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)

This is likely to be the last time I post news this year, so from all of us at Slug Disco studios, I'd love to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. As for the promised news before year's end, we've narrowed down our release window a little and our marketing team recently took the rare step of meeting in person (we are a work-from-home studio) to work on a trailer for the fire ants. We'll be releasing that hopefully early in the new year when it's done, and at that point we'll have a firm release date! See you in 2022 for the continuation of our journey into the Undergrowth, together.