The final chapter of the story is not too far away, so let's talk about the final ant species you'll be playing as in Empires of the Undergrowth. The video below is a creature feature style one to reveal a little about the ants and their environment, and their eating habits.



In the expansive savannah of sub-Saharan Africa, the sun scorches the earth during the day and creatures find different ways to survive. Some dig; some build spire-topped cathedrals.

Some of the diggers feed on the builders. Large, powerful, and specialised, Megaponera analis - the Matabele ant - feeds almost entirely on termites. They habitually conduct sweeping raids of nearby mounds at dawn and dusk, when the heat is more forgiving.

We'll be doing fairly regular reveals on our social media from now on (YouTube, Facebook and X / Twitter and of course our Discord server) so those are the places to follow along if you want news as fast as you can get it - but we'll be doing round-ups in newsletters and vlogs, too. The newsletter coming in a couple of weeks from this post will be packed with tier 5 stuff!

Making this game has been a wonderful, long, life-changing journey that is now nearing its end and we're glad you made it with us.

From now until March 10th, you can save 35% on Empires of the Undergrowth. Come check the game out!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

We've decided internally on a release date for Empires of the Undergrowth - it's now full steam ahead to meet it! We'll be doing some creature and setting reveals for the final tier soon. This vlog, while necessarily short, should plug the gap between calm and storm.

Note that this vlog also deals with news about 2 other games that Slug Disco publishes - if you'd rather skip that, the timecode is 3:53.

Hi everyone!

Empires of the Undergrowth is currently on sale for 20% off. At the end of the sale, the price of the game will be raised to reflect advancements made during Early Access. We wanted to provide advance notice in case anyone would like to purchase the game at the current discounted price.

Thank you for all of your support!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/

So, we’re in Empires of the Undergrowth’s release year now! That’s a terrifying and exciting concept. If you watched last month’s vlog, you’ll have seen that we’ve managed to narrow down the release window of the game to a slight 12 months. Well done us.


The Nian Beast encounters firecrackers in the New Year's Feast level. From Orion (Dilphy) on our Discord

Just a reminder that November’s newsletter contains the roadmap that should cover what to expect as we approach full release of the project - so refer back to that if you’d like some clarification on what’s happening over the coming few months. I’ll try to keep this newsletter relatively brief - in this time shortly before we start revealing stuff from the final tier, news is a little slight. However, next time should be full of exciting reveals! There’s definitely a few things worth discussing now - let’s dive in.


So, the big news I spoke about in the previous vlog at the end of last year is that Empires of the Undergrowth will be releasing in 2024! Upon this announcement being made, the memes almost immediately began saying things along the lines of “One second before 2025 confirmed!”, which I must admit made us giggle.



I don’t want to narrow down the launch window any further just yet, but I will say the aim is definitely for this to not be the case. Our internal decision on the release window is getting surer by the day, and as is always the case the rest of the team is holding me back from just blurting everything out! Believe me, I’ve been biting my tongue for months.


In the lead-up to us revealing stuff for the final tier, we’ve started doing semi-regular ‘Creature Feature’ videos on our YouTube channel. We hope these can introduce the critters from the game to everyone, and might even be mildly educational at the same time. We’re aiming to go through the game, highlighting some of the creepier crawlies as we go. Who knows what will happen when we reach the end of the existing campaign?




Now would be a great time to join our Discord, where I’ve recently started a new channel called Daily Devlog. A few times a week, I will go into Empires of the Undergrowth’s source control (software we use to keep track of code and assets as they are being developed) and see what has been committed recently.


I get to use [REDACTED] at work without working for the government. Neat!

This is a fun way of keeping track of what we’re up to in these last few precious months before release, and although I won’t be posting direct spoilers there (at least not until we’ve officially revealed something) it’s well worth a look if you're curious about what our small team gets up to on a day-to-day basis.


Our annual New Year’s level, fittingly dubbed New Year’s Feast, is now active and ready for play. Click on the Chinese lantern that has appeared on the main menu to jump in - it’ll be here all the way until the end of February (covering the Lunar New Year too) so you’ve got plenty of time to get those spicy new achievements before Spring comes around.



We like to take a fanciful approach to our holiday levels, as opposed to the more reality-based settings of the documentary levels in the campaign.

The fire ant queen is making her famous New Year's Eve hotpot, but her daughters have forgotten to bring her the ingredients for the broth. Help them find the correct spices in time for the New Year celebrations, whilst making liberal use of festive firecrackers to clear enemies and shorten your path. Rescue lost invitees to diversify your colony!


Thank you to everyone who has played since the Custom Game & Achievements Update went live just before the Christmas break! I thought now would be the right time to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who sent in a map suggestion - although we could only pick 2 winners, it was a joy going through the submissions and seeing all the wonderful ways in which your brains work.



Custom game maps Strawclutch (designed by Noctazar) and Imprisoned (designed by 鶴轟) are of course now in the game forever, as a testament to the creativity of our players. We may well do some more contests like this in the future - but likely after full release at this point. Time for us to crack on!

Here’s a list of everyone who sent in a valid entry, in no particular order. I hope your imaginations are working overtime for the next one.


A map design built in Minecraft!

Ungar, who made a 15 minute video describing their idea: https://youtu.be/DgM5AqXvFZs
Heolx, for cheekily submitting a Heart of the Swarm map.


Back in April of last year, we had the enormous privilege of being part of the organising team for Steam’s Earth Appreciation Festival and associated sale. Empires of the Undergrowth was of course featured, and we donated a portion of our revenue from the event to our favourite UK-based invertebrate conservation charity, Buglife. We were able to raise £2224, which gets doubled up via the Big Give No Insectinction Campaign to £4448.


Click the logo to visit the Buglife blog entry!

I had a quick chat with Nikki Banfield, Communication Officer for the charity, and with my answers she put together an article about our donation, what some of the money will be used for, why we chose Buglife and what we’ve found inspiring in our time developing Empires of the Undergrowth.

Read the article on Buglife’s blog here!

With the help of our players, we hope to be able to do more charity drives in the future for conservation concerns close to our heart like this one. Thank you so much to everyone who participated, and everyone who’s bought the game - please know that you’ve helped put us in the position where we can support a charity we love.


Thanks for reading our first newsletter of 2024 - things are about to get very exciting! Before I see us out with Screenshot Central, I’d just like to thank each and every one of you for being with us on this long journey to make our dream game, from early beginnings so long ago to now going through the process of preparing something fully realised to completion. We would not have been able to do this without the understanding and kind patience of a community who genuinely want what is best for us, and are willing to wait for quality.

You’ve made Empires of the Undergrowth what it is, and made us what we will continue to be.


Always a treat getting to this point of the writing - share your screenshots on the Steam Community tab, or more easily (for me) you can join our Discord and post them up in the appropriate channel. Remember - if you hold shift while you press the photo mode button (F9 by default) you can uncouple the camera from the tile grid, allowing you to get some lovely snaps.


Attacking big-headed ants from WarriorAntGaming, who has posted whole sagas on our Discord


Fire in the swamp from Vanguard on our Discord


The Nian Beast being formidable from Orion (Dilphy) on our Discord

The recently-implemented automatic crash reporting system in Empires of the Undergrowth has highlighted some issues that have been lurking in the dark for a long time, that we’ve now been able to root out and patch up. This update deals with the most pressing of those.

• Fixed a crash when a titan-class creature is near the edge of the map
  
• Fixed some creature fringe cases causing other crashes
  
• Fixed several rarer crashes

This patch also brings platforms other than Windows 64 bit up to date (Windows 32 bit, Mac). The following notes are from the previous update, but included for the convenience for those demographics.


Achievements

• Cramped extra level will no longer trigger 3.2’s achievements
  
• 'Multitasking' can now be completed if the pinecone on the island has been deleted
  
• Fixed an issues where 'Clever Little Ants' always failed even when nothing got hit
  
• New Year’s Feast achievements should now register
  
• 'Full House' counting issue fixed

Other

• Fix for velvet worm attacking itself
  
• Closed the New Year’s Feast nest entrance
  
• Christmas hats removed from invisible queens on a few levels (Festive Spider, etc)
  
• Beetles Rise Up no longer stuck on impossible difficulty
  
• Creature stats resynchronised between campaign & custom games

Welcome to 2024! This patch fixes some issues with achievements and extra levels that have cropped up over the Christmas break - and I thought I’d throw in a reminder about the New Year’s Feast level as well, which is now active and playable through until the end of February. It’s a little early for Chinese New Year, but we figured we should be early with something for once.



This patch is somewhat urgent because of the achievement issues, and we hope this resolves the last of them. For that reason, it is being rolled out in stages as we can compile them - starting with Win64, then moving onto Win32 and Mac as soon as they’re ready. This might take a day or two.

• Cramped extra level will no longer trigger 3.2’s achievements
  
• 'Multitasking' can now be completed if the pinecone on the island has been deleted
  
• Fixed an issues where 'Clever Little Ants' always failed even when nothing got hit
  
• New Year’s Feast achievements should now register
  
• 'Full House' counting issue fixed

• Fix for velvet worm attacking itself
  
• Closed the New Year’s Feast nest entrance
  
• Christmas hats removed from invisible queens on a few levels (Festive Spider, etc)
  
• Beetles Rise Up no longer stuck on impossible difficulty
  
• Creature stats resynchronised between campaign & custom games:
  
  • We have some time scheduled coming up to spend a few days just playing custom games & may make some custom game-specific creature changes in a future update

Hi everyone, get Empires of the Undergrowth for 20% off during the Steam Winter Sale! Command swarms of warriors at an unprecedented scale of warfare. Lead ant colonies against the many fearsome threats of the insect world:

Check out this game and Hooded Horse's other published games during the Winter Sale until January 4.

Happy Holidays! From now until January 4th, you can save 20% on Empires of the Undergrowth, and get great deals on all other games published by Hooded Horse during the Steam Winter Sale.

With Empires of the Undergrowth's early access journey coming near to an end with v1.0 arriving in 2024, now is a great time to come check the game out!

New custom game / freeplay maps! Achievements! New difficulty options! More generous mission rewards! This major update for Empires of the Undergrowth brings in a whole bunch of new stuff, and also puts us in good stead for the final chapter and full release coming in 2024. Thanks so much to everyone who’s been helping to test all the additions over the past few weeks.

• 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. Comes with a map option for wider-spaced nest locations
    
  • Sand Spit - a sandy peninsula designed for a 3v1 setup, where the single colony has an uphill battle ahead of them
• Achievements! There are now over 100 achievements for all aspects of the existing story mode & seasonal levels
  
• Reworked Difficulty Settings! More resolution in lower difficulty settings with more linear gradation as they increase
  
  • 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:
  
  • Rewards for a repeated play of a mission increased
    
  • Rewards for playing on higher difficulties increased
    
  • Consolation rewards for a defeat increased
    
  • Easy, Medium & Hard - although these difficulties are easier than before they provide the same rewards they used to
    
  • Extreme - although as difficult as Hard used to be, it will provide the same rewards that Insane did
    
  • Impossible - although as difficult as Insane used to be, it will provide more rewards than Insane did

• Pine woods tree frog now climbable
  
• Uber hermit crab is now climbable
  
• Uber red velvet ant is now climbable
  
• Uber mole cricket 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
  
• Level 3 leafcutter mediae & majors can now remove a phorid fly ever 2 minutes (down from 3)

• Leafcutter colonies in custom games now start with 19 queen tiles, meaning more workers / minims & increased fungus capacity
  
• Creature resource quantity slider added to freeplay options, allowing players to make creatures in their 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
  
• AI colonies on Towhead & Embankment will hide for a time after a flood
  
• More creatures should spawn at the start of a custom game when using singular spawning
  
• Environmental enemies ramp up faster in singular spawning (including skirmish)
  
• Adjustments to nocturnal / diurnal spawn timing in custom games
  
• 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

• Many updates & fixes for existing languages
  
• Support added for the following languages:
  
  • Hungarian
    
  • Italian
    
  • Portuguese
    
  • Turkish
    
  • Traditional Chinese
    
  • Ukrainian

• New early game objectives added to 3.1 The Harvest
  
• 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 (can be disabled in Advanced Options)
  
• Minor Improvements can no longer be applied mid-mission
  
• If a creature cannot transfer to the surface it is now killed instead of just being left underground to try again (for example, when exiting an enemy nest after water has risen)
  
• Creatures no longer heal in the formicarium after purchasing an ability
  
• Formicarium Challenge 3 (now called Possibly the Final Experiment):
  
• Easy difficulty now slightly easier
  
• Enemy queen no longer has abilities on Normal as well as Easy
  
• Mole crickets & praying mantises no longer have food reduction on harder difficulties
  
• Adventure: leafcutter supermajor can no longer climb creatures or carry food
  
• Extremis: food from killed creatures increased
  
• Extremis now uses newer ability icons
  
• The Culling: tripled food from spawned creatures
  
• The Other Foot: more time given on Impossible (previously Insane) difficulty
  
• The Other Foot: food drops from spawning creatures build up & spawn with the next drop
  
• The Crucible demo level now has difficulty settings
  
• Spider levels:
  
  • Added sound effects to spider abilities
    
  • Increased healing from Devour by 17%
    
  • Increased max health gained by Bite level
    
  • Hungry Spider: reduced uber wolf spider’s attack damage (down from 410 to 150)
    
  • Hungry Spider: added some queen corpses with 60 food each near the uber wolf spider
    
  • Festive Spider: early game a bit less difficult with more food
    
  • Festive Spider: waves rebalanced in several spots

• Fixed environmental creatures with singular spawning not attacking each other
  
• 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 for cinematic cameras in several places
  
• Minor improvements are now applied to fire ants at point of purchase
  
• Adaptations panel jelly value will now update on purchase of minor improvements
  
• Formicarium Challenge 4 (‘The Final Experiment’) victory camera positioning fixed
  
• Fixed some old beach style level tunnel exit to use the old one
  
• Fixed the wrong loading screen showing 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
  
• Pressing Esc during difficulty selection will no longer lead to a UI overlap
  
• Fixed an issue with dragonflies that could cause a slowdown over time
  
• Fixed a problem in Festive Spider where an upgraded tower could be knocked back
  
• Fixed a crash when a creature firing a projectile was deleted before the projectile lands