Did you think you'd seen the last of the Hungry Spider this year? He's back for Christmas, and his concerns are a little more wholesome this time. He's trying to protect his carefully-wrapped gifts for his spiderlings - but others are regarding his haul with envious eyes.



Festive Spider is controlled similarly to the Hungry Spider level - except this time, you'll need to use a tower defence system to keep the gift-coveting hordes of enemies away!

BE WARNED: like its predecessor, Festive Spider is a brutally difficult level and we expect very few will be able to complete it successfully. You'll need multiple runs to get a feel for the level, so set some time aside if you intend to complete it. You'll need to be selective with what spider weapons you use, and how you upgrade them.

A small tip for those starting out - those ants taking your gifts are awfully quick. Starting out with Crippling Venom to reliably slow them down will make them much easier to keep in range.

[/quote]
"Ode to a Hungry Spider", anon, 2020

Welcome to our November 2020 newsletter! The past few months have seen quite a few things happen, both for Empires of the Undergrowth and for us, Slug Disco, as a company. Very importantly, we are taking our first steps into expanding a little, and we’ve brought Dan on board as our Marketing Content Creator. We’ll have a little from Dan later on as he introduces himself to you all.


The modular formicariums from Steam user roobyRoss


I’m sure you’ll all be keen to see what we’ve been doing with regards to the fire ant update. Whilst we don’t have artwork we want to spoil yet, we can show you a bit more of our systems development as we introduce a new concept for ants - strandings. With changing water levels and multiple small islands on the miniature archipelagos that make up the fire ant’s swampy environment, the possibility of them getting stranded is now a real threat.



Stranded ants are panicky, and will die quickly if not reunited with the colony as a whole. This is thematic with ants being eusocial creatures that cannot survive for long by themselves. If you want to avoid a mass panic and death among your stranded ants, you’ll need to rescue them! Thankfully, fire ants are adept at using their own bodies to form bridges (as we’ve shown you previously) and sometimes, you might want to build a bridge not to reach new resources, but to rescue stranded colony members.


I’ve heard it said that if you lined up one of every kind of creature that exists in the world, one if every four is likely to be a beetle. Naturally, we want to include some more of nature’s little walking tanks in the undergrowth! The six-spotted tiger beetle Cicindela sexguttata is a common hunter in North America, and these beetles are easily identified by their ferocious-looking mandibles. Expect these daytime predators to be causing trouble for fire ants in the Green Swamp Preserve of North Carolina!


Cicindela sexguttata from Wikipedia. Photo by Marvin Smith. License: CC BY-SA 2.0. Rotated for newsletter

Outside of this, large amounts of progress is being made on the levels, script and everything else we’ll need to complete to bring fire ants to the game. With the addition of our new team member freeing up the devs for work on the 4.x levels, we expect to show you a lot of shiny new things very soon. Speaking of which...


One of the disadvantages of being a small team is that everyone has to be a generalist. The team has, until now, consisted of three developers (who are also the owners and company directors) and a community manager. Marketing responsibility has been shared between everyone, which is far from ideal - no project like this can be successful without a good marketing provision, but the developers want to spend their time developing. Enter Dan, our new marketing person and fifth team member! He’ll be taking on the role of producing marketing materials for us as well as exploring other avenues for us to get the word out about Empires of the Undergrowth and our other two games. I’ll let Dan introduce himself:

“As development continues on Empires of the Undergrowth and with the addition of Beetle Uprising and Ecosystem under the Slug Disco banner it became apparent that another slug needed to join the disco!

And I am that latest slug (maybe this slug analogy needs some work).

My name is Dan and I have joined the team as a Marketing Content Creator which means, well, I'll be creating content for marketing would you believe! Whether this is liaising with streamers and press to get content created for us - or making the content myself such as videos, digital graphics, the role covers a lot of elements.

If you feel like saying hi then why not head on over to the Discord server or our newly revamped Reddit page?

You can also find me on Twitter @DanPos_ and if you're interested in 3D modelling or game development I also have a YouTube channel where I post tutorials on those topics.

See you in the Undergrowth!
Dan"

We’ve recently released version 0.22. As well as including some neat new extra levels like Excavators and Tug of War, as well as AI colonies in freeplay, some important changes to game systems have been made.

We’ve made some changes to the way pheromone trails work, and Liam put together a helpful video explaining what’s been changed and why. In short, the updates to the way trails now work will mean more ants will reach the end of a trail faster, and some of the ants will be turned back along the way to form a seamless trail to the queen.



Newer players are sometimes confused as to why the game works like this instead of a more traditional RTS setup (for instance, units in StarCraft II). In short, we want the ants to feel like ants, and for the species that feature prominently in Empires of the Undergrowth that means trails. We can strike a balance between this naturalistic feeling behaviour and with the standardisation of the different methods of putting ants on and off trails, make the whole thing smoother and more responsive.


A few bugs resurfaced since the 0.22 update and we’ve taken some time out to track these down. Since adding some new resource collection behaviours for fire ants and beyond, some issues with these systems manifested themselves in other parts of the game. Something that has apparently been a long-running problem that wasn’t significantly on our radar until recently is that it is still possible for some creatures to get stuck in nest entrances. The reason we hadn’t come across it was because it required very low frame rates to occur, and so we had to develop a test that suitably stretched our hardware far beyond its limit. Once we were able to reproduce the stuck creatures, it was quite easy to find the problem.


Just us testing our hardware to the absolute limit to see if we can get beetles stuck in nest chamber entrances

The creatures usually ‘sweep’ themselves forward when they move, stopping if they hit something, but sometimes it is possible that a creature is already intersecting something when it begins its movement routine and so it can’t sweep itself anywhere. In this case the creature will teleport, but there’s a problem with that – the lower the framerate, the further the teleport and if the teleport is long enough, it can go straight through a wall to the other side (which is what happens with these beetles). Although we foresaw this problem, the routine to protect against it happening had a typo - but that’s now been fixed!


The first game published by Slug Disco Studios to fully launch, Beetle Uprising by Iocane Games left early access and entered full release on the 5th of November. We had a fun launch for it, consisting of an informative if unconventional imgur post that talked about why sites like imgur are essential for marketing when you’re a small team without a mega-budget for advertising!



As well as the completion of the campaign levels, a new feature - Mystery Mode - has been added. This gives random rewards instead of set ones in the campaign, which could lead to some interesting beetle abilities and stats earlier on! We look forward to seeing what you get.

Thanks so much to everyone that’s helped get the game to this point through feedback and supporting it throughout its early access time.


And so we come to the end of an unusually beetle-heavy edition of the newsletter! As always my favourite bit about this job is finding the amazing screenshots our fans produce on a regular basis. As a reminder - you can take a nice artily-angled screenshot using photo mode (F9 by default - and if you hit shift whilst pressing F9 you’ll get an unlocked camera). Upload your screenshots to the Steam Community page, send them directly to me at mike@slugdisco.com, or how about join us on our Discord and share there!


Charge! A clash of giants as Steam user Alex and Raptor’s leafcutters take on a devil’s coach horse and uber spiny devil cricket


A beautiful overview of the jungle at night from Steam user BrickyGraph631


A pleasing shot of leafcutters doing their thing from Steam user Professor Puffer

Hey everyone!

Along side the Steam Autumn Sale the Steam Award Nominations are back!

We are putting our hat in the undergrowth ring for the Labor of Love award for Empires of the Undergrowth and we would love it if you could vote for the game (and maybe pester your friends to do so too!)

We've been working on Empires of the Undergrowth for almost 3 years now and it truly is a labor of love. Along side the updates and the extra levels we've loved seeing our community grow.

Whether it's the lovely folks over on our Discord or the players interacting with us on Twitter we couldn't be more thankful :)

So no matter the outcome of the awards the team wants to say a massive thank you to you all and we can't wait to continue the journey.

Oh and if you missed it - our latest extra level "Tug of War" is now live!

Not ones to miss a trend, we've made our own auto-battler game mode a good 18 months after it was properly in vogue in the form of Tug of War.



In Tug of War, almost all of the macro decision making is taken care of for you - there's no food gathering or egg placement to concern yourself with. Instead, you'll be granted a regular income of food and eggs will be placed automatically. The meat of this game mode is in the choice of army composition - and you have lots of options available to you.

You'll get some bonus income if your ants are past the mid-way point of the overworld. Kill the enemy queen to win!

Thanks to everyone who's played this game mode in its various beta forms over the past few months - your feedback has informed it to the point where it is now!

Thanks to everyone who's tested our short optional beta over the weekend. We're confident that it's good for everyone now, so version 0.22103 is available for everyone from this point. There is one known issue detailed below the patch notes that didn't quite make it into this build on time - expect a fix for that next time round.

We are still looking for more information about a known bug where a leafcutter gets stuck on a plant with an exclamation mark appearing above its head. If this happens to you we would appreciate anything you can tell us or show us (screenshots or videos) about how it happened and if the leafcutter was affected by a status effect at the time (for example confuse caused by a devil’s coach horse).

• Fixed an issue where food buried underground but not part of a cavern would not be labelled as buried and not seen as an outline
  
• Randomised caverns for leafcutters now produce smaller leaves as so not poke through the surface and are randomly rotated
  
• Placing a marker on an enemy nest exit whilst your ants are in a different enemy nest will now cause your ants to leave the nest they are in
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to get a refund for a tile upgrade if cancelled the same frame it was completed (was easier on low FPS computers)
  
• Fixed a couple of painting issues on the surface to do with tunnel exits when they are not tunnelled out
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur in formicarium challenge 3 when the hand moved
  
• Player not selecting a unit option in freeplay will no longer refer to wood ants
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur on low end hardware
  
• Tunnel door now correctly stops ants walking through on The Other Foot
  
• Freeplay maps without a map option now grey out the option in the basic setup
  
• Fixed an issue for Russian language in the main menu text
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause creatures to freeze in an animation until the player looks at them
  
• Fixed a couple of spellings on the freeplay scoreboard
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit at a low frame rate
  
• Fixed an issue that could rarely cause a creature to get stuck in the air when picked up by a praying mantis
  
• Fixed an issue where the praying mantis could on rare occasions freeze doing nothing
  
• Fixed some visual underground tile bugs
  
• Fixed some UI issues with freeplay setup
  
• Fixed an issue with pathing at the northern end of Basin
  
• Fixed an issue where status effects were not being dealt with correctly in priority order (for example a creature could flee when stunned)
  
• Fixed an issue where turning gathering off whilst an ant was gathering caused it to walk back and forth to the food it was going to gather
  
• Destructible barriers can no longer be knocked back or affected by other effects
  
• Fixed some UI interaction issues with the freeplay setup menu especially when opening a saved setup
  
• Fixed a typo in the Discord tooltip

• Barrier between nests in Basin is no longer destructible if you are not allied with the colony on the other side
  
• Barriers that are destructible in Basin now appear as pieces of wood rather than stone
  
• Simplified some interaction in the freeplay menus that were causing issues to do with creature checkboxes and the creatures type dropdown
  
• Hunter and Domination game modes in freeplay no longer disable colony attacks
  
• The Hungry Spider level’s uber beach wolf spider can now take more than 6 damage per hit (should be easier to kill with a bite build now)
  
• Added in notifications explaining how to combat phorid flies in 3.1 and 3.2
  
• The player is now given a warning that they could lose their rewards if they try and restart a level when rewards are waiting for them in the formicarium
  
• Quitting or restarting Extremis now gives the player the reward points they had earned up to that point
  
• Some creatures now cannot be knocked back or forced to flee
  
• Some more improvement to funnel web performance in freeplay
  
• Smoothed some of the landscape at the edge of 2.2 and prevented some tiles poking through the sea bed
  
• Forum link changed to discord and patch notes link updated
  
• Mole cricket (and uber mole cricket) added to the Battle Arena
  
• Couple of icon updates for ant species in Battle Arena
  
• Slave maker ants added to Battle Arena
  
• Uber mole cricket can now be unlocked for freeplay by completing Excavators (should be retroactive)
  
• Dropped creatures will now try and drop where they are held rather than the centre of the holding creature

• Currently uber mole crickets do not count towards the Hunter victory condition. A fix for this will be out in the next patch
  
• Some recent changes intended for future updates may cause some unintended weirdness. Although unlikely, please let us know about any unusual behaviours you see

An update to the currently running short optional beta has been released. This will only affect you if you've opted into the beta - if you haven't and would like to, follow the instructions near the top of this link:

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/463530/view/2905346555607593463

Please note that this is a short beta and we are likely to set it to the main branch in short order anyway.

• Hunter and Domination game modes in freeplay no longer disable colony attacks
  
• Simplified some interaction in the freeplay menus that were causing issues to do with creature checkboxes and the creatures type dropdown
  
• Fixed a typo in the Discord tooltip
  
• Fixed an issue preventing uber mole crickets spawning in freeplay
  
• Fixed an issue where status effects were not being dealt with correctly in priority order (for example a creature could flee when stunned)
  
• Fixed an issue where turning food gathering off whilst an ant was gathering caused it to walk back and forth to the food it was going to gather
  
• Fixed some UI interaction issues with the freeplay setup menu especially when opening a saved setup

We're running a very short optional beta for this one. It's mainly a bug fixing patch, but the fixes potentially have some far reaching implications and we'd like to be sure we haven't missed anything huge. We'd appreciate any feedback on issues you experience in this beta - if you're on Windows 64 bit and would like to participate in this short beta, read on.

We are looking for more information about a known bug where a leafcutter gets stuck on a plant with an exclamation mark appearing above its head. If this happens to you we would appreciate anything you can tell us or show us (screenshots or videos) about how it happened and if the leafcutter was affected by a status effect at the time (for example confuse caused by a devil’s coach horse).

Additionally we would appreciate it if you could let us know if anything unusual happens with creatures using their abilities. Any freezing, stuck in animations or changes to how it worked before would help. We made a change to something fairly fundamental to do with abilities which is why we are asking for information around them.

The beta code is summertimeants - the same as it has been recently. If you’re unfamiliar with how to activate a Steam beta, here’s how to do it:

1. Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"
   
2. Choose the "Betas" tab
   
3. In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter summertimeants
   
4. After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "openbeta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu
   
5. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

• Fixed an issue where food buried underground but not part of a cavern would not be labeled as buried and not seen as an outline
  
• Randomised caverns for leafcutters now produce smaller leaves as so not poke through the surface and are randomly rotated
  
• Placing a marker on an enemy nest exit whilst your ants are in a different enemy nest will now cause your ants to leave the nest they are in
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to get a refund for a tile upgrade if canceled the same frame it was completed (was easier on low FPS computers)
  
• Fixed a couple of painting issues on the surface to do with tunnel exits when they are not tunneled out
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur in formicarium challenge 3 when the hand moved
  
• Player not selecting a unit option in freeplay will no longer refer to wood ants
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur on low end hardware
  
• Tunnel door now correctly stops ants walking through on The Other Foot
  
• Freeplay maps without a map option now grey out the option in the basic setup
  
• Fixed an issue for Russian language in the main menu text
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause creatures to freeze in an animation until the player looks at them
  
• Fixed a couple of spellings on the freeplay scoreboard
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures could get stuck in the tunnel exit at a low frame rate
  
• Fixed an issue that could rarely cause a creature to get stuck in the air when picked up by a praying mantis
  
• Fixed an issue where the praying mantis could on rare occasions freeze doing nothing
  
• Fixed some visual underground tile bugs
  
• Fixed some UI issues with freeplay setup
  
• Fixed an issue with pathing at the northern end of Basin
  
• Destructible barriers can no longer be knocked back or affected by other effects

• Barrier between nests in Basin is no longer destructible if you are not allied with the colony on the other side
  
• Barriers that are destructible in Basin now appear as pieces of wood rather than stone
  
• The Hungry Spider level’s uber beach wolf spider can now take more than 6 damage per hit (should be easier to kill with a bite build now)
  
• Added in notifications explaining how to combat phorid flies in 3.1 and 3.2
  
• The player is now given a warning that they could lose their rewards if they try and restart a level when rewards are waiting for them in the formicarium
  
• Quitting or restarting Extremis now gives the player the reward points they had earned up to that point
  
• Some creatures now cannot be knocked back or forced to flee
  
• Some more improvement to funnel web performance in freeplay
  
• Smoothed some of the landscape at the edge of 2.2 and prevented some tiles poking through the sea bed
  
• Forum link changed to discord and patch notes link updated
  
• Mole cricket (and uber mole cricket) added to the Battle Arena
  
• Couple of icon updates for ant species in Battle Arena
  
• Slave maker ants added to Battle Arena
  
• Uber mole cricket can now be unlocked for freeplay by completing Excavators (should be retroactive)
  
• Dropped creatures will now try and drop where they are held rather than the centre of the holding creature

This update has been bubbling in the cauldron for quite some time, and we think it's finally tender enough for everyone to sink their teeth into. Thank you so much to everyone who has been helping us test this patch for the past couple of months - we've been able to resolve issues much faster than we would have done just by ourselves!

We had hoped to have full saving for AI colonies ready at this point but that hasn't been possible; that feature is still in the works and will hopefully appear soon. Other than that, we're good to go.

• AI Colonies are available in freeplay (NOTE: activating these will currently disable freeplay saving)
  
  • They have Easy and Normal difficulty and can cheat (if you set them to) to create a greater challenge
    
  • Up to 3 AI colonies can be added, and can be enemies or allies
    
    The new freeplay setup screen, showing the AI options
• New freeplay map: Basin
  
  • Designed for 2v2 but can be played in any configuration
    
  • Map option adds in destructible barriers to open up new access routes on the map
    
    Basin in all its lush green glory
• New option: randomised caverns allow for a different underground setup every game!
  
• Freeplay game type selection allows quick and easy setups
  
  • Victory conditions, creatures and other options are automatically setup when selecting the game type
    
  • All other options can still be found in the tabs

• Excavators is now available to all in the extra levels section… wait.. did that exclamation mark just move??
  
  
  
  
• Tug Of War will be available at the end of November, an auto-battler against an AI

• Finishing The Other Foot extra level will unlock the Counterpart Colony for use in freeplay
  
• More ramps have been added to Towhead to make it easier at the early stages
  
• Rework of pheromone trails. Ants will now leave the nest immediately and some will turn around on their way to form the trail
  
  

• Fixed an issue where a loaded harvestman’s leg could cause the game to crash
  
• Can no longer place markers for nest group underground via minimap
  
• Blocked side routes for the huge whip spider on Aggrandise (preventing your ants pathing through its chamber unintended)
  
• Fixed an issue where switching from evasive worker upgrade would leave the camouflage on
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause first wave to have no creatures in Extremis
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures spawned on lab formicarium 2 after returning from a mission could be stuck slightly in the ground. The friendly spiders will now immediately attack; F in comments for spiderbro :(
  
• Fixed a bug where reloading a freeplay game that has no manual save would cause the map to load in its default setup without workers or queen tiles
  
• Fixed an issue where leafcutters were climbing empty plant leaves
  
• Fixed an issue where the whip spider (and other large enemies) could potentially skip the line-of-sight check if switching targets while an enemy is actually visible (stops whip spider attacking ants above it on the ridge)
  
• Minor improvement to target acquisition efficiency for abilities
  
• Fixed an issue where only 20 refuse was removed when cancelling a build or upgrade job rather than the full amount that was created
  
• Check added to prevent save files read-only crash and appropriate error message given to player
  
• Fixed an issue where resource numbers could appear to float upwards when food drops close to and behind the camera
  
• Fixed an issue on 3.2 where army ant scouts would not move (this may fix other issues as well)
  
• When an ally uses a queen ability it now correctly says an ally used the queen ability instead of enemy
  
• Fixed an issue where the wrong music would play when playing more after 2.1
  
• Fixed a crash that would occur on The Other Foot when creatures got close to bridge edges (after the formicariums are connected)

• Reduced point value of army ant media
  
• Leafcutter ant media buffed
  
  • Attack damage increased to 4.5 / 6 / 7 (up from 3 / 4.5 / 6)
    
  • Health increased to 100 / 115 / 130 (up from 90 / 105 / 120)
    
  • Speed increased to 310 / 320 / 330 (up from 300 / 300 / 300)
    
  • Piercing increased to 0.2 / 0.3 / 0.4 (up from 0.2 / 0.2 / 0.2)
• Wood ant melee buffed
  
  • Threat generation increased to 0.2 / 0.25 / 0.3 (up from 0.1 / 0.1 / 0.15)
    
  • Damage increased to 0.6 / 1.2 / 1.8 (up from 0.5 / 1 / 1.5)
    
  • Armour increased 0.2 / 0.4 / 0.6 (up from 0 / 0 / 0)
    
  • Distance values altered so they will get slightly closer to enemies before attacking (should allow other melee units the ability to get closer to the fight)
• Health regeneration on many melee units buffed
  
  • Leafcutter major, army ant major and slave maker ants health regen increased to 0.1 / 0.15 / 0.2 (up from 0.1 / 0.1 / 0.1)
    
  • Black ant, wood ant melee and leafcutter media health regeneration increased to 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3 (up from 0.1 / 0.1 / 0.1)
• Rapid fire wood ants will now get in and out of attack mode much more quickly
  
• Reduced mortar arc height

• Underground enemy "!" icons are now scaled based on how many points they provide. This should make it easier to gauge threats before attacking
  
• Ramp collision improvements
  
• Marker calculations have been improved (should be more responsive)
  
• Royal Guard are now immune to stun, confuse, pickup and execute
  
• Royal Guard health increased to 200 (up from 120)
  
• Infestation landmark is now defaulted to off
  
• Dropdown boxes in freeplay setup now display tooltips for each individual option when hovered over
  
• Freeplay now has an option to disable colonies entering one another (this turns on by default if playing Domination or Hunter game modes)
  
• Can now select which ubers you wish to spawn in freeplay

• Optimisations for creature movement
  
• Changes to how certain checks are done on the behaviour tree to improve performance
  
• Minor performance improvements on funnel web landmark (still needs more work)
  
• Improved honeydew resource performance
  
• When an egg hatches, the open egg and particle effect will only occur if the player is viewing that tile grid at the time (as will the hatch sound)

Mac & Linux are now included in the beta; we're very close to full release of this content for everyone.

• Reloading in freeplay now selects the correct loading screen for the map
  
• Root aphid clusters now spawn closer to the central point of interest in freeplay to prevent them spawning over cliff edges
  
• Fixed an issue where being at the south end of Excavators map would map the world bright
  
• Autosaves are now deleted when a game is deleted fixing an error that could try to load the wrong save into a freeplay level
  
• Killing an uber with a damage over time (DOT) effect will now count the kill towards victory objective Hunter
  
• Uber mole cricket now has 3000 food up from 30

- The Hungry Spider, whenever he's awake

Tucked away in a dark corner of the world, this wolf spider hungers. His appetite is insatiable, and there lies a feast nearby. The Hungry Spider is back for Halloween. If you've not seen him before, look for something that needs dusting away on the main menu.

Be warned - this level is notoriously brutal, and few have accomplished it. If you do, you'll be rewarded an achievement - the rarest of them, of course.



Thanks to Rensy for the screenshot used in the Steam artwork for this post!