With the Earth Appreciation Festival in full swing, we thought it'd be a good time to do a short livestream of Empires of the Undergrowth! Community manager Mike will be playing one of the more recently added campaign levels (4.1 'Cold Blood') for the occasion. Please join in, and ask any questions you like!

The Earth Appreciation Festival is now live on Steam! Slug Disco is a co-organiser of the event this year, along with Mechanistry and Straw Fawn.

Empires of the Undergrowth is 10% off in this festival of games that highlight the wonders of nature (such as EotU, Timberborn and Wandering Village) as well as games that deal with human-made issues, such as Frostpunk, Deponia and This War of Mine.



Slug Disco and Hooded Horse will be donating 10% of revenue generated by Empires of the Undergrowth during the event to Buglife, a UK-based invertebrate conservation charity that is very close to our hearts. Invertebrates represent a fundamental part of the ecosystem, and we're very happy to be supporting a charity that works towards their conservation.

We'll check in again a little later in the week with the Earth Appreciation Festival to see how things are going, perhaps with a little round-up video - see you then!

Challenge mode, and game plus, and new artwork, oh my!

After going over some in-person events that have happened recently for a couple of Slug Disco's other publishing projects and an important business move, Mike breaks down recent progress for Empires of the Undergrowth - including the long-anticipated challenge mode for tier 4, and plans for the post-campaign game plus mode coming along with tier 5.

To skip the Slug Disco news and get directly to the Empires of the Undergrowth goodness, start the video at 03:11.

The penultimate level in our Sequel Season is here - the short-form extra level Enemy of my Enemy 2 puts your queen in the middle of a map, surrounded by hostile creatures. All of them must be eliminated to win, but only a small garrison of Royal Guard ants protects the queen.



You can't build brood chambers, but you can dig with your mouse. Thankfully, the enemy packs are hostile to one another - and therein lies the key to victory. Tunnel them out strategically, forcing them to encounter one another before reaching the queen.

We think this level will probably benefit from another balance pass in the future due to it being too difficult, but we aren't quite in a position to make a new build of the game for it just yet due to our current work on the campaign and freeplay changes. For now, it will remain an extremely difficult extra level (almost certainly the most difficult, particularly on insane difficulty) but we are curious to see if a meta arises that can reliably beat it before we make any changes!

Extra levels don't take us very long to develop - they're there to give everyone some extra time in the Undergrowth whilst we work on the really big stuff!

We're entering a stage of development where we're making some pretty fundamental changes to both the campaign and freeplay mode, in order to get them closer to their final implementation when the game leaves early access. That's been the priority for our devs in the past few weeks - and we'll detail some of the changes that are coming in this newsletter.


A fire ant about to be entangled from NappyB

On the graphical side of things, there's a new Formica fusca queen model on the way and a change to two of the beach creatures for geographical consistency. We've also been finalising work for the visual improvement of the beach levels. Whilst we're not ready to show that in all its glory we will go through some of the new things that will be making the beach even beach-ier than it was before.

A little later this month we'll have the penultimate extra level in the Sequel Season appearing. Once again, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Well, not quite your friend, it'll attack you, too - but you get the idea.

Finally, in late February I sat our 3 devs down to confront them with the harsh reality that some people don't like their game. This was a giggle, and all in good fun - see the results later!


We have been due a large overhaul of the campaign ever since the fire ant update. The food balancing in the 4.x levels is closer to our philosophy going forward for how food from aggressive creatures will work in the finished project, and we are now at a point where it's time to implement this.


Something on your nose? From Dolly on our Discord

To reiterate the reasoning behind this - in the game as it currently stands, colonies often reach a 'tipping point' beyond which nothing can realistically threaten them, and this was not our original intention. Some creatures have methods of circumventing this, such as wolf spiders that can charge past ant lines underground - but these are more like band-aids over a much deeper issue. Once the colony cannot be realistically threatened, things become much less interactive. Enemies arriving in the nest to attack the queen become, instead of a threat, a free delivery.



We balanced the fire ant levels with this philosophy, with aggressive creatures dropping significantly less food for their difficulty than creatures in the 1st and 2nd tiers (the 3rd tier is immune to this due to leafcutters not eating creatures). We accept that the difference is quite jarring and can be disconcerting for a player who is used to a level of resources from fallen critters in previous tiers.

We agree with the overall consensus that we pushed things too far in the other direction when it came to balancing 4.x, so we're going to be increasing food from aggressive creatures a little in those levels whilst decreasing it across the board in the rest of the campaign. Food from other sources is being increased to compensate, but players starting the campaign from scratch should get a much more consistent feel for what they can expect from slain aggressive creatures.

Such a change is going to require tweaking, and we'll be inviting the community to be a part of that when the time comes. It's likely that we will run an extended optional beta.


We originally envisaged the upcoming freeplay changes to be a lesser update, rather than the entire overhaul that it's turning out to be! As we've moved forward with introducing the improved AI systems from the 4.x levels into it, we've come to the inevitable conclusion that, stats-wise, freeplay and the campaign operate on two entirely different levels. If we want to balance plant-harvesting leafcutters against voracious omnivores like fire ants, we're going to need a different set of numbers.

A short time ago, the stats for critters in the campaign and freeplay were divorced from one another, so that they can be balanced separately. How different they need to be will be down to the testing phase, once again, and we are very likely to run another optional beta for the freeplay changes. This is likely to be ready for testing after the campaign balance pass detailed above, so will probably be a separate event to it.

Other changes are also in the works for freeplay - a CSV-driven way of sharing freeplay setups is being implemented (the rarely-used copy/paste method is going to be retired), and this ties into another exciting addition to the mode that we'll detail in a future newsletter or vlog.

Outside of these larger changes, a smaller one that is freeplay-relevant is an increase of the number of harvest points on an uber velvet worm to 8. This was just an oversight with this one particular creature and did not represent where we intend to go on that front!


One of the earliest models made for Empires of the Undergrowth in its current form is the Formica fusca queen. Matt has been itching to have another go at her, and has recently done so. We're sure you agree that the new model is much improved!


The new Formica fusca queen

Since she's a constant, static feature in levels she features in, she was a much more pressing candidate for improvement over other models. Older stuff can always be improved, and we have a priority list for this. Improvements to, or replacements for, other models depends on time.


View from above

We will be making changes to two of the beach creatures for reasons that shall be detailed shortly - both the tiger beetle and the wolf spider will be replaced with similar yet distinct species. Earlier in the project, in the geographical crunch that was necessary to get the game to an initial early access release, the intended location of the beach levels (coastal Europe) was compromised by the inclusion of two North American species - the beach tiger beetle (Cicindela dorsalis) and the beach wolf spider (Arctosa littoralis).


The northern dune

This is now being corrected. The beach tiger beetle is being replaced by the northern dune tiger beetle (Cicindela hybrida). This beetle has different pigmentation to its predecessor, but shares the same behaviour - including an appetite for ants.


The new king of speed on the intertidal flats

The beach wolf spider is being replaced with the splendidly-named sand bear wolf spider (Arctosa perita). An active night-time hunter, it shares the same niche as its American cousin and will also be a one-to-one replacement for it in the campaign levels.



We see no reason to replace the existing species in places such as extra levels, so dorsalis and littoralis will still be around for the foreseeable future! So, in the current plans, the Hungry Spider will remain a beach wolf.


Texture differences between the new (left) and old


The art team has been hard at work sprucing up the beach environment to bring it up to scratch with the more recent additions. Environment artist Dan C has been building pebbles, plants and shells, and creating a large amount of sand textures. So much sand.


Sea-smoothed pebbles for your improved beach!

New decorative elements for the beach include limpet and scallop shells, as well as other marine adornments such as seaweed and flowering bindweed.


Lots of new beach assets appearing in the game files now

Please note that in the small thumbnails of the assets in the above editor screenshot they are missing their in-game textures. These are starting to go into the levels now, and our hope is that we can include the beach visual improvements alongside the campaign balance pass beta test.


Within the next few weeks from the time of writing, extra level Enemy of my Enemy 2 will appear. Like in its predecessor, digging is done with the mouse and no ants are controlled. This time around, the queen is located at the very centre of the map, which puts her at a much more perilous crossroads.


Uh-oh!

Buried enemy packs are hostile to each other, and the order in which you unearth them is crucial. Get them to take each other out before they reach your queen, where a limited number of powerful Royal Guard ants are protecting her. Harder difficulties represent a more intricate puzzle, and as always with these types of extra levels, game knowledge and a good feel for how powerful individual creatures are is paramount.


A red velvet ant threatens the queen, from tester NappyB

As things stand, the higher difficulties of this level are very difficult - perhaps too difficult! It’s due a final balance pass, but we’re not in a position to package another build of the game before it appears (everything is current in bits because of the ongoing campaign and freeplay changes). We’ll be interested to see if a distinct meta appears to beat insane difficulty before we get a chance to apply a rebalance!


In late February, I sat down with our 3 devs John, Liam and Matt, with the intention of bruising their egos a little. Whilst we’ve had plenty of support for Empires of the Undergrowth, there’s definitely some meaner comments out there and I thought it’d be healthy (and definitely not soul-destroying) for them to read through them.



We all had a giggle making this, and no foul is intended to anyone whose comment is featured in it! Let’s be honest, everyone who says we take a long time to do things isn’t wrong. There are few combinations as deep-cutting as both mean and witty, as many of the featured comments demonstrate. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?

Thanks to our Discord members, and Chinese community managers Kaidi and Lin, for helping me organise and collate the comments for this video.


If you’d like to submit a screenshot for this part of the newsletter, the easiest way for us to see it is to post it on the appropriate channel of our community Discord. Alternatively, you can post it to the Steam Community which I’ll occasionally rifle through. As an absolute last resort, you can email me at mike@slugdisco.com.

To get better screenies, hold down shift when entering screenshot mode to uncouple your camera from the ground plain.


A squadron of salamanders from Bananta on Steam


A swarmed spider from doom guy


One last look at the old black ant queen from heheboiboi999

Our third company vlog is out now, and there's a few juicy details in the Empires of the Undergrowth section. Our creature artist Matt has made a new Formica fusca queen model, and there's some details about upcoming extra levels and large changes to freeplay coming in a major update a bit further down the line.

If you'd like to skip to the meaty EotU content, then the time code is 6:18.



Slug Disco publishes several other games other than EotU (but we only develop EotU), and the start of the vlog deals with these as well as some general company updates first.

The Empires of the Undergrowth auto-battler mode is back with a new level. Tug of War 2 continues our Sequel Season of extra levels - with a new set of ants to use, and a whole different set of enemy builds to fight against. Tug of War 2 is a short-form level versus an AI opponent. Army composition is everything in this auto-battler game mode.

You do not control your ants directly - they will all hatch together, in waves, and immediately rush to take down the enemy queen - but your opponent has the same goal. Resources are given at regular intervals, and you'll have to make every seed count. You don't want to be playing catch-up - fall too far behind and you'll quickly find yourself overwhelmed.



Extra levels are relatively easily-made content (since they re-use existing assets and systems) that we spend a little of our dev time on whilst we work on the much bigger stuff. We always have fun making them, and we're currently in the midst of Sequel Season - follow-ups to previous extra levels, playing on their ideas in a slightly different way.

In other development news, we've made an update to the black ant (Formica fusca) model which will be rolling out with the next update, made some sensible changes to menu options, as well as made large strides towards getting the improved colony AI from the 4.x levels compatible with freeplay. In the next week or so there will be a vlog detailing these developments and more!

There’s a new seasonal level, New Year’s Feast, and it’s available now with the latest patch! We like to break from reality with our extra and seasonal levels, and we’ve had a lot of fun making this one. Play it by clicking on the lantern that has appeared in the main menu.


It’s almost time for Lunar New Year, and the fire ant queen is making her famous New Year's Eve hotpot for her family and friends. However, in the chaos of the party preparations, her daughters have forgotten to forage for the ingredients for the broth. Help them find the correct spices in time for dinner, whilst making liberal use of festive firecrackers to clear enemies and shorten your path.

It’s not just a fire ant level, though - this New Year’s party has many guests who have gotten lost in the undergrowth. Rescue them from peril and bring them home safely - to show their gratitude, they’ll add their species to your colony!

This is a very special seasonal level and we can’t wait for you to have a go - so jump right in! There are a bunch of other fixes and changes that also arrive with this patch, so let’s break down the full patch notes.

• Help the fire ant queen gather ingredients for her New Year’s hotpot
  
• There’s an explosive accompaniment to go along with the broth
  
• Rescue friendly ants to add their species to your colony
  
• New artwork & music set the tone of this festive level

• Adventure
  • Players can now choose between Royal Guard & Royal Decree
    
  • Supermajor abilities no longer cool down when game is paused
    
  • Royal Guard ants are now leafcutter-shaped if used in a leafcutter colony
    
  • Updated some text to say ‘nimble’ rather than ‘evasive’
    
  • Inaccessible leaf made accessible
• Fixed level selection menu disappearing after winning a formicarium challenge
  
• Fixed a foliage rendering issue
  
• Creature swarming optimisations
  
• Tweaked animation distance optimisations
  
• Rotting Log aesthetic added to tutorial level
  
• Rotting Log aesthetic added to Hold Out & The Nest demo levels
  
• Correct loading screens attached to demo levels
  
• Corrected spelling mistakes here and there
  
• Fixed some text formatting issues in various localisations
  
• Fixed BHA workers showing as wood ants in the UI
  
• UI buttons should now only appear on appropriate levels (creature climbing, etc)
  
• Voice credits updated
  
• Freesound credits updated

Hang on a minute, where on Earth did 2022 go? That whole fire ant update thing went by in such a blur. It still feels like it was last week, but it was very nearly six months ago now! Welcome to a brand spanking new year - 2023, which kicks off with several more extra levels in our 'Sequel Season', as well as a surprise or two along the way.

Happy New Year from Medin on our Discord

Before we get into upcoming stuff for EotU and things happening in Slug Disco as a company, I'll just take a moment to thank each and every one of you for making 2022 by far the best year that Empires of the Undergrowth has had, in every reasonably measurable metric. We make this stuff, but it's you who makes it a success and gives us the drive to continue. We hope to carry on with that energy in 2023.


Our Sequel Season of extra levels continues soon, with Tug of War 2 arriving in the next few weeks. Like its predecessor, it is a 1v1 versus an AI enemy where you build up an army with timed injections of resources, which will hatch at regular intervals and automatically battle with the opponent.


It's tuggin' time

The surface layout is a little different than in Tug of War 1 (and with the swamp aesthetic), but the main difference here is the army composition. This time around you'll have access to units such as little black ant soldiers and big-headed ant supersoldiers. This provides a markedly different experience to the first one, and will require different strategies to prevail.

We still have another few levels to go that are a part of Sequel Season, and we'll continue releasing them a month or two apart until we're done. We also have a new seasonal level that is apart from it, so let's talk a little bit about that next.


In the near future there will be a new seasonal level appearing on the main menu. Like the gift and cobweb for the Festive and Hungry Spider levels respectively, a new object will appear whilst this level is available and must be clicked to access it.

Whilst seasonal, the only thing I'll say about this one is that it's not another Hungry Spider one. It'll just appear one day on the main menu - keep an eye out for it, it’s gonna be a cracker!


Now that we've completed our rework of the look for the 'rotting log' levels, our environment artist Dan C has moved on to creating some higher fidelity assets to improve the look of the beach levels. We don't have any finalised things to show you on this front just yet, but rest assured that the beaches will be adorned with a wider variety of plant life and the new sand will be more coarse, rough and irritating than ever!


I know pebbles aren't all that exciting but look, the remastering is happening!

When he first started working on new materials and textures for the swamp levels shortly after joining us at Slug Disco, Dan requested an expansion of Matt's texture system to allow for different looks for the environment - the damp, reflective and swamp-like look of the 4th tier levels are achieved through this expansion. Expect to see that at work with the updated beach environment.


Work is continuing apace on fairly large changes to freeplay - probably the most notable of those recently is the addition of large creatures (bullfrogs, blue skimmers and huge whip spiders) as special, rarer-spawning landmarks in the mode. These large creatures, like in their campaign levels, will not represent an existential threat to your colony but do represent an area denial, as well as a food source once they’re defeated.


Large creatures and fire ant bridges are detailed in this vlog post (4:45)

In the case of the skimmer, they will be a bit trickier - until their home landmark is happened upon by the player, they will be flying around the map - so you’ll be aware of their presence, but you won’t know exactly where their home turf is until you try to walk through it and it lands!

Getting fire ant bridges to properly work and save properly in freeplay is another ongoing area of development (and source of much frustrating busywork) - both pure Solenopsis invicta and gene thief Formica ereptor colonies will be able to build bridges. In the case of the latter only fire ants will be able to build bridges, but the other ant varieties in the colony will be able to use them.


We've got quite a lot of work on the fifth tier of the formicarium very nearly ready to show off, but we want to make a bit of an event of the official reveal for the focal species for the final levels of the campaign. Several critters are complete and ready to show, but giving away even one of them will spoil a whole lot more by association!

A little while ago, we decided that we will do an official announcement, very likely with a video, showing the new ants and some of the new creatures when we've got some updated environments to show them in. Since we're now working on the beach revamp, that's going to be our milestone - we'll use the updated beach to show off the tier 5 ants, even though that won't be their final environment.

As always, we don't really like doing much in the way of estimates (since we are so frequently incorrect with them) - we much prefer firm dates, or just dropping things out of the blue.

As far as where we're at with tier 5 - the campaign levels are blocked out, and many specific one-off systems needed for them are being developed. Particularly exciting to see has been a sequence of events involving one of the new large creatures that will appear in one of the levels - but that's enough about that for now!


We spoke about the ICS (Insane Completionist Slugs) Discord server a few newsletters back, but it's worth mentioning them again now. They're a small community dedicated to insane-difficulty completion and challenges that really push the limit in Empires of the Undergrowth, and they're constantly working to beat what was previously thought to be impossible in the game, and more often than not they're succeeding.


The ICS. A noble institution.

Some of the more recent challenges that have been worked on include workers-only runs of the entire campaign in increasingly higher difficulties, and even deathless runs (no loss of colony members) of individual levels - you have to be a specific kind of person to be able to put in the grind for this kind of thing, but if that's what you're into, then the ICS is for you. You can join their server at this link. They're a friendly bunch and you're welcome to join the server just to partake in their community, even if you're not going to do all of the challenges.


In the past few weeks, we've had two new team members join us - please welcome Kaidi and Lin to Slug Disco, who are joining Mike & Dan P in the community management / marketing department. If you frequent services such as Bilibili, Tieba and Douyin, you're likely to be talking to them in the future if you interact with our official accounts.


We will soon be adding a new project to the pantheon of Slug Disco-published games. As with all of our games besides Empires of the Undergrowth, we will not be developing it directly, but publishing it - meaning we are using some of our marketing resources to help get the game out to the world.

We'll have a segment in the next vlog by Dan that talks to the developer of this project in a little more detail, and the dev hopes to have a playable demo ready before that time so you can get stuck in. We're not quite ready to announce what the game is just yet - but we will be doing so very shortly. Keep your eyes on our socials later this month for the scoop!


Always the best part of the newsletter to write, this time around all of the entries for Screenshot Central come from the Steam Community page. That’s one way to get screenshots to us - another is to use our Discord, which has its own dedicated screenshot channel that is posted on by our regulars. I usually take the weekly Screenshot Saturday post from there.

A little tip - if you hold down shift whilst pressing your photo mode button (F9 by default), the camera is freed from the confines of the arena and you can get some very interesting angles using the controls!


The swarm by zomboss479


A festive wood ant queen from leonardo.balda.01


An ultrawide shot of the rotting log from SHO

Occupation 2 is available now in the Extra Levels section!

The first in our Sequel Season of extra levels - this little black ant mission follows many of the same lines as its predecessor, but with a more urgent twist! Many critters will not wait patiently to be unearthed and will take a proactive approach to challenging your colony.



Extra levels take us very little time to develop, so we release them periodically as some nice bonus content for the community whilst we work on the bigger stuff!

We're currently working on large changes to freeplay, upgrading the art assets for the beach levels and creating the tier 5 levels.

We have several more planned for Sequel Season - stay tuned in the new year.