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With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this year’s Steam Awards are underway and we’d like to ask for your support by nominating Empires of the Undergrowth for the Labor of Love Award.



In the years since Early Access release, we’ve continued to improve Empires of the Undergrowth with huge, game-expanding updates - but we’re not done yet. We know all too well that our tiny team takes their time on the major updates, but we do that in the name of quality - and your kindness in supporting that allows us to take a considered approach. We couldn’t be more grateful, so this isn’t just our labor of love - it’s yours too!

Over the past year, we’ve been working on the following:

• A whole bunch of changes to custom games, including Skirmish - a new way to play freeplay maps.
  
• More up-to-date artwork for the beach and rotting log levels, bringing them in line with the visual fidelity of the more recent parts of the game - our aim is not just to finish the game, but have it be at its best possible quality too.
  
• Extended the climbing system to many more creatures in the game, really helping us settle into the skin-crawling feeling of ants crawling over everything!
  
• Working towards completing the systems and artwork for our final release, tier 5 – which will feature 3 new campaign levels set in an as-yet unrevealed location. Then a final climactic formicarium challenge which the scientist has been preparing your colony for!
  
• Bug fixes (ha!)
  
• And many more updates!

We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, the community, supporting our game throughout development and with each update we’ve brought to Empires of the Undergrowth. We are incredibly grateful for your support, and we know there will be a lot of competition for this award, so your nomination means the world to us. Please check the nominate button that’s part of this post if you would like to consider us for the Labor of Love award for the 2023 Steam Awards.

Thank you,

The Slug Disco team

With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this year’s Steam Awards are underway and we’d like to ask for your support by nominating Empires of the Undergrowth for the Labor of Love Award.



In the years since Early Access release, we’ve continued to improve Empires of the Undergrowth with huge, game-expanding updates - but we’re not done yet. We know all too well that our tiny team takes their time on the major updates, but we do that in the name of quality - and your kindness in supporting that allows us to take a considered approach. We couldn’t be more grateful, so this isn’t just our labor of love - it’s yours too!

Over the past year, we’ve been working on the following:

• A whole bunch of changes to custom games, including Skirmish - a new way to play freeplay maps.
  
• More up-to-date artwork for the beach and rotting log levels, bringing them in line with the visual fidelity of the more recent parts of the game - our aim is not just to finish the game, but have it be at its best possible quality too.
  
• Extended the climbing system to many more creatures in the game, really helping us settle into the skin-crawling feeling of ants crawling over everything!
  
• Working towards completing the systems and artwork for our final release, tier 5 – which will feature 3 new campaign levels set in an as-yet unrevealed location. Then a final climactic formicarium challenge which the scientist has been preparing your colony for!
  
• Bug fixes (ha!)
  
• And many more updates!

We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, the community, supporting our game throughout development and with each update we’ve brought to Empires of the Undergrowth. We are incredibly grateful for your support, and we know there will be a lot of competition for this award, so your nomination means the world to us. Please check the nominate button that’s part of this post if you would like to consider us for the Labor of Love award for the 2023 Steam Awards.

Thank you,

The Slug Disco team

We’ve fixed and changed a few things in our ongoing optional beta - if you aren’t participating yet and would like to, see the previous post for details on how to join.

• 3.1 Hard achievement now correctly says ‘Boundary Dispute’ rather than ‘Shoot the Messenger’
  
• 2.1 Extreme with challenge mode will now spawn tiger beetle larvae
  
• 3.2 ‘Sitting Ducks’ achievement now only fails if an ant tile is upgraded to 3, not any tile
  
• Formicarium Challenge 3 Extreme difficulty now possible
  
• Fixed uber praying mantis, spiny devil and whip spider not being climbable
  
• Fixed an AI chamber building issue in Sand Spit
  
• Fixed an AI construction layout issue in Imprisoned
  
• Fixed amphibians using their swim animation underground
  
• Removed a floating seed in Strawclutch
  
• Pressing Esc during difficulty selection will no longer lead to a UI overlap
  
• Small beach wolf spider given correct hat

• Formicarium Challenge 3:
  
  • Easy difficulty now slightly easier
    
  • Enemy queen no longer has abilities on Normal as well as Easy
    
  • Mole crickets and praying mantises no longer have food reduction on harder difficulties
• Tooltips on freeplay sliders will now appear faster
  
• Uber mole cricket now climbable
  
• Added latest localisations
  
• Added some decorative rocks to Imprisoned

We’ve run out of time for this patch, and these issues are known but didn’t make it in this time (or we don’t yet have enough information on them) - they’ll be fixed next week once we figure them out.

If you are experiencing any of the following and have a save game file that demonstrates them, please send us an email to crashes@slugdisco.com with the save files attached (the instructions on how to find your files are in this thread)

• Ghost hybrids from older saves
  
• Enemies stuck in nest entrances on Sand Spit
  
• Something activating random caverns in freeplay
  
• Issues with dragonfly landing and dying on Imprisoned
  
• Wrong rewards displayed on easy in FC1 and FC2

New custom game / freeplay maps! Achievements! New difficulty options! More generous mission rewards! We’re close to pushing a large update, and we’re now at a point where we’re inviting anyone who’d like to test it a bit to do so.

We are adding over 100 achievements to the game in this build - but PLEASE NOTE, if you accomplish them in this test build they will not activate on Steam during the beta. You can use the in-game achievement tracker and victory screens to determine if you’ve accomplished an achievement goal, and we’d very much appreciate feedback on any problems with them.

We are after feedback on all manner of issues that may occur, focusing on glitches, crashes, and balance. Any and all feedback on this optional beta is very much appreciated - please post it to the community discussions! As ever, thanks so much to our closed testing focus group who have been providing feedback to get this patch to this point.

Let’s go over a few things related to these optional betas for people who haven’t participated in them before. Firstly, please note: optional betas are limited to the Steam Windows 64 bit build, and may be missing localisations in some newer or updates areas.


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. Copying the data in that folder to somewhere else will keep it safe from any potential issues.


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

• New Custom Game Maps! The 2 winners of our summer map design contest have been completed & added to the game, as well as one more
  
  • Imprisoned, based on a design by 鶴轟 - a swampy area that floods & drains, opening up easier access to other resources & colonies
    
  • Strawclutch, based on a design by Noctazar - tightly-packed nests around central resources in the swamp ensures intense skirmishes with neighbours
    
  • Sand Spit - a sandy peninsula designed for a 3v1 setup, where the single colony has an uphill battle ahead of them
• Achievements! Over 100 new achievements for all aspects of the existing story mode & seasonal levels
  
  • Please note: in this test build, meeting an achievement’s conditions will not activate the achievement on Steam, but you’ll be able to see if you got it in victory screens
    
  • Icons for the new achievements are still in the works, so worry ye not if you spot them defaulting to an older one!
• Reworked Difficulty Settings! More resolution in lower difficulty settings with more linear gradation between them
  
  • Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme & Impossible are the new difficulties, with new Easy a little easier than the old, & Extreme being where old Hard was. Impossible is the new name for what used to be Insane

• Mission rewards increased significantly:
  
  • Formicarium rewards for a repeated play of a mission have been increased (increased by 67%), for a defeat have been increased & the rewards provided at higher difficulties are higher.
    
  • Easy, Medium & Hard - although these difficulties are easier than before they provide the same rewards they used to
    
  • Extreme - although this is as hard as Hard used to be, it will provide the same rewards that Insane used to
    
  • Impossible - although this is as hard as Insane used to be, it will provide more rewards than Insane used to

• Pine woods tree frog now climbable
  
• Uber hermit crab is now climbable
  
• Uber red velvet ant is now climbable
  
• Young velvet worm is no longer climbable
  
• Improvements to climbing points on hermit crabs
  
• Small harvestmen now become food on death
  
• Jumping spiders now become food on death
  
• Ladybirds now become food on death
  
• Young praying mantis can now only be harvested by 1 ant
  
• New beach creatures now spawnable in Battle Arena

• Creature resource quantity slider added to freeplay options
  
  • Allows players to make creatures in their freeplay game drop more or less food if they like
• Restart button added to custom game defeat screen
  
• When spawning attack waves, freeplay director will now choose larger creatures to spawn if none can be found in the smaller creature options
  
• AI harvesting process now considers the average of total & ants alive when deciding where to harvest & not just enemy ants alive
  
• Freeplay now starts with a default save name

• Default FPS is now set to 60
  
• Updated beach loading screen to use new assets
  
• Arcade button graphics updated
  
• Improvements to the living sea urchin decorative asset
  
• Seaweed models updated in 2.1 & 2.2
  
• New hat for the sand bear wolf spider

• New early game objectives added to 3.1 The Harvest, the same as in The Crucible
  
  • The idea here is that the early objectives act as a mini tutorial, so the player has a good-sized leaf & refuse chamber before encountering the enemy colony. Shouldn’t interrupt established gameplay otherwise
• New narrator dialogue added regarding leafcutter refuse storage
  
• Formicarium Challenges now have names instead of numbers
  
• Visual pulsing effect when the queen is at low health & has recently taken damage to more urgently telegraph that the queen is in imminent danger
  
  • Can be disabled in Advanced Options
• Minor Improvements can no longer be applied mid-mission
  
• Creatures no longer heal in the formicarium after purchasing an ability
  
• Adventure: leafcutter supermajor can no longer climb creatures or carry food
  
• Extremis: food from killed creatures increased
  
• The Culling: tripled food from spawned creatures
  
• The Other Foot:
  
  • More time given on Impossible (previously Insane) difficulty
    
  • Food drops from spawning creatures build up & spawn with the next drop
• Both spider levels:
  
  • Added sound effects to spider abilities
    
  • Increased healing from Devour by 17%
    
  • Increased max health gained be Bite level
• Hungry Spider only:
  
  • Reduced uber wolf spider’s attack damage (down from 410 to 150)
    
  • Added some queen corpses with 60 food each near the uber wolf spider
• Many new & updated localisations

• Enemy colony health bars are now properly hidden in fog of war
  
• Adventure-specific UI elements no longer overlap the huge whip spider health bar
  
• UI elements no longer visible when photo mode is on during a victory animation
  
• Fixed depth of field in tutorial level victory camera
  
• Fixed depth of field in Hungry Spider victory & defeat cameras
  
• Formicarium Challenge 4 (‘The Final Experiment’) victory camera positioning fixed
  
• Fixed some old beach style level tunnel exit to use the old one
  
• Fixed some issues that would cause the wrong loading screen to show in some situations in a custom game
  
• Fixed some huge creatures & hybrids appearing to resurrect after a formicarium reload
  
• Fixed long creatures adorably chasing their own tails (sorry!)
  
• Fixed a crash when colony 2 was empty in a custom game
  
• Hermit crab shells & spider hats no longer receive decals

This will be the last newsletter of 2023, with one more vlog to come in December. 2023 has been a formative year for Empires of the Undergrowth with the freeplay / custom game mode being brought much closer to its final form, and the bulk of the systems and level work on the final stages of the game being done.


Fire ants in the swamp from Solstitium on our Discord

The end is, finally, in sight – but there’s still a stretch to go. To that end, the main feature of this newsletter is an updated roadmap that might take us all the way to release (we’ll have to see how things go!). We’ll spend the majority of our word allowance going over that.


The Empires of the Undergrowth roadmap gets updated every six months, with the optimistic thought that one of them may unexpectedly be the last one we have to do. Is this that one? We don’t know – probably not, but hope springs eternal as they say. Feast your arthropod-hungry eyes on this beauty, as we then go through each step in turn:


Now I am become roadmap, destroyer of deadlines

A couple of changes from the last one include using year quarters to refer to time instead of seasons to help our friends in the southern hemisphere, and giving a slightly longer explanation at each station. If there’s no ballpark date on a step then that’s because we’re not comfortable putting one there just yet, although we are aiming to get everything done as swiftly as we can. The ordering and timing is, as always, subject to change.


First up is achievements. These have been thoroughly detailed in both the previous newsletter and the most recent vlog, so I’ll keep this section brief. In short, more than 100 new achievements are being added for all of the existing campaign and seasonal levels. We still intend to run an optional beta on Steam to test out some of these, and with any luck we’ll have some news on this very soon – keep your face orbs unshrouded.


A while back we held a contest to design a custom game / freeplay map for Empires of the Undergrowth, picking one winner from YouTube / Discord entries and another from Bilibili. We had a good time going over the finalists (in a pre-recorded video for the Bilibili one and a fun livestream for the YouTube one) and ultimately settled on our winners – Strawclutch, and Imprisoned.



We have already very nearly completed work on bringing these designs to the game – our level designer John has built them, and our environment artist DanC has decorated them. So, let’s talk about each one in turn.


Strawclutch (designed by Noctazar) will, at least in its skirmish form, be a fast-paced map with short overall playtime. The four colony spaces are in close proximity to each other, and in the very middle of the map is a large growth of aphid-bearing milkweed plants. These act as the main food source when played as a skirmish game, and there will be early and repeated quarrels as the colonies vie for control of this territory.


Clutching at straws in the middle of the winning map design by Noctazar


Our Bilibili winner is called Imprisoned (designed by 鶴轟), and it features a locking mechanism that will put colonies in direct conflict with each other only periodically, as the water level changes. This had to be adapted somewhat from the original concept to work without fire ant bridges (see later in the roadmap for more information about that) but the basic premise remains the same – for most of the time in this map, colonies can only get to each other via a long road, but with the change of the water level there will be fighting.


A lot going on in Imprisoned by 鶴轟

It was a lot of fun running this contest and there’s a very strong possibility of us doing more stuff like this in the future, perhaps post-release as part of ongoing content after we reach version 1.0.

There is one more custom game map coming along at the time of this update: Sand Spit, which is designed for 3v1 setups. We detailed this map more back in the July newsletter – so have a look back there for some more detailed information (and some pictures). All 3 of these maps will be coming simultaneously, and with any luck will be part of the upcoming beta test that focuses on the achievements as well.

For anyone wondering about other work-in-progress custom game maps that we’ve shown glimpses of, such as Archipelago and Wetlands – they are dependent on fire ant bridging being completed for custom games and we’ll discuss more about this later on.


The New Year’s Feast event level will be returning in January and February to coincide with Chinese New Year – with a whole bunch of achievements attached. This time around we’ll be making a bit more of an event of it, too – with some new cosmetic updates to make the map a bit more thematically pleasing, as well as a much-needed balance pass to bring the map up to speed with the food rebalancing that happened back with the 0.31 update.



For those of you who haven’t played it yet – it’s a whimsical themed level based around fire ants collecting ingredients for a hotpot, with an explosive twist and a fantastical ending. Check out the trailer above for a preview – the level will reappear on January 8th, marking its return with a lantern in the main menu.


Version 0.31 of the game introduced some sweeping changes to the way AI colonies worked in a freeplay / custom game. Whilst they’ve been successful in lots of ways, it’s clear that there are some further things we can do to make it more effective without too much cheating.


In the UE4 Editor, AI colonies look like this for reasons that no-one but Liam knows

One of the issues we’ve had recently is quite simply just playtime – taking time to play the mode exhaustively ourselves outside of the context of just having it working or fixing it. We spend all of our time developing and playing in chunks – we listen to a lot of external feedback from testers and players, and implement it based on general consensus. However, this is often lacking the personal context of lots of time just spent playing for the sake of playing.

Our devs have gained good momentum on tier 5 right now and we don’t want to disrupt that – so we’ve put aside several days in the new year to do nothing but play custom games and take notes. Rather than immediately run off and fix every issue we come across, as is usually the case with development work, we will absorb the experience in its entirety. We hope this will give us some sounder knowledge for what we should prioritise in making the mode work better.


This is another thing that we’ve spoken about extensively before, so I’ll be brief – right now tier 4 challenge mode is waiting for the aforementioned tier 5 momentum wave to crest. Once that spike of activity reaches its zenith and dies back down again, the six-spotted fishing spider will finally make its long-awaited appearance, wearing its pirate hat if you want it to.


Yarrr!


Fire ant bridging in custom levels is tricky for several reasons. How do we handle multiple colonies competing for the bridging spot, for the most obvious example – these problems have been mostly solved, but the more time-consuming issue of allowing fire ant bridges to be save-able in a custom game has not. Once it has been, fire ant bridging will be introduced to appropriate maps.


We will inevitably hit a period of time where we’re getting everything finalised and ready, ramping up the marketing effort and preparing for the very scary task of bringing our first project to full release for the entire world. How long this ends up being is complete guesswork right now, but it is likely that at this time there will be enough of a gap to squeeze in an extra level / custom game map or two.

John (level designer) told me recently that he’s had some ideas that he’s itching to try out, but he’s being very good and concentrating on getting the game to 1.0 right now. This period of time is when he might have a few spare hours to bring these to fruition.


Archipelago – on hold for the time being

It might be here that custom game maps Archipelago and Wetlands make their appearance – they both have some aspects to them that will require input from all 3 of the devs to work, though, so we’ll have to see how we do with the implementation of fire ant bridging in custom games.


Finally, after years of work, we will be here – and this is now a real horizon-loomer. Final release will feature the last 3 story / campaign levels (the fifth tier will have 3 levels, instead of 2 like the others) and the ultimate formicarium challenge that the scientist has been preparing your colony for. I hope you’re all ready.


Time for some pretty Empires of the Undergrowth screenies! If you’d like to be featured in this section at some point in the future, the easiest way is to join our Discord and post on the screenshot channel there. Other than that, I’ll occasionally trawl through the community tab on Steam to see what’s been going on there. By default, press F9 to enter photo mode (hiding the UI) – hold down shift while you do that to uncouple the camera from the floor for some neater angles.


The big-headed ants overlooking an uber beach wolf spider from Dolly on our Discord


A pleasingly picturesque view of 4.2 A Bridge Too Far by Orion (Dilphy) on our Discord


The army is on the march in the formicarium from GoldenUngy on our Discord

For those of you who have joined us since last time, welcome to our infamously difficult Halloween level, which will earn its conquerors the rarest achievement in Empires of the Undergrowth. To celebrate this time around we've made an updated 4k trailer with the newer environment artwork. Enjoy!



The Hungry Spider's cobweb appears around Halloween and on full moons, and he's absolutely ravenous. Help him grow and defeat his enemies in a gluttonous fury as he stalks a web-shaped map. His hunger causes him to constantly lose health - quickly unlocking the 'devour' ability is paramount as it'll keep him alive. Take down bigger and stronger prey, upgrading his abilities as you go.

EDIT: A bit of bad news re: the Hungry Spider livestream, but hopefully a good compromise too:

Mike was due to do the 'One Chip Challenge' if he fails the Hungry Spider level live on stream at the weekend. However, after looking into the challenge we have decided that he should not do it. We apologise to anyone looking forward to his reaction.

Although the chip is a food and adheres to food standards, we do not want to encourage anyone else to participate in the activity and as such will not be doing it.

So, as and alternative (and because John has ruined Mike's fun), John will eat a scoop full of mixed preserved insects - a mix of buffalo worms, meal worms, crickets and locusts - each time Mike defeats an uber creature. Bigger insects the further Mike gets into the level.

It's the 1 year anniversary of the Slug Disco vlog! In this episode, Mike talks about the Empires of the Undergrowth map contest results, progress on tier 5, achievements, roadmaps, and more.

The brutally difficult Hungry Spider will be returning, by the way, on October 25th.

As is usually the case, this is also a general Slug Disco vlog with mentions of the rest of our publishing charges - if you'd like to skip these and go directly to the EotU good stuff, skip to time code 2.29.



EDIT: A bit of bad news re: the Hungry Spider livestream, but hopefully a good compromise too:

Mike was due to do the 'One Chip Challenge' if he fails the Hungry Spider level live on stream at the weekend. However, after looking into the challenge we have decided that he should not do it. We apologise to anyone looking forward to his reaction.

Although the chip is a food and adheres to food standards, we do not want to encourage anyone else to participate in the activity and as such will not be doing it.

So, as and alternative (and because John has ruined Mike's fun), John will eat a scoop full of mixed preserved insects - a mix of buffalo worms, meal worms, crickets and locusts - each time Mike defeats an uber creature. Bigger insects the further Mike gets into the level.

Hi everyone! Empires of the Undergrowth and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out!

Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale

Welcome to September, the worst month of the year (or so I'm told). I'll do my best to ensure you don't have to listen to Green Day on repeat to get through it, with some lovely news about achievements, map contests and difficulty changes coming to Empires of the Undergrowth. If you think that'd cheer you up, read on.


Leafcutter ants swarm over a huge whip spider in this shot from Steam user Bananta

As the art team and two out of three of our devs press forward with tier 5 work, one of our devs has been making changes to the difficulty options to Empires of the Undergrowth which were detailed in the most recent vlog last month. Before we get onto all the ins and outs of that, let's talk about the recent map contest!


In August we launched a map contest, mainly advertised on YouTube (you should absolutely subscribe to our YouTube channel - we post a whole bunch of great stuff there).

The contest closed at the start of this month, and we have had in the region of 200 entries all told! The brief was to submit an idea for a freeplay or custom game map, which we will then judge and turn our favourite into a fully-fledged map in the game.


John and Mike discussing map designs, whilst John makes an example map (which we will be finishing and adding to the game also!)

We want to do the judging live, so our current plan is to do a livestream at some point towards the end of this month. It would have been earlier but several of our team members are away for the Tokyo Game Show at the moment (more on that later in the newsletter). The exact timing of this is yet to be nailed down but we hope to stream at a time where most people can watch live in some form, hopefully on a weekend.

We're going to have to cut down the entries to 20-30 for the final judging, or we'd be there all night trying to get through 200! Please know that we appreciate all of the entries, and I'll do my best to make sure everyone who sent in an entry is credited for it, even if the entry doesn't make it into the final selection.

Keep an eye on our socials, and on here, for news of when the judging is happening! Remember - it'll likely be a weekend towards the end of this month or the start of October.


A common criticism of our difficulty choices is that the jump between them is not very linear, and in particular that the difference between medium and hard is more than a little unfair - with hard being closer to insane than to medium. We've decided now is the time to get the difficulty selection in its final working order before we finish the project, so one of our three devs has spent a lot of time recently working on that whilst the others crack on with tier 5.


Handy chart showing intended difficulty changes relative to the old standard

As you can see in the chart above, the intent is for difficulties between 'easy' and the new 'extreme' (which sits where the current 'hard' difficulty is) to be a gentler slope upwards. There's lots of reasons for this, and we hope the renaming of 'insane' to 'impossible' gives more people pause for thought if they want to attempt it on a first try (perhaps we should gate off this hardest difficulty on a first playthrough - what do you think?).

The increased resolution in the options outside of the toughest one will, we hope, allow people to make a more appropriate choice for their early playthroughs with better-fitting options for their skill level. There will be four options to choose from outside of the toughest - easy, medium, hard and extreme. We know plenty of people have chosen hard for the first playthrough of a level which, by no fault of their own, lies outside of their current skill level, being 'insane-lite' in some respects. 'Hard' should indicate challenging but achievable with sound game knowledge if not level-specific knowledge - we think that should now be the case.

See the vlog linked below for the full video form of this discussion - the segment begins at 2:38. Also, a reminder that the vlogs also come bi-monthly, in between these newsletters.




We spoke about the achievement additions in the previous newsletter, but we've now had the huge list of new ones in testing for a week or so and they should be arriving in the next patch (tentatively scheduled for October)! We've tried to include a selection of nice standard ones (complete level X on difficulty Y, that sort of thing, similar to the existing ones) along with quite specific challenges for the more adventurous. Here's a small selection of what you can expect (artwork pending), specifically some of the more interesting ones for 2.2 Queen of the Hill. Which ones will you be going after first?


If you don't get the Lord of the Rings reference, we can't be friends


Although we’re not ready to officially reveal the setting and theme for the fifth and final tier of the formicarium story, I can talk a little about how it’s progressing. As we’re bringing to a close the tying-up of other loose ends for the project (freeplay, achievements, etc) most of the dev team is currently working solidly on the fifth tier, and a good 70% of the source control commits that come in are related to it.

After revamping the beach assets for the July update, our environment artist has recently sent in his first completed models and textures for the as-yet unrevealed fifth tier setting. Several more creatures are completed, including some of the more exciting titan-class ones and some others that have novel mechanics associated with them.

New systems (which along with artwork always represent the biggest time sink for a new tier) are coming together and beginning to work in unison, and the species we’ve homed in on for tier 5 requires several of them! One such new system involves a local-scale dynamic change to the environment occurring in one of the levels.

Internal discussion has led to the consensus of a more controlled build-up to how we release information about tier 5 compared to previous marketing cycles. Although as the community manager I’m itching to get that information out there, I understand the team’s desire for a firmer marketing regimen given that it’ll be the last of the truly huge updates as we leave early access. As soon as I have the goahead to start sharing more concrete information, I shall!


Last month, the team travelled to Cologne, Germany to attend Gamescom. Empires of the Undergrowth was represented there as part of the Hooded Horse booth (they're our co-publishers on EotU) - a member of our team was manning that section most of the time! I had my camera with me, and took enough videos to cobble together a travel vlog which was fun to do. It was great to meet some of our players, old and new, from the continent and chat about the game with them. It was also lovely to meet our colleagues from Hooded Horse in person for the first time (for most of us)!



We like to use these public events as a way of gaining a little hands-on feedback from new players, as well - as work-from-home developers, we don't very often get the opportunity to directly observe people who are completely new to the game interacting with its systems, so we take that chance when we can. One thing that came from this particular event is some changes that will be made to 3.1 The Harvest - we'll be introducing a few early game objectives for that level, which should serve as something of a mini-tutorial for leafcutters (very similar to how The Crucible, the leafcutter demo level, works) as well as fully implementing some cut narrator dialogue about refuse chambers. Look out for that in the next update.


EotU developer Matt and environment artist Dan C at Gamescom

Slug Disco were also there with Robert Kaufmann, developer of Horticular - a beautiful garden-building pixel art game that Slug Disco is publishing, but not developing. Horticular was at the Indie Arena Booth, and Robert also got the chance to meet a whole bunch of you and gain some valuable feedback. Horticular development is continuing apace and we're really excited to see everyone's reaction to the finished game - it really is a remarkable project that we're very proud to be representing.


The Horticular station at the Indie Arena Booth

Gamescome is absolutely gigantic, the largest such event in the world, and its 2023 incarnation was an unforgettable experience as the world emerges fully from the shadow of COVID-19 that has loomed for the past several years. It’s always great to have the team together and we cherish those times that we can do that. We’re not quite done with events this year, which leads us on to…


TGS kicks off a few days from the time of writing, and Slug Disco will be represented there with three of our other publishing projects - Horticular and Adapt will be together at the dedicated Slug Disco booth, and Ecosystem will be there as part of the Indie Select 80. Our co-publishers Hooded Horse will be there, too.

Although we don't have a Slug Disco booth for Empires of the Undergrowth, if anyone is there and has a strong urge to play it we will boot it up for you - tell Liam and Dan that Mike sent ya and they'll oblige. If you’re nice.


We’ve had some beautiful screenies of the beach environment since its release in July, and so this month for Screenshot Central we’ll focus on that.

If you’d like to submit a screenshot, the easiest way is to join our Discord and post on the appropriate screenshot channels. You can also upload to the Steam Community page, and I will occasionally look through there. To get great screenshots, hold shift whilst you enter photo mode (F9 by default) - this will uncouple your camera from the ground and allow you to get some better angles on the action.


Attack of the crabs from BrickyGraph631


The beach in all its glory from Orion (Dilphy)


A wood ant queen safe in her burrow from Pumadog