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:

Features

• 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)

Improvements / Changes

• 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

Fixes

• 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

The Promised Land

• Carve out and construct your underground nest to suit your strategy
  
• Engage in fast-paced colony versus colony combat above ground
  
• Play as different ant species and explore their unique traits and weaknesses
  
• Encounter and overpower dangerous beetles, arachnids and other awesome arthropods
  
• Grow your pet formicarium over time by completing missions

• OS: Any reasonable new Linux distro (Ubuntu 16.04)
• Processor: Intel Core i3-4340 / AMD FX-6300Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: nVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB / AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB
• Storage: 2 GB available space