Why Early Access?

“Since releasing our first demo we have received mountains of feedback from the community, which has been constantly shaping the game’s core mechanics and features. We feel this has ultimately resulted in a much better game and we want to continue moving forward with help and suggestions from players, and this has worked so well we're likely to continue that even after early access!

A side effect of this iterative community focused development, is that whilst we have been putting more time into tweaking the game’s inner workings to create the ideal mix of ant colony realism and compelling gameplay, it has put us behind schedule in terms of producing a final product that we can label complete.

While we are confident about the state of the game’s mechanics, and the amount of playable content currently available, there are additional game modes, creatures and abilities that we are still working on. All of these will need balancing, and that process works best with player input.

It seems to make little sense holding back the game’s release for months of development whilst we work on additional levels and features. We would much rather continue our work in the same manner as we have done for the past year: with the help of our enthusiastic ant-loving community.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“As of early 2022, we estimate a further 6-18 months of development to reach our version 1.0. However this can change as game development is by its nature an unpredictable process.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The early access version includes six (soon eight) stand-alone missions with unique creatures, music and narration as well as a “formicarium” story mode which has three (soon four) devious missions to test your colony. This content is considered to be complete and unlikely to be changed significantly between now and final release (except for bug fixes, performance updates etc). Therefore the experience should be similar to the final product. Over the course of early access, we plan to introduce new content as blocks of complete missions, ready to play. We are also releasing periodic extra missions that are not part of the main story campaign.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“We have re-structured some parts of the game specifically for early access. The early access version includes stand-alone missions with unique creatures, music and narration as well as a “formicarium” story mode. This content is considered to be complete and unlikely to be added to between now and final release (except for potential bug fixes, performance updates etc). Therefore the experience should be similar to the final product. Over the course of early access, we plan to introduce new content as blocks of complete missions, ready to play.

Bugs are also an inevitable possibility (the software kind), however we are beta testing separately and will make every effort to resolve issues before pushing early access updates.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“We may raise the price when we leave early access”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We try to facilitate community feedback and engagement wherever possible. Since the early days of the project, we have received thousands of feedback messages through our forums, social media and Discord server. We read all of these and they have significantly shaped the evolution of the game - especially when we start to see the same point raised by multiple people. We have a dedicated community manager who is very involved with the community that has sprung up around Empires of the Undergrowth.”