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.

We’ve done plenty of testing ourselves but a change like this is systemic, so any part of the game could have issues that we’ve 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 don’t know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

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 givemeextraextra
   
4. 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
   
5. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

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.

• 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 enemy’s 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

Thanks to syrian dugong on our Discord for the screenshot used in the artwork for this post!

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) we’ve 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


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. It’s 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 Green Swamp in North Carolina, so all of the creatures in the 4th tier levels are either native or invasive to that place in real life.

Since we’re talking about the 4th tier levels, it’s worth reiterating our policy on release dates. We do not do estimates for big content releases – we’ve done that in the past and since game development is very unpredictable in how long certain tasks will take, we’ve 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 it’s 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.


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!




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!




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 it’s likely to be an area-of-effect ability that will help them make up for their small stature.


The layouts for the fire ant missions (and even missions beyond that) are completed at this point. With no further context, we thought it’d 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 haven’t decorated it with the swamp flora just yet – we’re not quite ready to show that off, but you can imagine how it’ll be with plants such as the Venus flytrap populating its shores.




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.


We’ve 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 it’s 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. We’re likely to include the community in an update post-fire ants to rebalance levels around this new mechanic.


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 – there’s 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 doesn’t 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 they’re 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!

Extra level The Culling has some unique enemy spawning mechanics

At the time of publishing (29th January 2021), these four levels have recently begun undergoing optional community testing on Steam. If you’d like to help out, please follow this link and see the instructions there. Once the testing period is complete, they will be properly released a month apart, as with previous extra levels. We’re thinking of running a little speed running competition for Enemy of my Enemy in particular!


Quite a lot of time has been spent dealing with old issues, and new ones have cropped up in the meantime. Starting in early January, an issue started to be reported amongst a small subset of players of the game suddenly stopping working altogether, which puzzled us as the game hadn’t been updated since before Christmas. It’s almost certain that an operating system, driver or proprietary software update is to blame, but getting to the bottom of it has been very tricky. We’ve found some commonality in that everyone who has this issue is using laptops with Intel processors, but frustratingly only a small percentage of that demographic is having any problems at all.

Due to the kindness of the community (particular thanks to Scyobi_Empire who has uncomplainingly helped us test various things) we’ve found a workaround that involves upgrading the engine version. This is something we intended to do in the not-too-distant future anyway, but it’s likely that our priorities have changed because of this issue so that will be happening sooner rather than later. Upgrading the engine will inevitably lead to crashes and plenty of things game-wide that need fixing, so we may be asking for some help testing that in the near future.

In other fixing stuff news, there have been some recently-reported resource gathering issues in the currently running beta. Liam spent time trying to get to the bottom of this by making a special scenario where he could quickly test ants trying to reach resources at the bottom of a cliff. The below video is representative of his entire afternoon.




Once again, the best part of writing a newsletter has arrived where I trawl through recent screenshots to find the real gems that show off the beauty, chaos, or both of Empires of the Undergrowth. If you’d like to contribute a shot to Screenshot Central, either upload your shot to the Steam Community or to the screenshots channel in Discord. By default, press F9 to enter photo mode, and hold down shift whilst you do it to get an unlocked camera and some really neat angles.


Hydra? A quadruple threat of mantids from Dr. Spooks on Discord


Night is no time to halt the harvest from Josselin17 on Discord


A pleasingly-lit shot of beta level Occupation from BrickyGraph631 on Steam

2020 was a uniquely challenging year for many of us, and 2021 hasn’t shown many signs of being much different thus far – but it’s going to be a big year for Empires of the Undergrowth, and indeed Slug Disco as a company.

Thank you for being with us throughout, and your gentle patience is as appreciated as your boundless enthusiasm! You’re a uniquely lovely bunch and as community manager I love that a good proportion of my job is interacting with the fantastic group of people that has built up around EotU and our other games. If you’re not already more closely involved and would like to be, we’d be absolutely delighted to have you in our Discord (where we’ve recently begun doing pre-releases of the optional betas) and our official forums. We hope to see you there.

Mike & The Slug Disco Team

It’s 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 you’d like to help out, we’d be very happy for you to give them a spin now! You’ll 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 periodically 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 don’t know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

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 givemeextraextra
   
4. 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
   
5. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

0.2222 Patch Notes

• 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

EDIT: Has been brought up to version 0.22221 with a small patch.

0.22221 Patch Notes

• Fixed an issue preventing creature spawning and marker placement in Towhead
  
• Removed a UE4 cone shape from Cramped that shouldn't be there
  
• Removed campaign rewards and narration from The Culling ending
  
• Reverted some changes to resource targeting that were causing issues

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.

• 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 colony’s 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 colony’s 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)

Thanks to whoamijr for the screenshot used in the artwork of this post!

We’ve made big strides towards getting the freeplay AI save-able, and we’re 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 you’re unfamiliar with how to activate a Steam beta and would like to, follow the steps below:

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 christmasants
   
4. 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
   
5. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

WARNING - We highly recommend you backup your saves before testing this beta build. This beta is primarily testing saving so this is more important than usual - there’s an above-normal chance of save files becoming corrupted. Save files are located at:

C:/ Users / [YOUR USER NAME] / AppData / Local / EotU / Saved /SaveGames

• 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 colony’s 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 colony’s tunnel exit for excavation

• 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)

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