A whole bunch of fixes have been made, mainly regarding the fire ant update and freeplay (there’s plenty more changes to freeplay coming in a larger update a bit further down the line). Extremis fans will be pleased to know that level is now playable again, and the poor bullfrog will no longer get beaten up by its lunch!

Thanks to everyone who’s helped to test this patch over the last few days.

• Bullfrog will now always eat creatures intended to feed it instead of being beaten up by them if they get too close
  
• Titan health bar will no longer appear during feeding events if the bullfrog is dead or has hopped away

• Player’s ants still in the Monomorium colony after it floods will now die
  
• Monomorium nest entrance now looks correct after end-of-level flood cinematic
  
• Reduced ‘Top of the Hill’ level end requirements on all difficulties
  
• Underground aesthetic updated

• A few decals added to cupboard interior after FC4 for extra detail
  
• Fixed an issue where continuing play too quickly after FC4 could cause the end to not properly happen

• Little black ants & big-headed ants will no longer be called Atta cephalotes in defeat screen
  
• Fixed a convoluted issue in freeplay causing random leafcutters to spawn in the place of dead queens
  
• Fixed an issue in freeplay where if dead enemy colonies were in the game, creatures would be less likely to attack the player
  
• Fixed an issue where the freeplay setup info would always appear as if 4 players were in the game (1v1v1v1)
  
• Fixed an underground tile that was crashing games in Basin
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause fire ant queens in freeplay to be off the ground

• Extra level Extremis will not crash the game any more
  
• Fixed carried aphids sometimes being removed if the ant is distracted whilst picking it up
  
• Fixed refund being prevented for 2nd refuse tile / leaf drop-off chamber
  
• Moving queens in 2.2 can no longer be killed by environmental creatures
  
• Fixed army ants despawning in Beetles Rise Up! which sometimes made the level unwinnable
  
• Fixed autoclicker food duplication issue
  
• Various UI elements made more stretchy to account for languages with longer sentences
  
• Distance increased between Battle Arena lanes to prevent knockback abilities hurling critters into the other lane
  
• Fire ant & little black ant queen mesh repositioned so they should float less
  
• Fixed population totals not being updated when a tile is cancelled before being built
  
• Removed access to a decorative plant that looked appetising to leafcutters in 3.2
  
• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now only ever be visible by their rendered outline; no more accidentally seeing the model poking out somewhere
  
• Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 would never end if all creatures were dead at some point after spider spawn
  
• Can no longer click through augmentations menu to select a tile
  
• Reduced size of fire ant worker eggs so they are not poking out the top of the queen
  
• Cancelling a tile before it is built will now correctly update population totals
  
• Corrected some spelling issues in the Freesound credits

• Replaced queen worker chamber crown icon with a flag
  
• Team stripes added to abdomens of fire ants, little black ants & big-headed ants
  
• Reduced size of all little black ant eggs to make them properly little
  
• 'Play More' button removed from 2.2
  
• Couple more first-time playthrough hints added to the first formicarium
  
• Numerous texture optimisations; they should pop in faster
  
• Font update in minor improvements panel
  
• Various animation optimisations added
  
• Some lab decorations moved closer to the formicarium so they can be seen in play
  
• Objectives will now update faster when something has changed
  
• Star power scale is now taken into account for minimap & physical size of buried creatures
  
• When an indestructible tile is made destructible (by, for example, a toad burrowing through it in 4.1) the tile break effect will play
  
• Chinese localisations updated
  
• Credits updated

• Under some circumstances, fire ants seem unable to place pheromone markers on the surface in freeplay
  
• On rare occasion, fire ants can get stuck when they're part of a bridge and the bridge is disassembled
  
• Green lynx spiders can rarely get stuck at the base of a pitcher plant

please let us know in the discussions if you see any of these issues!

We’ve made a bunch of fixes and some changes since the fire ant update, so many in fact that we want to run an optional beta before full release to make sure we haven’t damaged some vital system somewhere. This opt-in beta will run for a short while.

Please note that optional betas are only accessible on the Steam Windows 64 bit build.

If you would like to join the beta, the code is fireantfixtest. 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 fireantfixtest
   
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.

Any and all feedback on this optional beta is very much appreciated - please post it to the community discussions!

Patch Notes

4.1 Cold Blood

• Bullfrog will now always eat creatures intended to feed it instead of being beaten up by them if they get too close
  
• Titan health bar will no longer appear during feeding events if the bullfrog is dead or has hopped away

4.2 A Bridge Too Far

• Player’s ants still in the Monomorium colony after it floods will now die
  
• Monomorium nest entrance now looks correct after end-of-level flood cinematic
  
• Reduced ‘Top of the Hill’ level end requirements on all difficulties
  
• Underground aesthetic updated

Formicarium Challenge 4

• A few decals added to cupboard interior after FC4 for extra detail
  
• Fixed an issue where continuing play too quickly after FC4 could cause the end to not properly happen

Freeplay

• Little black ants & big-headed ants will no longer be called Atta cephalotes in defeat screen
  
• Fixed a convoluted issue in freeplay causing random leafcutters to spawn in the place of dead queens
  
• Fixed an issue in freeplay where if dead enemy colonies were in the game, creatures would be less likely to attack the player
  
• Fixed an issue where the freeplay setup info would always appear as if 4 players were in the game (1v1v1v1)
  
• Fixed an underground tile that was crashing games in Basin
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause fire ant queens in freeplay to be off the ground

General

• Fixed carried aphids sometimes being removed if the ant is distracted whilst picking it up
  
• Fixed refund being prevented for 2nd refuse tile / leaf drop-off chamber
  
• Moving queens in 2.2 can no longer be killed by environmental creatures
  
• Replaced queen worker chamber crown icon with a flag
  
• Extremis will not crash the game any more
  
• Fixed army ants despawning in Beetles Rise Up! which sometimes made the level unwinnable
  
• Fixed autoclicker food duplication issue
  
• Various UI elements made more stretchy to account for languages with longer sentences
  
• Distance increased between Battle Arena lanes to prevent abilities with knockback hurling critters into the other lane
  
• Team stripes added to abdomens of fire ants, little black ants & big-headed ants
  
• Fire ant & little black ant queen mesh repositioned so they should float less
  
• Reduced size of all little black ant eggs to make them properly little
  
• Fixed population totals not being updated when a tile is cancelled before being built
  
• Removed access to a decorative plant that looked appetising to leafcutters in 3.2
  
• 'Play More' button removed from 2.2
  
• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now only ever be visible by their rendered outline; no more accidentally seeing the model poking out somewhere
  
• Couple more first-time playthrough hints added to the first formicarium
  
• Fixed an issue where Formicarium Challenge 2 would never end if all creatures were dead at some point after spider spawn
  
• Numerous texture optimisations; they should pop in faster
  
• Various animation optimisations added
  
• Font update in minor improvements panel
  
• Some formicarium decorations moved closer to the formicarium so they can be seen in play
  
• Can no longer click through augmentations menu to select a tile
  
• Reduced size of fire ant worker eggs so they are not poking out the top of the queen
  
• Cancelling a tile before it is built will now correctly update population totals
  
• Objectives will now update faster when something has changed
  
• Star level is now taken into account for minimap & physical size of buried creatures
  
• When an indestructible tile is made destructible (by, for example, a toad burrowing through it in 4.1) the tile break effect will play
  
• Corrected some spelling issues in the Freesound credits
  
• Chinese localisations updated
  
• Credits updated

EDIT 2nd September: A couple of things that don't warrant a new version number but have been added:

• Mac package added to the beta
  
• Windows 32 bit package added to the beta
  
• Choice of DX11 or 12 removed - until we implement an engine upgrade, DX11 is the best option
  
• Steam Deck issue resolved

It’s been a while since the situation has warranted one of these newsletters – we said that after the last one in March, we didn’t want to spoil anything else and just wanted to concentrate purely on getting the fire ant update ready to go, and so we did! Welcome to the first newsletter as the sun rises in a post-fire ants world.


The Green Swamp

We’ll be dividing this newsletter into a few sections - firstly, we’ll talk about how the fire ant release went. After that, it’s time to talk about the future - we’ll put forth a new roadmap to get us to version 1.0, and detail the steps that we will take to get there, including the development of a specific tutorial level to make player onboarding much better.

After some internal discussion, we don’t quite feel like we want to talk about the tier 5 species and setting just yet - just know that it’s been long-planned, scripted, voice-acted, and partially implemented already!


First and foremost, we would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t express a heartfelt thankyou to all of our players for fire ant release day and the days after. We absolutely smashed our concurrent player record, which had been unbeaten since early access launch day in December 2017, and for an entire week we were trending on SteamDB’s front page - which is an absolutely mind-boggling occurence for our tiny little development studio.


Dad's Gaming Addiction plays 4.2

It’s been an utter delight following the content creators as they post (and continue to post) their coverage of our biggest update yet, whether that was Frazzz feeling the ominous presence of the skimmer, Man of the Antz giving the new camera rotation features a good outing, TheGamingBeaver putting in a very good argument for using Pervasive fire ants in 4.1, Drawing_Pin laughing his butt off at the scientist’s antics or Blitz clearly just living his best fire ant life. As the community manager, seeing the reaction of everyone who’s followed and played this game over its lifetime, and interacting with them, is the best part of my job – so naturally seeing the reactions to cool new stuff is even better.


Yes, yes, we know. Last year we estimated "early 2022" for the fire ant release date, and that was our original intent – but as is always the case with game development, some things take a lot longer to complete than anticipated. We strained credulity of the definition of “early” until we made a final decision to wait until we didn’t have to compromise on the update.


A fine addition to the soundtrack

July can at best be called mid-year, not early - see what happens when we give even the vaguest of vague hints! During April, we found that we likely could have pushed out the update in late May, which would qualify us for our targeted early 2022. However, we would have had to compromise in several ways here - there would not have been any new music, and the update would have been lacking that final polishing phase that the decision to wait a short while longer gave us.

We’re very glad we took the extra time! The update is shining from the extra layers of lacquer we were able to generously apply over it. Thanks so much for the feedback on the new soundtrack - it was music to our ears to hear that the new tracks may have supplanted earlier ones as some people’s favourites.


There’s been debate on both our official forums and the Steam discussions about the balance of the 4.x levels, and how it differs from the 2.x levels. Whilst we’ve included many ways for the player to gather food, there’s some frustration being expressed about the relatively low amount given by dead creatures this time around.


Just doing amphibian stuff

We’ve explained this in several places but it’s worth putting our reasoning for the change in design philosophy here, agree or not. In the 2.x levels (particularly 2.1 Rising Tide), there comes a tipping point in which the aggressive creatures provide far more food than is lost respawning ants, and the levels essentially play themselves. The game becomes unintentionally un-interactive, and the other methods of food collection are forgotten.

There are a few ways to address this, but outside of altering the food drop value of the creatures, they broadly involve re-working the narrative and creature behaviour in the missions. We very deliberately want the story of a vulnerable nest under attack; not siege. In nature, narrow-mouthed toads are excellent diggers and ants make up most of their diet, so they provide this setting-appropriate pressure in the 4.x missions. If we gave them a more substantial food drop value the problem would exist in these levels also.


The last thing you see before you fail - thanks to Geo ka lala on Steam for this shot

That’s not to say that there isn’t room for balance changes here, but it’s too soon to commit to anything just yet. When a relatively large change is made to a game, rashness is more likely in both developers and players, so we are still very much in the “cooling off” phase before we have an internal discussion and decide what changes, if any, are appropriate. We’re keeping a close eye on those discussions as the dust settles, but for fear of inflaming anything unduly we’re keeping to low activity in them for now.

We’ll come back to this at a later date, and perhaps have more to say about it in the next newsletter.


Here’s an interesting statistic for you – of all the Empires of the Undergrowth refund requests, by far the most common reason given is the lack of a proper tutorial or onboarding system. We have relied too much on the optional tips and hints to provide basic training to the player – we have also regularly observed many players completely not noticing or ignoring this system. That is entirely our fault, and the time is ripe to address that.


Early in-editor shot of the tutorial level

At this point in development, where version 1.0 is almost visible on the horizon, we want to make sure new players are not left in the lurch as far as understanding the core mechanics at play with pheromone control, nest construction, food gathering, combat and building goes.

For the next few weeks, the development team will be working on ways to highlight the UI and bring up tutorial dialogue in a way that is not easily missed by the player in a dedicated tutorial level. We hope to take this to the Indie Arena Booth at Gamescom 2022 in Germany at the end of this month, where one of our team will be manning a booth and observing new players with the aim of getting some useful, hands-on feedback. If you’re going to be at the event and are in the area, come by and let us know what you think!


It’s been a hot minute since we committed to any sort of roadmap, given the uncertainty of the past couple of years and the time it took to push the fire ant update. However, we are in a clearer position now – and will be in an even clearer one in the next few weeks. So, here we present our August 2022 roadmap, which is likely to be clarified and updated in the next newsletter. Click to see it in all its glory.


It’s not about the destination, it’s about the ants we met along the way

You’ll notice that outside of the bug fixing update that will come next month, we are continuing with our policy of not putting dates, even vague ones, on things – although we are certainly resolved to wrap up development up until version 1.0 in a speedier time frame than before, there is still significant uncertainty.

As always, we will give firm dates when we are 100% sure we can meet them, but here are some reassuring words for the remainder of the project: we already have a significant head-start with tier 5 in that it’s been completely scripted, the voice acting is already recorded, many of the creatures are already modelled and animated, and we have a very clear picture of where we are headed with it.


There’s a few things of note here – firstly, the long-awaited leafcutter extra level Adventure is visible on the horizon! It will indeed feature the first in-game appearance of the velvet worm – a soft-bodied predator of the jungle that was originally intended to be in the leafcutter update back in 2019, but was cut for time. It has now been finished and ascended to its full glory, with help of the long-bodied creature animation system perfected for the newt and salamander in the fire ant update.


Outside of Adventure, you’ll notice mention of a “sequel season” for other extra levels. Without giving too much away, we’re going to revisit some of the ideas from earlier extra levels and come up with new spins on them – for example, there is very likely to be a Tug of War II featuring a different set of ants to play with.


The large and (characteristically) vague “interim update period” is likely to manifest as several updates in a relatively short period of time that address the items listed. Most pressing is an update to freeplay – the much more robust and customisable AI systems developed for 4.x will be integrated into freeplay to replace the current inferior one (*sad robot noises*).


Encountering a false bombardier beetle larva in freeplay from BrickyGraph631

Speaking of freeplay – now is definitely the time to let us know about issues you’re encountering in that game mode, big and small, in time for the time that we’ve set aside to do our upcoming changes. Let us know in the forums, or on our social media.


We’ve previously revealed the challenge creature that will plague the swamps in the challenge mode for the 4.x levels – it’s the six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton) that can water-walk in a similar way to the amphibians, and will be a menace to your fire ant’s bridging abilities. The exact details of how this works are yet to be revealed – closer to the time we’ll release a short trailer showcasing her abilities.


Currently, there are only achievements for the 1.x levels and formicarium challenge 1. Before we reach the end of the roadmap, this will be addressed and all tiers will have their own unique achievements. If you’d like to contribute your ideas of what some of these could be, please get in touch – we had a good time streaming some of the development of the 1.x achievements and there’s a non-zero possibility that we can do that again in the coming months!


Over the past several months, it’s been delightful to see a completionist / speedrunning community spring up around our little ant game. An offshoot from our official Discord, Insane Completionist Slugs is a Discord server that keeps a track of users who have completed tricky challenges on insane difficulty, and records speedruns for the runnable levels (some levels are on a strict timer and not runnable).


If you’re insane, a completionist, and a gastropod mollusc, this is for you

If you’d like to join this community then do so, but be ready to prove your mettle! This Discord is run by Solstitium and Heolx, and we couldn’t be more gleeful and grateful for their contributions to the Empires of the Undergrowth community.

There is also an https://www.speedrun.com/eotu – this is not officially affiliated with the ICS server but it’s somewhere else to submit your runs to! Speedrun.com is recognised as the go-to site for fast lookup and logging of speedrun records for just about any game you can imagine.


Tier 4 has increased the graphical fidelity of the game significantly, and that’s led to an absolute visual feast for me as I’ve arrived at my favourite part of writing the newsletter. If you’d like to submit a screenshot for a future edition of the newsletter, then the easiest way is to submit to the screenshots channel on our Discord where they’re easily seen by the team. F9 enters screenshot mode by default.


A wasp mantidfly perches on a pitcher – from Idle309


All pile on the dragonfly – from NapoleonBonaparte_the1st


The great skimmer escapes – from BrickyGraph631

For the final three, we have to give a special shout-out to Metaxypod, a Discord regular and long-time contributor of art in screenshot form. An exceptional eye for framing and colour makes these screenies stand out from the crowd.


A bombardier beetle sprays fire ants with boiling liquid


Fire ants collect caterpillars


The Throne of Froge

Here's a moment we've been waiting for as long as you have - we're burning with joy to be releasing the fire ant update to everyone! Let's keep this introduction short, because I'm certain you want to dive right into that lovely swamp as soon as you can. Here are the full patch notes for the update.

Patch Notes - The Fire Ant Update

The Fire Ants Invade!

Fire ants are nothing if not adaptable to new challenges. These swamplands that young queens, fresh from their nuptial flight, have landed in are not in their native range. The changing, often-flooded environment will test their flexibility to the limit.

• A whole new formicarium tier, featuring 2 new documentary scenarios:
  
  • 4.1 Cold Blood: a newly-settled fire ant queen must deal with the threat of the amphibians & other denizens of the green swamp
    
  • 4.2 A Bridge Too Far: use the fire ant’s abilities to traverse water and reach all the resources you can, whilst an ominous shadow looms overhead

• New focal ant species: fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) which come in two soldier variants:
  
  • Pervasive fire ants will respawn for free after a while
    
  • Vigorous fire ants will have a buff to their stats for a time after spawning
    
  • The tiles of both variants can support 2 ants at a time at level 3

• Fire ants introduce several new ant skills:
  
  • Bridge building: fire ants can build floating pontoons over water to reach resources previously unplundered, but beware of changing water levels!
    
  • Aphid relocation: relocate yellow aphids from distant milkweed plants and bring them closer to home for a reliable source of honeydew, but other colonies may not like that!
    
  • Titan climbing: very large new enemies can be climbed for extra damage!

• New auxiliary ant species:
  
  • Big-headed ants (Pheidole morrisii) have an ancient genetic variant waiting to be awoken
    
  • Little black ants (Monomorium minimum) use a chemical threat display called gaster flagging

• New swamp environment
  
• A menagerie of new swamp-dwelling critters with unique stats & abilities
  
• New voice acting from the narrator & scientists
  
• New music for our dynamic conductor system

Formicarium Challenge 4 Awaits!

Once you’ve completed the documentary scenarios and are back in the formicarium with your rewards, the fire ant soldiers will make a fine addition to your collection. Add them to your formicarium to help you with the challenges ahead! They have 4 formicarium upgrade options:

• Surefooted: gains extra attack damage when mounted on an enemy
  
• Evasive: gains a small chance to take no damage from a hit
  
• Last Stand: at zero health, will survive for a short time longer with reduced attack speed
  
• Last Laugh: upon death, the fire ant will deal high damage to its closest enemy if in range

After you’ve completed your upgrades and stocked up your resources, the scientist has an idea - and he’ll take the opportunity to put it into action. As always, Formicarium Challenge 4 will be a climactic test of your colony’s prowess and your own skills as a player, so be prepared.

• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now display on the minimap
  
• Additions to the minimap & more consistent minimap pings
  
• Woodworm & woodlice will now appear as food on the minimap
  
• Escape key will now close the in-game menu
  
• Made Formicarium Challenge 3 a little easier on Hard & Insane
  
• Holding Insert & PageUp keys now rotates the camera view 90° left & right respectively
  
• Added a quick build / upgrade tool which detects nearby tile type to use, thumb mouse button by default
  
• Delete tool can now be used on tiles where building has not yet started
  
• Added an entirely new set of icons for the Formica ereptor adaptations menu
  
• Added a check for progress file corruption on game startup. If detected progress file is wiped and a new one made
  
• Added victory & defeat images for Beetle Rise Up! & the Hungry Spider levels
  
• Power-scaled creatures will have a star next to their health overlay displaying their scale level (currently only used in freeplay and some extra levels)
  
• Creatures will now correctly display the status effect they are currently experiencing
  
• Renamed worker "evasive" ability to "nimble" to avoid confusion with fire ants
  
• Formicarium level setup rewards on gateway levels now appear as zero before difficulty select
  
• Clicking an active underground minimap tab will now take you there from the surface
  
• The Promised Land demo level reinstated
  
• Moving buried creatures will now throb on the minimap
  
• Dead harvestable creatures in the Battle Arena will now not sink for 2 seconds
  
• Credits updated

• Colony rehousing will now give the correct jelly amount for level 3 tiles (previously it was counting level 3 tiles as level 2)
  
• Fixed an issue where wood ants could get stuck in a deployment animation when a line-of-sight check was failing
  
• Huge improvement to render times for all 2D overlays (upgrades, health, food, etc)
  
• Numerous optimisations to swarming, pathfinding & movement
  
• Numerous optimisations to rendering for many individual assets
  
• Fixed an issue in Battle Arena where some ant levels weren’t working
  
• Fix for a rare pheromone marker crash
  
• Fixed a rounding error causing incorrect number of creatures to spawn in battle arena
  
• Fixed an issue where creatures dying mid-air had their food collection point far from their corpse
  
• Fixed an issue causing underground tile highlighting to stick on some tiles
  
• Connecting bridge in the interlocking formicariums will now load correctly

• Updated, fixed and changed many interface & game narration lines in existing localisations
  
• Various menus & UI elements adjusted to allow for translations that were the wrong size for them
  
• Font changes for CJK languages
  
• Added 7 new officially-supported localisations. These are:
  • Czech / Čeština
    
  • Spanish / Español
    
  • French / Français
    
  • Korean / 한국어
    
  • Japanese / 日本語
    
  • Dutch / Nederlands
    
  • Polish / Polski

• Extra level Extremis is currently crashing on launch (caught this one too late to re-package the project in time; will be fixed for the next patch)

Just a very short post to confirm that the launch of the fire ant update won't be occurring at midnight but at 6 pm UK time tomorrow, or approximately 23 hours after this is posted. Converted to some other times this comes out as:

1 pm: US East Coast
10 am: US West Coast
7 pm: Most of Europe
3 am on the 28th: Most of Australia

A quick search engine query should let you convert your own local time from the team's 6pm BST (British Summer Time).

Today we posted a quick tutorial video that should help you quickly get up to speed with some of the major new mechanics introduced with this update. It doesn't spoil anything that hasn't already been revealed, but if you're trying to keep entirely unspoiled you'll probably want to skip this one.



Roughly an hour before we launch the game, some of the team are going to do a livestream on YouTube going over some of the new mechanics, changes, and other such things. A quick breather before we push the button! Join us over there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jTm53w8fHk

Hey

Just a quick post to allow streams to appear on the store page during the summer sale and to celebrate the release of the fire ant trailer:



Cheers!

Dan

We are delighted to announce that the fire ant update is coming on July 27th 2022! Grab an eyeful of the updated trailer that shows off the new environment and (some of) the new enemies that come along with it.



A whole new formicarium tier awaits - guide a young fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) queen and her first brood as she invades an unfamiliar swamp environment in two full new story missions. The swamp is swimming with amphibians that are not adverse to a spicy snack!

As well as having by far the most critters we’ve added in a single update, the 4th tier includes a long-awaited class of enemy: titans. Titans are huge creatures - big enough, in fact, to be climbed. They do not represent an existential threat since they’re too big to invade the nest, but they must be dealt with in other ways and are a challenging obstacle to be overcome.

Fire ants themselves have a unique ability, outside of their incessant stinging - by linking their bodies together, they can form floating pontoons that can cross water, reaching resources previously unplundered. This is a skill that will come in exceptionally handy in the regularly-flooded green swamp.

They come in two very different soldier varieties - pervasive and vigorous. If you choose pervasive, they will spawn for free after the egg has been on the tile for a time. This can be a crucial advantage when food is scarce. Alternatively, vigorous fire ants will have a significant buff to stats for a time after birth. This opens up the potential for aggressive expansion, but beware of pushing too far too fast. At level 3, both variants will be able to spawn 2 ants from each tile.

Once you’ve conquered the swamp, return to the formicarium where the scientist is far from done with you yet - what dastardly design has he decided is due to your Formica ereptor colony?

Finally, welcome to new people who are finding us through the Steam Summer Sale! We hope you find our little ant game worth your attention, and if you’re considering giving it a go you’ve joined us at a very good time.

We’ll see you on July 27th for the invasion of the fire ants!

This will be a shorter-than-usual newsletter, just catching up with the last of the things we’ve posted on our social media before the fire ant update. We’re rounding the corner to the home stretch on that front now, and whilst we’re not quite ready to announce a date (that will come out of the blue one day with a trailer) we are at a point where we don’t want to spoil anything else, as we still want there to be plenty of surprises for when the update drops.

We’ll go over a few things that have been previously announced – all of the things shown in this newsletter are from the 4.x missions.

Our environments for the fire ant update are near complete, and we put together this short video to highlight some of the artwork by our dedicated environment artist, Dan C. Level 4.1 will be called “Cold Blood”, and this is the arena in which it is set. The swampland has poor soil so many of the plants here have evolved to be carnivorous.




One such carnivorous plant is the iconic Venus flytrap. The leaves are tipped with traps that exude nectar, attracting ants and flies. Trigger hairs on the inside of the trap cause it to snap shut when touched, effectively turning the traps into stomachs which then digest the prey. The flytrap will act as an “area denial” obstacle – ants will climb it but will inevitably trigger the traps, before re-opening after a cooldown.




Caterpillars have recently hatched on this young sweetbay magnolia sapling. Such an infestation may well be fatal, but help is at hand – the resident fire ants are very glad of the extra protein. Caterpillar-spawning plants will provide a rich food source for your fire ants, as long as you can survive the competition required to keep the supply lines open.




Milkweed plants are often homes to sap-sucking aphids. The aphids excrete a sweet substance called honeydew, which fire ants find irresistable. The ants will care for their aphid flocks, protecting them from predators, jealously guarding them from competing colonies and even moving them to safer locations.


A fire ant tending to aphids on a milkweed


A milkweed stripped of aphids


Let’s close out this shorter-than-usual newsletter with the traditional Screenshot Central post! The easiest way to get these to us is to post on the #screenshots channel of our Discord – I usually have a look through it once a week or so for great snaps for social media and the newsletters.


A whip spider glows in the moonlight from realpumadog


rmy ants have defeated an uber mole cricket in this shot from Anthony Gaming


A ladybird beetle flies off from SamThePro

The main feature this time is full support for gamepads (Steam Deck, XBox One and PlayStation 4 controllers are all officially supported). If you prefer to play with a gamepad or would like to try it out, now is the time! We are also adding six new languages localisations (we are not updating our store page to say we officially support these yet; they should be considered to be in beta for now). The languages are Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch & Polish.

There’s also some fixes and changes, detailed below, including a fix for Mac so Mac users should be able to play Hibernation now! We have also moved the game files to an encrypted form, so the download is likely to be larger than a regular patch since Steam won’t recognise the encrypted files.

• Gamepad support added
  
  • All standard gamepad buttons now have functions which can be viewed from the options menu
    
  • When using a gamepad, key bindings show gamepad glyphs
    
  • Several notifications have been added or replaced to explain gamepad support when using them
    
  • The Hungry Spider can now be properly controlled with a gamepad
    
  • XBox One, PlayStation 4 and Steam Deck gamepads can be selected from the options menu to display the correct glyphs
    
  • When using Big Picture mode on Steam, or the Steam Deck the on-screen keyboard will display when needed
• Several new localisation languages added for testing (Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish)

• Mac build is now updated to include the Hibernation extra level
  
• Fixed a memory leak in creature despawning
  
• Fixed some minor pathing bugs
  
• Several areas in the game with small text have had their text size increased
  
• Fixed an issue where the mouse pointer would not change until moved in some circumstances
  
• Fixed an issue where brood chamber hover information would come up overground after having it come up underground
  
• Fixed an issue where ants could get stuck on the overground nest exit
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes level setups could drop off the screen at the bottom
  
• Minimap pings will now display more consistently
  
• Fixed an issue where dragging the mouse during a cutscene could cause tiles to tag for digging
  
• Fixed an issue where tiles would be left highlighted when tabbing to surface
  
• Fixed an issue where dead creatures could sometimes be carried off to the side of the carrying ant
  
• Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor would change when hovering over an enemy nest but not change back when moving off it
  
• Added in quick build / upgrade key binding (default to thumb mouse button 1). Hold to automatically select the upgrade or build tool most suitable for where your cursor is

Welcome to the year of the fire ant! For those of you wondering how we’re doing with the 4th / fire ant tier, we’ve recently gotten the last of the dialogue and voice acting into the game, and sent things off to translators for localisation. Keep an eye on our social media for further public narrowing of our release window. As always we won’t give a date until we’re certain we can hit it. The marketing team have indeed been working on the trailer as the art team completes the detailing on the levels, and we’re positively itching to show it all off to you – but we have to be patient too.


The Year of the Fire Ant is upon us!

Let’s talk about a few things that have come up over the last couple of months, including the exciting return of a creature long thought lost to the sands of time – the velvet worm.


Velvet worms were cut from the 3rd tier for time, since they used what was at the time a unique animation system for its trailing behind, which was not finished. Since two 4th tier creatures use this (the eastern newt and the dwarf salamander), we’ve been finishing and refining that system and we feel that once we’ve done with the 4th tier it would be a shame not to bring the velvet worm back into the fold.



Widespread in tropical South America, velvet worms are voracious, soft-bodied hunters with a special weapon they use to incapacitate their prey. When hunting, they use two specialised slime glands that are either side of the mouth, trapping the target in a sticky web of mucilage. This makes catching and consuming it significantly easier. In nature, it can also use this slime defensively, wriggling free of potential predators.


Two sizes of velvet worm

Like many of the game’s creatures, the velvet worm comes in different sizes, from a juvenile to an adult of 7cm in length, which makes it one of the Undergrowth’s larger denizens. We’ll be reintroducing the velvet worm to the 3.x levels at some point, as well as giving it an appearance in an upcoming extra level called Adventure. Both of these are likely to happen post-4th tier, since right now our focus is to get that complete and out to everyone.


Our environment artist Dan C continues to produce amazing swamp-related items for us, and one of his latest creations is the pitcher plant – the second carnivorous plant of the 4th tier. This swamp-dwelling flora has specialised leaves that grow into a jug shape, which it fills with digestive enzymes. The rim of the plant is slippery, making it a treacherous surface for insects to be scaling.


As pretty as a pitcher

The plant attracts victims with enticing scents and sweet nectar – and there is a chance that a fire ant may escape with a prize, but the possibility of an unfortunate death is always present – and in more ways than one. This pitcher is the favoured lurking spot of the green lynx spider, and it’s always ready for an easy meal.


Sorry, arachnophobes 🙁


One of the peripheral species that will appear in the 4th tier is the little black ant, Monomorium minimum. They will be the smallest ants in the game – even the diminutive fire ants will look big besides them! To even the odds, they have a chemical and visual threat known as “gaster flagging” which will cause a debuff to enemy units caught in it, and they will not use it sparingly. The video below shows them attacking a group of fire ants – note the debuff symbols over the fire ant victim’s heads.




We were lucky enough to be sent a little present from Valve a couple of weeks ago, a Steam Deck developer kit. We’ve been testing all of the games we publish on it, and Empires of the Undergrowth runs exceptionally well without us having to make any modifications to the game when using Valve’s Proton system (software which allows a Windows program to run natively on a Linux operating system, like SteamOS that the Deck uses). This is a remarkable achievement for a hand-held PC equivalent, and it’s clear that Valve has made an exceptionally desirable product here.



There are things we’re working on to make the experience even better, such as including Valve’s controller glyphs, having a proper keyboard in the UI and creating an official control scheme. These will eventually get us the coveted “Verified” tick, but we’re not sure exactly when that will happen right now. Rest assured, the game works very well right now via Proton, and with some small tweaks and changes coming at some point in the future it will work fantastically.

Testing on the Steam Deck has opened us up to some of the shortcomings that the Linux build of the game has, and it is very clear that the best way to play Empires of the Undergrowth on Linux is through Proton as things currently stand. We’ll talk more about this over the next few weeks.


There has been some discussion on the forums (both the Steam ones and our official ones) about freeplay balance. In truth, freeplay is not in an excellent spot right now, since we’ve been focussing our attention elsewhere. This problem is likely to be compounded as we add more creatures and mechanics from the campaign into it.

There are a few reasons for us waiting to make any major changes to freeplay, and the most obvious one is that we’ve been working almost exclusively on the 4th tier for some time now (with the odd exception of some extra levels here and there, but development time on them is practically nil compared to the campaign. Another reason is that we will be replacing the existing AI in freeplay with a new bot system that has been developed for use in the remainder of the campaign levels. It is significantly smarter than the current implementation, and can more easily be tweaked to play like a player rather than the more rigidly-behaved colonies in the campaign. We hope that it will be possible to make them competitive without having to cheat – we’ll see how we do on that front!

The net result of this is that it would be inefficient for us to put much in the way of time into fixing freeplay as things stand, since our focus will switch to a pretty extensive overhaul of it once fire ants are released. This follows our usual development pattern of major release then interim update focusing on freeplay before the next major release.

In short, we hope to be able to make freeplay a much more balanced and enjoyable experience, but not until we reach the interim update period between the 4th and 5th (final) tier. Until that point, we are aware that things are not exactly right where they should be.


Thanks to everyone who played our winter-themed extra level Hibernation over the festive season! It’ll be sticking around permanently in extra levels, rather than disappearing like the Hungry Spider event levels. It features a unique resource – vegetation – and heating tiles, which must be stocked before the depths of winter arrive. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer below. The level features custom music and voice acting – a first for an extra level.



I just thought I’d clear up a little confusion with this level, since it comes up semi-regularly – you must have the specified stored vegetation in your heating tiles at the moment that the mid-winter hits. This is when the narrator says his “bleak mid-winter” line, and if you’re not at the specified level at that point the queen will inevitably freeze. So, that’s the targeted time you need to be aiming for!


Head on over to our Discord to submit your screenshots, it’s by far the easiest way – when the time comes to write a newsletter I’ll choose a few of my favourites to include! Alternatively upload them to Steam Community, or email mike@slugdisco.com. You can get some really nice shots by hitting shift + F9 to unlock the camera!


A whip spider lurks over The Crucible from Demoant


Flight of the ladybird by Mako


One last bit of festive cheer from DilphyThatsMe