 2021.

We asked Callum, the narrator, to record some extra voice lines for a special winter-themed extra level. Also, we spent some of our free time creating bespoke music for it. Behold, Hibernation!

[previewyoutube=H2rb-MdPLI8;full][/previewyoutube]

Many wood ant colonies live in Alpine mountains, where harsh winters close in fast. They have evolved a special way to survive these conditions - collecting vegetation which gives off heat as it decays, saving the near-frozen colony from certain doom. Hibernation has a special new resource and chamber to store it - pine needles are collected from the surface and stored in heating chambers. The nest will be saved from disaster by their decay, and ants walking through them will be able to visit the frozen surface for longer after walking through one.

There's also some fixes and changes - here are the full patch notes for this update:

• Added Hibernation - guide a wood ant colony to survive the Alpine winter
  
• Fixed an issue where during rehousing the colony the UI would not always fade back in
  
• Whip spider can now be harvested by 8 ants at a time
  
• Slight buff to whip spider and is more likely to use its AOE bleed attack
  
• Whip spider food value dropped to be in line with forthcoming titans
  
• Fixed an issue with D key becoming unmapped
  
• Beetles Rise Up! made easier on Insane and Hard (more beetles!)
  
• The cookie on the Festive Spider level will now pause respawning if fighting a boss that stops the flow of the enemy waves (preventing the boss being held and getting infinite resources to build)
  
• Hungry Spider abilities now cast instantly without a wind-up (wind-up has been moved to the wind-down)
  

Today, we pre-emptively released a build with the intention of getting ahead of things for the planned release of our winter level on Wednesday. Unfortunately it seems that we missed a glitch when testing - level 2.1 Rising Tide seems to have problems with food spawning in the new patch.

For now, we've rolled back these changes so the game is still completable. This shouldn't affect too much since the new level, Hibernation, wasn't due to be fully released until the 22nd anyway. We'll get everything fixed and re-packaged, and reinstate the update when we're ready!

Once again, the Hungry Spider has crawled out of his hole. This time he's in a better mood, having just finished his Christmas shopping and gotten everything wrapped and ready for the little ones. However, envious eyes are looking over his haul - and he'll need to protect it!

[previewyoutube=_IPkapEX60c;full][/previewyoutube]

The Festive Spider level is here once again for the season. Find it by clicking on the gift that has appeared on the main menu. Whilst you may be familiar with the upgrade system and control scheme from the Hungry Spider level, this game mode is more akin to a tower defense. Like the Hungry Spider level, it is incredibly difficult - very few players have defeated all of the waves and saved Christmas for their spiderlings.

Building towers is vital - whether recruiting funnel web spiders to slow enemies and snatch them away, or wood ants to launch acid at them, you'll need to think about tower placement and longevity to be succesful. Placing towers costs life, so you'll need to balance this single resource carefully.

A little tip - the spider's abilities are also extremely useful for making sure enemies don't get away with your precious presents. It'd be a good idea to start with the Crippling Venom ability to slow enemies from afar.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!

Welcome to 2021s last newsletter! Well get straight to the point about where were at with the fire ant release plans after this introduction. Weve also got a very special extra level set to come out shortly before the holidays next month so plenty of details on that. Theres a final creature we want to show off, some finished animations and game mechanics for a creature revealed a while back, and some finished artwork for the swamp environment in which the 4th tier will be set, as well as the first of our carnivorous plants.


Trap jaw ants on the march from Kacper on our Discord

4th Tier Release Plans

Those of you who have been following along on our social media and particularly our Discord will probably have gotten the impression over the last few months that we intended to get the fire ant update out before the end of the year. Indeed these were our plans, and obviously shortly before Christmas would have been the ideal time for that but weve realised that we wont be able to hit that goal.

As is always the case with game development and ambitious projects, pinning down how long things take is exceedingly tricky. What would appear to be an easy task ends up taking a long time, unexpected complications arise, and priorities change. We are confident enough at this point to say that the update will come in early 2022, but exactly how early is yet to be finalised.

Our marketing team will be getting together soon to work on some promotional material, and a short while after this we will have a much better idea of when well be able to give you a date for the long-awaited update. Expect some more firm news on this before the end of the year!

We can let you know that weve been working with the voice cast again recently, and its been great hearing new words from devious scientists and sombre narrators again. We took advantage of this fact to have the narrator record some extra voice lines for a new extra level. Which leads us on to:

Extra Level Coming Soon Hibernation

Although we realised we wouldnt be releasing the 4th tier this year, we still wanted to do something a little special to close out 2021. Many of the extra levels are rather fanciful, playing fast and footloose with reality and we get very silly scenarios such as Beetles Rise Up! Not so with Hibernation, which will play out much more like a campaign level and is based on a real-world scenario. In it you play as wood ants living high in alpine mountains where winters are harsh and ants must adapt or die.

It will be arriving shortly before Christmas, and itll be the first extra level to have completely new narration and music. Liam has snuck plenty of Yuletide-themed tunes in the new music! Heres a little preview of that:

[previewyoutube=R6cSQhYIed8;full][/previewyoutube]

To survive and compete against nearby colonies, your wood ants will have to gather not just food, but slow-decomposing vegetation as well. As vegetation is broken down, it releases heat in much the same way a compost heap does. Decaying pine needles will warm nearby creatures in the nest, staving off the harsh cold outside and allowing ants to remain active for longer.

Its shaping up to be a really fantastic extra level, and combined with the winter-themed music it should feel suitably seasonal. The ultimate goal is to allow your colony to settle down for the winter, safe with its warm vegetation chambers gently giving off heat, and enter a state of torpor until the spring sun warms the colony again. Its set to be released just in time for all your holiday ant action.

Eastern Newt

The last of the amphibians that will be in the 4th tier update is the eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) more specifically the juvenile version of it, known as the red eft. They are bright orange or red, and have toxic skin any assailant wishing harm upon the newt will have to cope with the potent tetrodotoxin. In-game, this is likely to manifest as them reflecting back some of the damage they receive back at their attacker as venom-type damage.

[previewyoutube=c1vGv0glXW8;full][/previewyoutube]

They love damp, swampy conditions and your fire ants have made their home nearby. They will be unimpeded by water, and will be able to swim across the surface to reach islands much more easily than the invertebrates.

Swamp Environment

Our small but skilled art team has been working away on the swamp environment for several months now, and were now at a point where we can show off some of the surface! Whilst underground is a teal-tinted world full of roots, slime moulds and other such growths, the surface is green with algae, mosses, leaves and carnivorous plants.


A ramped area in the swamp adorned with dead wood, moss, lichen and algae

This damp environment will have changing water levels and a variety of new resource types, such as seed-rich pinecones and nectar-like secretions from the carnivorous plants. A huge variety of creatures live here, making their homes in the unique ecological niches allowed. This includes creatures adapted to hide amongst the traps of the meat-eating flora, such as the green lynx spider.


A wide area with a nest in the background on level 4.1, titled Cold Blood (WIP)

Were well into the decoration phase now, with our dedicated environment artist Dan flexing his painting muscles to give the two campaign levels of the fire ant tier their distinctive final look. The rest of the team have been waiting as patiently as the rest of you have to see the results, and we think theyre stunning.

Venus Flytrap

When one thinks about carnivorous plants, the Venus flytrap is what immediately springs to mind. Although there are many kinds of plant adaptations that can extract nutrition from animals, such as pitchers and sticky traps, the iconic, dramatically-spiked leaf traps of the Venus flytrap are the most famous.


Two flourishing flytraps

The trap heads themselves are adorned with tiny, barely-visible trigger hairs. If more than one of these hairs is touched in a short enough space of time, the hairs will trigger a relay of chemical and mechanical actions that close the trap, and the struggling of the doomed invertebrate only makes the trap hold on tighter. Eventually, the trap will seal, forming a kind of stomach in which to dissolve the prey. Inevitably the victim is broken down into a liquid by digestive enzymes which is then absorbed by the plant.


A closer view of the leaf traps themselves

Despite their name, flying insects make up a very small proportion of the plants diet roughly a third of its prey items are ants. Plants that consume animals do so as an evolutionary adaptation to poor soil quality in their area, lacking in phosphorus and nitrogen.


A closeup of a single trap, showing the tiny trigger hairs

The in-game mechanics of the flytrap will involve them exuding a kind of sugary nectar-like food on the traps, which will likely look similar to the honeydew globules that aphids provide. There will be a percentage chance to trigger the traps, killing any ants currently on them. There will be a balancing act to collecting enough of the nectar to make it worthwhile whilst being able to respawn lost ants sustainably.

Materials Breakdown

Related to the environment work detailed above, Dan C was kind enough to provide me with a breakdown of a rocky material used in the fourth tier campaign levels. It shows the amount of detailed layers needed to make surfaces realistically react to light, from the base layer, to displacement mapping (adds runtime detail to geometry), to normal mapping, which is a computationally efficient way to add extra non-geometric detail.


Many layers go into making a realistic material

Red Velvet Ant In Action

We announced the red velvet ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) a while back, but we thought itd be nice to show some of its movement and in-game mechanics. This creature is in fact not an ant at all, but a kind of wingless wasp. The females crawl on the ground and amongst vegetation, their bright red striping a warning about their excruciating stinging capabilities. They are not colloquially called the cow killer for no reason!

At high health, she will use her jaws to bite assailants. Eventually, as she feels more threatened, she will enter a state of panic when her health is reduced below a threshold amount. Her movement will become much faster, and she will switch to using her sting one of the most potent insect stings in existence. The sting will allow her to cut down fire ants much faster as she fights for her life.

[previewyoutube=w_RON8mRELc;full][/previewyoutube]

She also has an extremely tough exoskeleton, allowing her to take a lot of damage whilst in this frenzied state. Youll have to weigh up the cost of replacing the ants you will inevitably lose before engaging in a tussle with this notorious resident of the green swamp.

EGX 2021

Back in early October developer Liam, product marketing manager Dan and community manager Mike travelled down to London to go to our first live event in over two years EGX 2021 at the ExCeL centre. Our main aim was to get back into the swing of things with live events, and of course to show off the game to new and old players alike!


The three stages of man Dan P, Liam & Mike at our EGX booth

It was fantastic to be able to see people playing the game in person after so long (whilst frantically taking mental notes on what needs to be improved, I think we should warn people off freeplay somehow until theyve played the campaign!) and it was wonderful to see people discovering it for the first time. Were hoping to do more live events again going forward if the world allows it.


We exhibited alongside Paul Herv, developer of Adapt

Screenshot Central

Every time I write a newsletter I look forward to this part. If youd like to submit an Empires of the Undergrowth screenshot for consideration in a future newsletter (or the occasional community Screenshot Saturday on Twitter and Facebook) then by far the easiest way to do so is to join our Discord and post in the screenshot channel. To get some nice angles, remember to use photo mode F9 by default. If you hold down shift whilst hitting F9, your camera will be unbound to the surface for added creativity.


An uber whip spider strikes in this shot from Frazzz (check out his YouTube!)


The truth revealed by Atta cephalotes Boi


An uber falls from HamAndCheeseSandwich

Years End

With our bimonthly newsletter cycle, that concludes the newsletters for 2021.

Its been a challenging year for all of us, for very obvious reasons, and I said the exact same thing last year. In spite of that, we sincerely hope youve had reasons to be thankful and celebrate too. Our friends in the US have just had thanksgiving, and this seems like a good moment to try and remember what were thankful for. We here at Slug Disco are eternally grateful and thankful for the patience, support and kindness youve shown to us, as we continue to shape our vision for EotU and Slug Disco as a whole. We know things take time but theyre worth the wait, and the wait is no longer so long. Look out for more news before the years end, and well see you in 2022 to continue our journey into the Undergrowth.

Mike & the Slug Disco Team

It's that time of year again. The nights are drawing in, the air is getting colder.... and the Hungry Spider awakens, and finds that he is ravenous.

[previewyoutube=L3QtFadJryI;full][/previewyoutube]

The Hungry Spider level will be around for the remainder of the spooky season - to access it, click on the cobweb that has mysteriously appeared in the lab. In this level you directly control an endlessly starving wolf spider (although I am of the belief that he has some sort of terrible metabolic issue) as he eats his way around a web-shaped map.

To those who haven't played this one before, it is a brutally difficult level and few have achieved victory in it. The uber creatures are the real killer, and you'll have to take them all out to win. Upgrade your abilities as you level up, improving your chances against the monsters.

But in the end, of course, the real monster is you.

Discard the shackles of oppression - in our latest extra level Beetles Rise Up!, you must grow your beetle pack to annihilate your captors. All of your beetles are controlled by a single pheromone marker - simply move near beetles to add them to your pack, bolstering your strength. Kill all enemies and free all beetles to win! Game knowledge from your campaign and freeplay experiences will be helpful; it'll allow you to gauge threats before you take them on.

[previewyoutube=F7MWqlfuowU;full][/previewyoutube]

Your game client will not need to update to get the new level; it will already be there.

This extra level is inspired by Beetle Uprising, a game by our friends at Iocane Games! It's a deeply complex genetics game with real-time tactics and some colony management elements. Check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/662680/Beetle_Uprising/

Notice about the campaign we must post with each new extra level:

For those concerned about extra levels taking up dev time, please know that compared to the campaign content, these missions take practically no time at all to develop - just a few short hours apiece (you can watch us do most of the development for these on stream). Because they all use existing assets, systems and artwork, one of our devs can create an extra level very fast indeed.

We're still charging full steam ahead with the fire ant update - we just thought there's plenty of you who would appreciate something new to play in the meantime.

At this stage in the development cycle for the rest of Empires of the Undergrowth, were very close to having all of the creatures for the 4th tier complete (as well as a sizable chunk of the 5th tier ones). Our environment artist is working hard on perfecting the aesthetic of the Green Swamp, as the art team populates it with appropriate (and sometimes dangerous) flora.


An infestation of harvestmen from TheRealStormCZE on our Discord

Were ready to show off some of the underground look that the fire ants and their enemies will inhabit, as well as focusing on something that has, until now, evaded the Undergrowth entirely vertebrates! The fire ant levels will feature a number of backbone owners, and weve been dying to show them off to you. Well also talk about the events weve been part of recently.

Swamp Environment

We showed off some early work on the underground look for the 4th tier last time, but weve now completed it, so lets revisit!

The fire ant levels are set in the , a nature preserve in North Carolina. Fire ants are not native to this area, but considering their invasiveness this is not an issue. We chose the green swamp specifically for its lush plant life, specifically the Venus fly trap (which were not quite ready to show just yet) and the wide variety of game-appropriate species inhabiting it.


The eerie glow of the underground

A few months back we hired Dan C, who has taken to the role of environment artist with great enthusiasm. His vision for the Green Swamp was of an eerie, teal-lit underground, reminiscent of a glow worm cave.


Fire ant workers come to clear the nest entrance

Inspired by various slime moulds that grow in damp conditions, hes created this wonderful aesthetic which is quite different to anything thats come before it, and adds some nice contrast to the bold redness of the fire ants themselves.


The slime mould-inspired lamps and growths are generated for us by the engine as we work

Next time around were likely to have plenty to show for the surface too! We tend to show things off on Saturdays as part of Twitters Screenshot Saturday weekly hashtag, so remember to follow us on our socials to see stuff as soon as we post it.

Amphibians

The amphibians (the class Amphibia) are one of the five major classes of vertebrates. Theyre widespread around the globe, and modern amphibians all exist in three orders the frogs (Anura, 90% of amphibians), the salamanders (Urodela) and the caecilians (Apoda). Were representing frogs and salamanders in Empires of the Undergrowth.

Coming into making this game, we were all beginners at nearly all aspects of game development. As weve continued the project all of us on the team have improved in the areas weve worked at. When we started all this, the idea of including the more complex considerations that go along with vertebrates (musculature, skin, more complex movements, etc) didnt seem like something we wanted to touch on but thats all changed. Lets talk about some of the 4th tiers amphibians.

[h2]Pine Woods Tree Frog[/h2]

The pine woods tree frog (Hyla femoralis) is a small frog that favours dark, damp conditions making them ideal swamp dwellers. Despite their name, they are often found on the ground as well as in trees! They inflate their throats to make a distinctive, fast croaking sound (sound effects are a work in progress), especially at dusk. Theyre fond of an insect supper, and ants are certainly on the menu.

[previewyoutube=ASaJ1X2mFJc;full][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Narrow-mouthed toad[/h2]

The narrow-mouthed toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis) is native to much of the United States. Its diet consists primarily of ants a trait that will make it one of your bitter enemies when the fire ant update comes for Empires of the Undergrowth, despite its cuteness! It is not technically a toad, but is colloquially called one because it is mostly terrestrial.

[previewyoutube=2VtvPg-akQ8;full][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Dwarf Salamander[/h2]

The dwarf salamander (Eurycea quadridigitata) represents the Urodela order, one of the three modern orders that make up the amphibians. It prefers swampy conditions and spends much of its time burrowed in the leaf litter. Its serpentine movements will be based on older code that was never finished for the cut velvet worm from the 3rd tier. This system allows it to bend its flexible spine as it travels, trailing its long body after it. Theres still some tweaks and adjustments to be made to the animation systems of this creature, but its far enough along to show you the main points.

[previewyoutube=vi00cJ6lTog;full][/previewyoutube]

[h2]American Bullfrog[/h2]

So on to the biggest of them all! The American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) is widely spread around the world due to human introduction, but their native range is the eastern United States. Large, noisy and usually very hungry, bullfrogs are not fussy in their diet. In fact, generally speaking, the diet of the bullfrog consists of whatever will fit inside the bullfrog.


A bullfrog attacks a spicy snack (bombardier beetle)

Like the other frogs, the bullfrog is able to use its long tongue to grab and eat enemies at a considerable distance. As a titan, it can be climbed upon by swarming ants, dealing extra damage to vulnerable spots on its body. We wont post any videos of this titan-class creature until closer to release. Its on course to be the largest actual creature that will be in the game, if you dont count the scientist (we dont).

Events

With much of the world getting closer to some semblence of normalcy, events are starting to happen and weve been fortunate enough to join a number of these remotely over the past couple of months. Our first in-person event in nearly 2 years will be EGX 2021 in London, starting on Thursday 7th October (next month at time of writing)!

[h2]EGX 2021[/h2]
Three of us from the Slug Disco team (developer Liam, marketing content creator Dan and community manager Mike) will be joining our friend Paul Herve where well have two booths at EGX, one showing Empires of the Undergrowth (a great opportunity to talk to us about the fire ant update!) and the other showing Pauls awesome upcoming creature evolution game Adapt (more on this collaboration coming in the future). Well be in the EGX Rezzed Zone for all 4 days of the event (Thursday 7th October Sunday 10th); come and find us if youre in the area. Were quite friendly.


The last time they let us out in public EGX 2019 along with Ecosystem & Beetle Uprising

[h2]Indie Arena Booth[/h2]

The most outright fun event we were virtually part of this year was the Indie Arena Booth as part of GamesCom 2021. The Summercamp of Doom event was presented in a top-down RPG format where you gained XP by interacting with NPCs, and unlocked badges by talking to the denizens of virtual booths. It was a ton of fun and certainly a unique way to present things! The demo we developed for this event included a fire ant demo level The Promised Land, which has disappeared for now but thanks to everyone who played it whilst it was there. Fire ants will be back with tier 4!


Our virtual booth in the Summercamp of Doom!

[h2]Big Indie Pitch[/h2]

The Big Indie Pitch runs regular competitions for indie developers in a variety of categories. We entered a while back, and to our astonishment won first place in their Digital Big Indie Pitch (PC+Console Edition) #9! Liam was interviewed afterwards, so if youd like to hear a little of his perspective on how the games industry has treated us read through that article. Liam stresses that a combination of sheer optimism, belief in our product and a generous smattering of luck got us to where we are now. I feel he leaves out a lot of hard work over a long time! Thanks so very much to Steel Media Ltd. for running this fantastic event. Well be making good use of that promotion package!


We won!

[h2]BitSummit[/h2]

Lastly but by no means leastly, we had a physical booth at this years BitSummit, which is Japans longest-running indie games festival. We couldnt be there in person due to the pandemic, but it was fantastic to know our game was being exhibited on the other side of the world! Japanese is one of the additional languages we intend to translate the game into for full release.


Our booth at BitSummit. One day, well be there in person!

Screenshot Central

Something a little different for Screenshot Central this time the three shots Ive chosen all come from one player. Frazzz is a YouTuber and long-time coverer of Empires of the Undergrowth, and he recently played the aforementioned The Promised Land on his channel whilst it was an event. Thanks to him for sending in these excellent fire ant snaps hes really got an eye for them. We look forward to lots more Empires content from him!

Usually I take these screenshots either from our Discord or from the Steam community uploads; those are the easiest way for me to see them if youd like to have your screenshot selected for a future newsletter.


A fire ant hatches


Fire ants link their bodies to create a short bridge to a nearby island

The queen is attacked by a group of bombardier beetles the end is nigh

We love events, but for obvious reasons we've so rarely been able to attend them recently. Enter the Gamescom 2021 Indie Arena Booth, an online event that is running from 25th-29th August! We have a booth in the virtual world, which you can visit with your 2D avatar. There's an NPC representation of the scientist there to answer some questions, and of course we'll be there ourselves too!

To celebrate this, from the moment of this post there is a limited-time demo level available. For the first time we're letting fire ants loose for a preview before their appearance in the upcoming 4th tier levels! In The Promised Land, you'll need to use the fire ant's bridge building skills to acquire resources from neighbouring islands, before building as long a bridge as you can to reach the aforementioned land that was promised on the right side of the map.

Simply place a pheromone marker on an island you wish to reach, and your fire ants will use their bodies to make a floating bridge for their sisters to use. Beware of falling water levels stranding them - ants that get cut off from the colony will panic and quickly die. Also, keep an eye on the bombardier beetle population - they'll attack your colony together with their near-boiling liquid spray.

The Promised Land will be available until August 29th, when Gamescom ends.

Full patch notes below:

[h2]Features[/h2]

• Fire ant demo level The Promised Land available between 23rd and 29th of August (accessible through a pop-up in main menu) whilst Gamescom is running
  
• Vulkan can now be used in Windows (add -vulkan to launch options)
  

• Improved walk cycles across game (creatures should now longer look like they are sliding when slowed)
  
• Enemy underground tabs will now stretch to the full available size above the minimap rather than just taking a set size (this allows up to 6 colonies on a map, needed for future levels)
  
• Creatures slow resist will now also resist attack slows
  

• Really slow creatures wiggle left and right less
  
• Fixed an issue with creatures killed during pickup getting stuck in the creatures jaws
  
• Disabled colony section of the colony setup tab in freeplay setup (due to a bug that could cause it to be inconsistent with the basic setup tab)
  
• Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause ants to spin on the spot for a short amount of time
  
• Reward tooltips will no longer display if the mouse is hovered over the invisible reward area on levels without rewards
  

Time for the last of the extra levels we put out in beta earlier this year to be released - it's The Culling! In this black ant level, packs of enemies will slowly swell in number during the daytime. If you allow them to grow too large, they will overwhelm your colony when they attack en masse at night.

[previewyoutube=R2CZO5CteR8;full][/previewyoutube]

The trick is to keep their numbers in check by regular culling - every slain enemy will reduce the intensity of the nighttime onslaught. There are aphid farms to keep you supplied with food, but they'll need defending from ladybird beetles that can strip them bare. Also, beware the tiger beetle larvae lying in wait!

The Culling represents the last of the four extra levels we had scheduled to release, but we're not done with extra content yet! We've got an exciting announcement regarding a special demo level due to coincide with our appearance at the Gamescom Indie Arena Booth which is open online from August 25th - 29th. And yes, it will feature fire ants. More on that when we're ready to update! Also, we might have managed to sneak in one more non-Gamescom related extra level whilst we were at it.

Notice about the campaign we must post with each new extra level:

For those concerned about extra levels taking up dev time, please know that compared to the campaign content, these missions take practically no time at all to develop - just a few short hours apiece (you can watch us do most of the development for these on stream). Because they all use existing assets, systems and artwork, one of our devs can create an extra level very fast indeed.

We're still charging full steam ahead with the fire ant update - we just thought there's plenty of you who would appreciate something new to play in the meantime.

Its been an important last couple of months for Empires of the Undergrowth, and those of us at Slug Disco Studios! Work continues apace on the fire ant update, and were not too far away from having all of the 4th tier creatures complete and ready for placement in the levels. Weve also decided that now is the time to expand our dev team, and weve brought in a fantastic new artist to work on our environments Ill introduce you to Dan (yes, this is the 2nd time in the past year weve hired someone called Dan) a little later in the newsletter.


A whip spider observes a trail of Atta cephalotes from Crazlex9 on our Discord

Last time, the creature feature was all about beetles. Were (almost) moving away from insects for our newly-finished critters this time, into the world of spiders! We apologise in advance to any arachnophobes who already find looking at them difficult. Theres also a beetle larva to show that wasnt ready in time for the last newsletter.

Spiders

Spiders elicit fascination in us as much as they instil dread. What is it about the form of the spider that makes them so intimidating to us, despite very few of them posing any real threat at all? Perhaps its the unpredictable stop-start movements they make. Maybe its that theyre all business at one end, many eyes and fangs staring right back at us. Or is it that, despite our intelligence, deep down we know that nature perfected functional physical form long before our ancestors could sharpen a stick? Whatever the reason, today we have three spiders to introduce that will battle your fire ants in the 4th tier levels!

[h2]Green Lynx Spider[/h2]

The green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) lurks in foliage, using its pigmentation as camouflage. It is an active hunter, seeking out prey rather than building webs, in a similar way to wolf spiders. It can also defensively spit venom a long distance a very rare adaptation, and we felt this trait made it ideal for our game.


A green lynx spider confronts fire ants

Like all three of the spiders being introduced in this newsletter, it is what is known as a true spider, being a member of the order Araneae. This is in contrast to, for example, the whip spiders of the 3rd tier, which are arachnids but not true spiders.


Lurking in the leaves

[h2]Magnolia Green Jumper[/h2]

The magnolia green jumper (Lyssomanes viridis) hunts using excellent eyesight & powerful back legs that allow it to jump many times its body length. It will be the 2nd jumping spider in the game, after Psecas viridipurpureus from the 3rd tier.


Cute but cunning a magnolia green jumper

Jumping spiders are highly intelligent, even curious in nature, carefully observing targets before making the decision to pounce at the opportune moment. They represent the largest group of Aranae (true spiders).


Im not sure I like those odds

[h2]Six-Spotted Fishing Spider[/h2]

The six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton) is a large semi-aquatic spider native to North America. It lurks near the bank, exploiting a hydrophobic (water-repelling) coating on its skin, surface tension and air bubbles to stay afloat. It can lie in wait (float in wait?) patiently for many hours for a suitable prey item to drift or swim to within striking distance.


They swim now?!?

Its prey includes insects (both aquatic and ones that have fallen into the water) and small fish. It is capable of fully submerging itself for a time, breathing from a pocket of air it takes with it. Air bubbles that get trapped on its body mean that as long as it is not submerged for too long, it will emerge completely dry.


Ready to strike keep your distance, ants!

The fishing spider will be the optional challenge creature for the 4th tier levels this means it is likely to not be in the game with the initial release of the fire ant levels, but added in after in an interim update between the 4th and 5th tiers (following the pattern for the 2nd and 3rd tier challenges).

[h2]False Bombardier Beetle Larva[/h2]

And to finish off our creature reveals for this newsletter, lets leave the world of arachnids and return to a beetle weve talked about before, but this time in larval form. Like many ground beetles, the larval form of the false bombardier beetle (Galerita bicolor) is as voracious a predator as the adult.


Born ready for battle

Theres an interesting difference between the larval form of the false bombardier and the true bombardier (Brachinus alternans). Although the false bombardier mimics the true bombardier in its pigmentation and shape, its larvae are much more fearsome than that of the true bombardier. Like devils coach horse larvae, they are born ready for combat, and are more than capable of tussling with fire ants on their home turf.

Our New Environment Artist

A couple of months back we recruited a new member of the Slug Disco team working alongside Matt on environments for upcoming levels of Empires of the Undergrowth (and perhaps adding his touch to existing ones) is artist Dan Coates. I asked him if he wouldnt mind introducing himself as a team member, so here he is in his own words:

My name is Dan (Dan.C/Dan 2) and Im the new Environment Artist here at Slug Disco! This means Ill be working on some seriously cool level art for EotU and any future projects (spoilers).

If you want to get in touch Im over on the Slug Disco Discord, you can also find me on Artstation where Ill be posting how the assets for EotU were made, as well as some personal projects! And if youre interested in seeing what an Environment Artist with an irrational fear of spiders looks like, make sure to tune in when we stream EotU!

Keep an eye out for future screenshots and environment updates, I cant wait to share with you what weve been working on!

Thanks guys,
Dan.C

There's a new extra level for Empires of the Undergrowth - and this one is rather unique. In Enemy of my Enemy, packs of enemies are hostile to each other - the trick is to get them to take each other out before they reach your queen. It's a short game mode, with lots of different solutions - the puzzle of how to unlock the packs gets more complex at higher difficulties.

[previewyoutube=n-yIbi4rACc;full][/previewyoutube]

Digging is instantaneous and done with the mouse, and marker placement is not allowed - instead, your queen is protected by a number of strong Royal Guard ants that will always stay near her. They're your last line of defense against the enemy packs, but of course you should be aiming to set them on each other and wipe each other out before they get close! A bit of trial and error is expected, but the average run of Enemy of my Enemy only lasts 10-15 minutes.

Perhaps in the future we'll run a speedrun competition for this level; its short form factor would suit it! The mission will be in your Extra Levels menu now - your client will not need to be updated.

Notice about the campaign we must post with each new extra level:

For those concerned about extra levels taking up dev time, please know that compared to the campaign content, these missions take practically no time at all to develop - just a few short hours apiece (you can watch us do most of the development for these on stream). Because they all use existing assets, systems and artwork, one of our devs can create an extra level very fast indeed.

We're still charging full steam ahead with the fire ant update - we just thought there's plenty of you who would appreciate something new to play in the meantime.

Cramped is a new extra level for Empires of the Undergrowth, and it's out right now! This leafcutter level is very tight on space - with a tiny underground nest and many enemies that must be slain, only a superior knowledge of the game systems will allow for victory. Find the level now in the "Extra Levels" section of the menu.

[previewyoutube=klayhKhH5nk;full][/previewyoutube]

Your game client will not need to be updated to play; the level will already be in the list. Thanks to everyone who helped test and balance this level when it was in beta.

Notice about the campaign we must post with each new extra level:

For those concerned about extra levels taking up dev time, please know that compared to the campaign content, these missions take practically no time at all to develop - just a few short hours apiece (you can watch John do most of the development for these on stream). Because they all use existing assets, systems and artwork, one of our devs can create an extra level very fast indeed.

We're still charging full steam ahead with the fire ant update - we just thought there's plenty of you who would appreciate something new to play in the meantime.

Good lord, its May already. This newsletter will spotlight some more enemies coming for the fire ant update, with a particular focus on natures favoured form the beetle. We also have some talk about new AI systems that weve been working on over the past few weeks, which will be used in the last of the campaign levels and eventually in freeplay too!


A classically red Formica ereptor queen from GlitchyGamer

Weve still got quite a few critters to show off as we complete work on them, as well as a few we dont want to spoil until we get very close to release time.

4th Tier Creatures Beetles

Ah, beetles. They are the most diverse group of insects, and arguably of all animals. They appear throughout human culture and history, in art and science they exist just about everywhere that we do. Naturally, we need more beetles in Empires of the Undergrowth (but perhaps not so many as to cause an uprising) so we have a few more joining our various tiger beetles and rove beetles in the upcoming fourth tier.

[h2]Bombardier Beetle[/h2]

Bombardiers are a kind of well-armoured ground beetle. There are several species this one is called Brachinus alternans. They get their name from the distinctive popping sound they make when threatened, and a closer look at the cause of this sound reveals a defensive system that can be deadly if you happen to be small and in its way.


A bombardier beetle faces off against fire ants

By mixing various chemicals and enzymes together in a special internal chamber, the beetle produces a violently exothermic reaction. The resultant mixture reaches close to the boiling point of water and is expelled by the rapid rise in pressure through an opening pointed at the beetles enemy.


Near-boiling liquid is explosively fired at the beetles enemies

If youre a large vertebrate predator, this irritant is likely to be enough to put you off having a bombardier beetle for dinner. If youre the size of an insect, however, the momentary boiling temperature of this liquid can easily be fatal. With the large area of effect this defensive spray has, itd be wise to consider carefully whether the bombardier beetle is worth the inevitable casualties.

[h2]False Bombardier Beetle[/h2]

Mimicry is seen everywhere in the animal kingdom creatures evolve to look like more dangerous ones, which gives them a deceptive advantage. The false bombardier beetle (Galerita bicolor) has evolved to look almost identical to its namesake, with some minor differences in colouration and morphology.


An impostor among us a false bombardier beetle looking sus

This helps it avoid predation, but the false bombardier beetle is not without defences its significantly larger than the true bombardier, has the same chitinous armour, and uses muscle action to spray a solution that is mainly made of a familiar substance formic acid.


Size comparison to the false bombardier (left) and the true bombardier

Whilst not as deadly as the boiling liquid that is explosively fired by the true bombardier, formic acid will still do considerable damage to small creatures. Its the same acid used by the ranged wood ants of the 2nd tier, and itll have a similar in-game consequences an area of effect venom-type attack.

[h2]Checkered Beetle[/h2]

Cleridae the checkered beetles are distributed worldwide. This particular species is called Enoclerus rosmarus, and its a common sight in North America. Theyre active hunters, and their preferred habitats are moist and sunny qualities which will bring them into conflict with your fire ants.


A checkered beetle minding its own business

[h2]Checkered Beetle Larva[/h2]

Checkered beetle larvae are also hunters, which in Empires of the Undergrowth will give them a similar role to rove beetle larvae in previous levels. Theyre more vulnerable in this state, before they develop the chitinous armour they have as adults but theyre still a force to be reckoned with.


Checkered beetle larva fights fire ants

AI Scanning

At the moment, the various AI colonies we have in the game are either heavily scripted (as in 2.2) or reliant on preset points of interest which they use to decide where to send their forces (3.1, freeplay). This makes them relatively robust but doesnt allow them to make very complex decisions on a changing battlefield. Liam has been working on a scanning solution that will let colonies periodically scan the surface for interesting things, giving them the ability to make much more relevant choices.

[previewyoutube=yVcObGD57rc;full][/previewyoutube]
Green squares represent areas of interest the AI scan has found

These will be used on all of the remaining campaign levels, all of which will feature AI colonies in some form. Eventually, we hope to transplant this feature to freeplay to after fire ants, we are likely to do another big round of freeplay changes to bring that game mode closer to its release form.

[previewyoutube=RAbjCkBHAjc;full][/previewyoutube]
Two colonies scan for points of interest on one another light orange is the real scan, the maroon is a skipped scan where it decided to use saved data from a scan not so long ago in the same place

Community Wiki

Im sure many of you are familiar with the fan wikis that crop up; fandom.com is one of the more prominent ones. Weve been slightly bemused by these and not entirely sure what to make of them up until very recently, they were simply placeholders with very little in the way of articles. However, thanks to some dedicated community members, the Empires of the Undergrowth fandom.com wiki has had some big content additions over the past couple of months.

Particular thanks to thanhmk28 on our forums for putting a lot of time into the fandom wiki, and writing / formatting a majority of the articles so far. On it youll see creature stats and abilities (taken from a version of the spreadsheets that the game uses that we host on our website) that might well be useful for people looking for a more solid idea of what various creatures strengths and weaknesses are until we implement a way to see these in the game.


The EotU Fandom Wiki

Theres even a dedicated spoiler page for the upcoming 4th tier update, which details all of the new stuff weve revealed in Screenshot Saturdays and these newsletters. This wiki is open to further contributors, so if youd like to help thanhmk28 out with writing some new articles then by all means do! Our community continuously proves itself to be one of the best there is, and we couldnt be more thankful for that.

For final release, there will be plenty of information accessible in-game with our own encyclopedia system. Even after thats implemented, there will always be a place for community-driven wikis like these theyre definitely an appropriate place to post guides, creative strategies and suchlike that wont be in the game itself.

Ecosystem Updates

A couple of months ago, Tom Johnson released his evolution simulation game Ecosystem into early access on Steam. Slug Disco are the publishers for it, and its been a joy to see how its been received and how community feedback is already shaping the direction Tom has decided to push things.

About once fortnightly, Tom has been sharing his progress and direction with us and weve been posting these as articles on the games Steam page. Hes now at a point where he can share the path hes chosen for Ecosystems first major update, which will focus on graphs and analytical tools so the player can see plant, predator and prey relationships in much greater detail than before.


The graphs and analytical tools coming soon to Ecosystem

Ecosystem continues to progress rapidly as a project and if you have an interest in speculative evolutionary biology, serene aquatic environments, or even just producing abominations such as human-like fish then we heartily recommend giving Ecosystem a spin. It has a demo which shows a lot of the basic features, but the full thing is gearing up to be something altogether more special.

Screenshot Central

Seriously, I feel like this section is just for me every time I write a newsletter, I look forward to the bit where I have a browse through some recent screenshots posted to our Discord or uploaded to the community, and select three of my favourites. If youd like to participate, by far the easiest way to get your screenshot to us these days is Discord. You can also email them directly to mike@slugdisco.com.


A pleasing formicarium from BrickyGraph631


Trapjaws under attack from a hidden jumping spider from Rarity


A close call in extra level Excavators from Crazlex9

Occupation - a new extra level for Empires of the Undergrowth - is out now! In this level not unlike the campaign mission New Home, you control wood ants (with mortars) with the simple mission to kill all nearby creatures. Beware - your occupation of this prime nesting location will not go uncontested.

[previewyoutube=P091qp-8f_Y;full][/previewyoutube]

Although the level is definitely the most straightforward of the four that will be releasing over the next few months, that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park - it has a particularly tricky start, and you'll need to use your knowledge of the game systems to walk away from a very tricky early encounter with your queen still living.

You can find the mission in Extra Levels right now - your game will not need to update first; as long as you're on version 0.23 it'll be there.

It's worth reiterating at this point that compared to the campaign content, these missions take practically no time at all to develop - just a few short hours of dev time apiece (you can watch John do most of the development for these on stream). Because they all use existing assets, systems and artwork, one of our devs can create an extra level very fast indeed.

We're still charging full steam ahead with the fire ant update - we just thought there's plenty of you who would appreciate something new to play in the meantime.

A localisation issue that didn't come up in testing meant we had to roll back yesterday. This has now been rectified, and so version 0.23 has been reinstated.

Other than that, all the patch notes from the 0.23 post apply. Thanks for your patience on this everyone, and thanks to the players who reported the issues they were having!

Hi all,

Due to some Mac and localisation issues that didn't come up during testing we're going to have to do an emergency rollback from 0.23 to the previous version, 0.22112. This should only be temporary but it's vital since those groups are having major issues to do with saves and language defaults.

We'll work fast to get everything sorted, re-packaged and re-uploaded. In the meantime this shouldn't affect much since there isn't any new content scheduled to come out until April 2nd - but we appreciate your patience on the matter!

Apart from 4 new levels set to roll out over the next few months (thank you to everyone whos been helping test and balance them) the main bulk of this update is under-the-hood changes.

To deal with a persistent problem experienced by a number of laptop users, weve accelerated plans to upgrade the game engine by several versions. Were always reluctant to do this since it invariably breaks lots of things, and most of the time over the past month has been spent dealing with the fallout. Once again, thank you to everyone whos helped us iron out those wrinkles. Particular thanks to Scyobi_Empire who helped us diagnose the initial laptop issue.

Theres also a new menu for the extra levels, which will give a description of them and a preview of their minimap, as well as an estimate of how long theyll take to complete and any reward associated with them.

Features

• Extra levels now come with a description and minimap preview when selecting them from the menu
  
• New extra levels added to be rolled out every 6 weeks starting on April 2nd
  
  • Occupation - a wood ant level not unlike the campaign level New Home
    
  • Cramped - a heavily infested leafcutter level with a surface, kill all enemies!
    
  • Enemy of my Enemy - a unique game where digging is instant and done with the mouse; packs of enemies are hostile to each other. Get them to kill each other before they kill the queen!
    
  • The Culling - a black ant level with interesting enemy spawning mechanics

• The game will no longer crash on startup when using specific Intel graphics chips
  
• Fixed an issue where non-aggressive buried enemies were heading to the queen when dug out
  
• Fixed an issue where after a freeplay save one of the enemy colonies would become un-enterable
  
• Fixed an issue where ubers were linked to the wrong freeplay setup check boxes
  
• Fixed a pathing issue on The Crucible demo map
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur at low frame rates
  
• Fixed an issue in 2.1 where night creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures on top of tunnel exits could get stuck
  
• Fixed an issue on 2.1 where first night creatures to spawn would immediately despawn (there are now more creatures at night)
  
• Night creatures in 2.1 will now be more attracted to combat
  
• Fixed an issue with an ant getting stuck in 2.2 on a specific ramp
  
• Enemy woodworm dug out at start of 3.1 are now friendly again and hence the narrator makes sense
  
• Fixed an issue where the uber mole cricket would freeze instead of doing its thump attack
  
• Creatures will no longer decelerate when they spot and item of food or an enemy (movement should look smoother when going to gather food)
  
• Minor cosmetic painting issue fixed on 3.1
  
• Fixed an issue where the scientist was not coaxing your ants out when you retreated underground in formicarium challenge 3
  
• Fixed an issue where loaded food items underground could count as enemies being in your nest (this could cause a computer ally in freeplay to never stop protecting you)
  
• Fixed an issue where the scientists finger jab would aim at dead ants
  
• Changed victory animation on 3.1 and 3.2 so they correctly come out of the tunnel exit
  
• Minor cosmetic fixes to 2.2 (water edges and painting issues)
  
• Dug out a tile that should have been in the leafcutter demo level (on top of the tunnel exit)
  
• Fixed some potential issues with bots
  
• Freeplay AI enemy colonies will now leave an enemys nest faster after the queen is dead
  
• Fixed an issue with freeplay AI colonies that caused them to sometimes place a marker off the map resulting in the associated ants breaking
  
• Fixed various minor issues with Freeplay AI colonies
  
• Fixed a minor issue where leafcutters could rarely teleport to a plant to climb

• Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.24 (up from 4.20)
  
• Minor optimisations in plant climbing
  
• Changes to how AI colonies in freeplay decide which resources to harvest from
  
• Cheating freeplay colonies can now resurrect more than one dead group at a time if they have no resources and their ants in groups are all dead
  
• Minor bot optimisations
  
• Minor tweak to the way trails work
  
• Improved checks added to food pickup meaning food should go ignored less

We're likely to run this beta just overnight and get it out onto the main branch some time tomorrow, as long as no huge problems are discovered! Whilst it doesn't have much in the way of new features, v0.23 is a significant patch because we've upgraded the engine that Empires of the Undergrowth runs on (Unreal Engine 4), and we've spent a significant amount of time fixing problems that arise from that.

So, just to reiterate - no major new features since the last optional beta, but there have been plenty of changes going on under the hood. This beta is available on all platforms. It will also remove the four extra levels, with the first of them (Occupation) being due for full release on April 2nd.

If you'd like to join the beta just for the evening, the beta key is givemeextraextra. If you don't know how to join a beta, here's how to do it:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter givemeextraextra

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch

• Fixed randomised caverns in Freeplay
  
• Fixed Chinese and Russian languages
  
• Minor tweak to the way trails work
  
• Fixed a minor issue where leafcutters could rarely teleport to a plant to climb
  
• New extra levels removed from list & scheduled for release in future - set your system clock forward a few months to unlock them all if you'd like to continue beta testing them (at your own risk)
  
• The Culling balance changes
  
  
  
  • Slightly increased food dropped from creatures in hard and insane
    
  • Slightly reduced creature spawn rate on insane
    
  • Added an extra ramp to the south
    
  
  

Weve got another few Empires of the Undergrowth critters and some size comparisons from the upcoming fire ant update to show you in this edition of the newsletter. Weve also done an engine upgrade which has had us banging our heads against our keyboards for the past few weeks! Those of you who have been having issues on certain laptops, whilst a small number, will be pleased to know that the next update will fix this problem in a roundabout way. At the time of writing this patch (0.23) was coming towards the end of optional beta testing. See this thread for more detailed discussion of the issue.


A wood ant queen surveys her dinner from Steam user roobyRoss

Well also be talking about the imminent release of Slug Discos foray into publishing, Ecosystem! Were not the developers of this game by Tom Johnson but are publishing it under our banner, and are of course hopping up and down on the spot in anticipation of playing the early access version after months of playing the demo.

Ecosystem Early Access March 16th

We first spoke about Ecosystem shortly after we brought Ecosystem on board as the first Slug Disco publishing-only project (we are not developing it), back in September of 2019. Tom Johnson is an accomplished developer and we were impressed with his ingenious ocean evolutionary sim based on real-world science.

Were very pleased to announce that the game is ready to hit early access on March 16th! Please check out the launch trailer below and read on further to find out about this genuinely brilliant simulation game.

[previewyoutube=diOH8eEhHtk;full][/previewyoutube]

Set in an ocean world of your devising, the first task in Ecosystem is to design your marine environment using an array of terrain generation and decoration tools. Your world can look decidedly familiar at one extreme and positively alien at the other. A variety of plants, rocks and decorations can be used to enhance the look of your Ecosystem. Plants and corals have a direct affect on how your creatures will evolve they form the basis of the food chain on which all evolving animals ultimately depend. You can unlock new plants and corals as you progress.

Ecosystem is a technical marvel and its been a joy to see how far the game has come. Its a remarkably satisfying experience to know your creatures are evolving in a true sense, using neurons that learn how to apply torque at the joints to push against the water, without any pre-ordained animation. The game will be available on Steam from Tuesday 16th March add it to your wish lists right now, and give the demo a spin if youre not convinced!

Now, back to our regular programming!

Tier 4 Creatures

[h3]The Big-Headed Ant[/h3]

Another species that will be tussling with fire ants in Empire of the Undergrowths 4th tier is the big-headed ant (Pheidole morrisii).

Like many species, it has minor and major castes, but it also has a category of major often called supersoldier in scientific literature. This beast has a huge head and a wicked pair of pincers. The head powers huge bite force much like a leafcutter major, but in a much more awkwardly-proportioned form.


Pheidole morrisii about to drop the hottest album of 2021

The head is very big in comparison to the body (hence the name), so although the bite is formidable the supersoldiers do tend to be a little on the clumsy side! This is likely to translate in-game as the supersoldiers being very tough, but also having the unfortunate tendency to stumble and fall every so often simply due to the disproportionate size of their heads.

The big-headed ant joins the little black ant (Monomorium minimum, see the previous newsletter for more details about them) as another peripheral species that will appear in the fire ant levels opposing them, but theyre not the focus of the update. Unlike the peripheral species of the leafcutter update (trap-jaw and army ants), both of these species are ideal candidates for inclusion in freeplay as their own distinct colonies, as they have suitable nesting and foraging behaviours. As always with unreleased in-development things, this is subject to change.

[h3]The Cow Killer[/h3]

The cow killer, or red velvet ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) is not an ant at all but is a kind of wingless wasp. In nature, the males fly to find mates but the females spend most of their lives looking remarkably ant-like as they busy themselves foraging. Seeing her resemblance to a queen ant but with distinct furry red patches, its quite easy to see how ants and wasps are closely-related in the insect kingdom both being members of the order Hymenoptera.


She doesnt actually kill cows, but her sting would certainly put one out of action for a while

Red velvet ants are usually non-confrontational and will avoid conflict if they can, but if threatened the sting is so potent that the species gets its common nickname of cow killer. Her exoskeleton is remarkably tough for an insect it has been reported that entomologists have difficulty using metal pins to pierce it for display mounting!

Her stats and abilities are related to the tough exoskeleton, reluctance to fight and exceptionally painful sting. Shes likely to be very tough for her size, and to only start using the stinger at low health, perhaps also sometimes fleeing with a speed boost. Overall the cow killer is a tough and deadly addition to the swamplands of North Carolina.

[h3]The Wasp Mantidfly[/h3]

The wasp mantidfly (Climaciella brunnea) is neither a wasp nor a mantid the wasp-like pigmentation is mimicry to fool predators, and the mantis-like arms are an excellent example of convergent evolution, where similar solutions to a problem evolve in unrelated species.


Hello there!

Voracious hunters of insects, they are more than willing to tussle with fire ants for a quick snack. They grab their prey very much like a praying mantis does using those uncanny front arms. They then fly off to devour it in peace. Expect to see them lurking among the flora of North Carolina waiting for your colony to stray too close!

Size Comparison Great Blue Skimmer

Titans huge creatures with unique behaviours that differentiate them from the regular denizens of the undergrowth will be coming to the game along with the fire ant update.


She's a beauty!

We detailed the first confirmed titan, the great blue skimmer (Libellula vibrans) in the previous newsletter. Check out its animations to see it in action! What is difficult to see from these stills and video is just how big this dragonfly is. In the above picture, weve put it next to a very familiar ant type the Formica ereptor ant as well as the upcoming fire ants, who the skimmer will battle. You can see just how much of an absolute unit she is.

Screenshot Central

Always my favourite part of writing these newsletters this time round taken exclusively from our Discords screenshots channel. If you havent already, come along and join our nature-loving community! Friendly ant enthusiasts guaranteed.


Fezes are definitely cool in this shot from PeepsPlays_YT


The Hungry Spider never forgets his top hat. As long as you have arachnophobe mode on. From syrian dugong


The hermit crabs await the arrival of their uber-powered lord from Dr. Spooks

In order to fix a crash that was happening on certain laptops with Intel chips we have had to update the Unreal Engine version Empires of the Undergrowth is built on. Doing so may have some performance improvements but mostly the experience should be the same.

Weve done plenty of testing ourselves but a change like this is systemic, so any part of the game could have issues that weve missed.

We are running this beta to make sure there are no hidden bugs that cropped up during the engine update, and we appreciate anyone who can spend some time testing any and all aspects of the game for problems.

If you would like to join the beta, the code is givemeextraextra. If you dont know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter givemeextraextra

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

• The game will no longer crash on startup when using specific Intel graphics chips
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur at low frame rates
  
• Fixed an issue with player-controlled spider movement
  
• Fixed an issue in 2.1 where night creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures on top of tunnel exits could get stuck
  
• Fixed an issue on 2.1 where first night creatures to spawn would immediately despawn (there are now more creatures at night)
  
• Night creatures in 2.1 will now be more attracted to combat
  
• Fixed an issue with an ant getting stuck in 2.2 on a specific ramp
  
• Enemy woodworm dug out at start of 3.1 are now friendly again and hence the narrator makes sense
  
• The Culling is no longer stuck on easy
  
• Fixed an issue where the uber mole cricket would freeze instead of doing its thump attack
  
• Creatures will no longer decelerate when they spot and item of food or an enemy (movement should look smoother when going to gather food)
  
• Minor cosmetic painting issue fixed on 3.1
  
• Fixed an issue where the scientist was not coaxing your ants out when you retreated underground in formicarium challenge 3
  
• Fixed an issue where loaded food items underground could count as enemies being in your nest (this could cause a computer ally in freeplay to never stop protecting you)
  
• Fixed an issue where the scientists finger jab would aim at dead ants
  
• Changed victory animation on 3.1 and 3.2 so they correctly come out of the tunnel exit
  
• Minor cosmetic fixes to 2.2 (water edges and painting issues)
  
• Dug out a tile that should have been in the leafcutter demo level (on top of the tunnel exit)
  
• Fixed some potential issues with bots
  
• Improved checks added to food pickup meaning food should go ignored less
  
• Freeplay AI enemy colonies will now leave an enemys nest faster after the queen is dead
  
• Fixed an issue with freeplay AI colonies that caused them to sometimes place a marker off the map resulting in the associated ants breaking
  
• Fixed various minor issues with Freeplay AI colonies
  

• Extra levels now come with a description and minimap when selecting them from the menu
  

• Minor bot optimisations
  

In our first newsletter of the new year, covering news from December 2020 and January 2021, we have some critters from the fourth tier of the formicarium story to talk about (and perhaps a tiny little sneak preview of a story mission), as well as some discussion of some new extra levels that will be coming your way over the next few months. Also, on the company side of things (which we do have to occasionally think about) weve recently launched an updated version of our website, which should make it easier to find information about Slug Disco Studios Ltd. and the games we publish. Thanks to Dan, our recently-hired marketing content creator, for his stellar work on bringing the website into the 2020s!


A screenshot from an upcoming extra level Cramped

4th Tier Creatures

With our artist Matt on a big drive to complete lots of 3D models, textures and animations for the fire ant update, we have a few new creatures to show off to you. Its exciting to be able to see some of the denizens of the swamp ready and in the game! The 4th tier levels take place in a nature preserve known as the , so all of the creatures in the 4th tier levels are either native or invasive to that place in real life.

Since were talking about the 4th tier levels, its worth reiterating our policy on release dates. We do not do estimates for big content releases weve done that in the past and since game development is very unpredictable in how long certain tasks will take, weve ended up disappointing people before and end up having to push estimates back further. To that end, we stick to the old development adage of when its done and as soon as we have a date we are 100% sure we can hit, we will be very loud about letting everyone know.

[h3]Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle[/h3]

We announced this critter some time back, but now we have completed artwork to show you. The six-spotted tiger beetle (Cicindela sexguttata) is a common sight in the undergrowth of North America. A fast daytime hunter, its large compound eyes scour the landscape as it also feels for vibrations. It is a voracious hunter of ants, and your Solenopsis invicta are very much on the menu.



Cicindela sexguttata, in-game model

Cicindela sexguttata will be a little smaller than the other tiger beetle in the game (the beach tiger beetle), but just as deadly. We particularly like the motion that Matt has bestowed him with, just look at that elytra (wing casing) action in this animation showreel!

[previewyoutube=UrC6s8TMt8I;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly[/h3]

The great blue skimmer (Libellula vibrans) is a large dragonfly native to eastern parts of the United States. It is the first creature that is officially in a new class known in-game as titans. These are invariably large enemies that have special behaviours beyond that of the regular fauna you encounter on your adventures in the undergrowth.


Libellula vibrans, in-game model

In the case of the skimmer, it is of course capable of flight and will periodically land, and that is when you can attack it. Titans are always tough to take down and typically represent a large amount of resources if they can be beaten. Its animations are fun we particularly like its overly-dramatic death after attempting take-off!

[previewyoutube=9-7F12XSR-E;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Little Black Ant[/h3]

The little black ant (Monomorium minimum) is a tiny North American ant species that your fire ants will come up against. Although small (very likely the smallest ants that will ever be in the game), they are fierce and territorial they wave their gaster (hind section) in a technique called flagging, which releases secretions from their poison glands.


The 3 kinds of Monomorium minimum - soldier, queen and worker

This intimidating chemical and visual threat display / territory marking is effective enough to see off most competition. The exact details of the gaster flagging are yet to be tested, but its likely to be an area-of-effect ability that will help them make up for their small stature.

Fire Ant Mission Preview

The layouts for the fire ant missions (and even missions beyond that) are completed at this point. With no further context, we thought itd be fun to show you a little in-editor preview of what one of them looks like from above. Remember that the fire ant levels take place in swampy conditions so expect plenty of water to be present in its final form! It looks fairly bland right now as we havent decorated it with the swamp flora just yet were not quite ready to show that off, but you can imagine how itll be with plants such as the Venus flytrap populating its shores.



New Mechanic: Aphid Relocation

Like many ant species, fire ants are resourceful and one of their many sources of food is honeydew that they milk from aphids. Some new aphids will be added to the game these ones will live amongst foliage instead of roots. A modification of the cart system used to let leafcutters climb plants will let other kinds of ant climb plants to harvest from aphids, and indeed move them.


The Unreal Engine 4 blueprint flowchart for the aphid relocation system

A new system will be in place that allows the ants to relocate said aphids to suitable plants nearer the nest. This will be a type of command the player gives rather than the ants doing it themselves. Bringing aphids closer to the nest has the obvious advantage of reducing travel time to tend to the flock.

Titan Climbing

Weve spoken before about the ability to climb creatures coming along with the fire ant update. As part of their attack behaviours, ants will be able to climb onto certain large enemy creatures that have been rigged up for mounting. This once again involves using an extended version of the plant cart system, but this time attached to a mobile creature.


Some of the in-editor intricacies of the titan climbing system

Not only can the target move, but its also likely trying to eat the ants that are trying to climb onto it. All sorts of problems came up, as you can imagine, from spinning creatures trying to attack ants that had mounted them, to ants jumping off creatures limbs that overhang the edge of the map and culling themselves in the process. A lot of these issues have to be considered to make the effect seamless and sensible!

The climbing system will be extended to previous levels eventually, but probably not with the initial release of the fire ants as allowing creatures to be climbed will change the balance of levels. This will particularly affect the levels that have the most large creatures such as 3.1 and 3.2. Were likely to include the community in an update post-fire ants to rebalance levels around this new mechanic.

Upcoming Extra Levels

We have a number of extra levels awaiting release. We occasionally hear from people worried that these extras are taking development time away from the main campaign theres no need to be concerned there. They do not take anywhere near the amount of time that the campaign missions do because they all use existing assets and systems. A simple extra level can go from concept to the balancing phase in just a few short hours. John, who is the predominant creator of extra levels thus far, finds them a convenient thing to stream that doesnt spoil upcoming campaign levels, too.


Leafcutter extra level Cramped lives up to its name!

Quite simply, they are a nice productive thing for one of the devs to do if theyre waiting on work from the other two they create some new content for everyone to be getting on with whilst we work on the big updates. They also allow experimentation outside of the comparatively rigid / realistic settings of the campaign levels (Tug of War is a perfect example of this). Below is a description of the four that are being tested and tweaked right now:

• Occupation a wood ant level not unlike the campaign level New Home
  
• Cramped a heavily infested leafcutter level with a surface; kill all enemies
  
• The Culling a black ant level with interesting enemy spawning mechanics
  
• Enemy of my Enemy a unique game where digging is instant and done with the mouse; packs of enemies are hostile to each other. Get them to kill each other before they kill the queen!
  

Its time for an optional beta! This beta has some fixes for long-standing issues and, more excitingly, comes with 4 (!) new extra levels for testing and balance. Extra levels are fast to develop as most of them don't need extensive new systems and artwork; we can make one of these in just a few short hours but testing them for balance is another thing. They need some feedback!

We are looking for feedback on balance in the 4 new extra levels. You can leave them on our Discord, Steam forum, or official forums.

If youd like to help out, wed be very happy for you to give them a spin now! Youll need to be a Windows 64 bit owner on Steam to join the beta.

PLEASE NOTE! Once the testing phase is over and this update goes live on the main branch, the new extra levels will be removed from the list again, and will reappear monthly after that (exact dates to be announced as the time approaches).

If you would like to join the beta, the code is givemeextraextra. If you dont know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter givemeextraextra

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

• New extra levels added to be rolled out monthly, but available in this beta for testing for a short time:
  
  
  
  • Occupation - a wood ant level not unlike the campaign level New Home
    
  • Cramped - a heavily infested leafcutter level with a surface, kill all enemies!
    
  • The Culling - a black ant level with interesting enemy spawning mechanics
    
  • Enemy of my Enemy - a unique game where digging is instant and done with the mouse; packs of enemies are hostile to each other. Get them to kill each other before they kill the queen!
    
  
  
• Fixed an issue where non-aggressive buried enemies were heading to the queen when dug out
  
• Fixed an issue where after a freeplay save one of the enemy colonies would become un-enterable
  
• Fixed an issue where ubers were linked to the wrong freeplay setup check boxes
  
• Fixed a pathing issue on The Crucible demo map
  
• Minor optimisations in plant climbing
  
• Changes to how AI colonies in freeplay decide which resources to harvest from
  
• Cheating freeplay colonies can now resurrect more than one dead group at a time if they have no resources and their ants in groups are all dead
  

Thanks for the people who have helped us identify a crash with the recent short optional beta. This has now been fixed and we're ready to move this patch to the main branch just in time for Christmas. It is now possible to save your freeplay games that include AI colonies! This should make them more viable for long-term games instead of short skirmishes.

Freeplay AI should still be considered to be in its early days and there are a multitude of extra things we'd like to do for it (making it cleverer being the main one) but it's likely this is the last feature update for freeplay until after the 4th tier campaign levels (fire ants) are released.

[h2]Headline Features[/h2]

• Saving is now available with AI colonies in freeplay
  
  
  
  • Please keep an eye out for strange behaviours of the enemy or allied colonies after a save and load in freeplay; it is possible some of their behaviour has not been correctly restored. Please report these on our forums or Discord!
    
  
  

• Fixed some underground visual tile bugs
  
• Fixed a minor issue with the slave maker button in battle arena
  
• Swarm slave makers now have team colours working properly
  
• Fixed a surface tile painting issue on The Dunes
  
• Removed some specks of dirt that were floating on the open nest entrances in The Dunes
  
• Fixed an issue where AIs that were cheating could only get a free hatch once per game
  
• Fixed issues with the AI colonys visibility of spawned landmarks (should lead to some more sensible landmark harvesting decisions)
  
• Fixed an issue where surface tunnels could switch when a freeplay game was loaded
  
• Fixed an issue where randomised caverns were not loading and saving
  
• Fixed an issue where some creatures could freeze if interrupted during picking up another creature
  
• Creatures eaten by other creatures will no longer drop invisible food
  
• Festive Spider level funnel web kills now count towards your experience
  
• Adjusted web size in Christmas spider level the better represent the area funnel webs can detect enemies
  
• Webs in the Festive Spider level will no longer expand upwards covering the map
  
• Webs stop increasing in size beyond level 9 in the Festive Spider level
  
• Fixed an animation issue to do with wood ants rapid firing
  
• In freeplay uber mole crickets now count towards the hunter victory condition
  
• Can no longer tag and untag another colonys tunnel exit for excavation
  
• Stopped aphids moving when being eaten by a ladybird; should fix floating honeydew
  

• Optimisation added to creature spawning when looking up its class (should speed things up when lots of ants are hatching at once such as the beginning of a freeplay game)
  

Weve made big strides towards getting the freeplay AI save-able, and were at the point where we could do with some extra feedback before we declare it good to go. This opt-in beta build adds saving to freeplay games with AI colonies, which should make them much more viable in a long game.

If you would like to participate, the beta code is christmasants. You will need to be a 64 bit Windows user to join. If youre unfamiliar with how to activate a Steam beta and would like to, follow the steps below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

Choose the "Betas" tab

In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter christmasants

After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.