Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Empires of the Undergrowth
January 2024 Newsletter - it's release year!
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.
2024 Release
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.
Creature Features
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?
Daily Devlog
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.
New Year’s Feast Now Active
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!
Map Contest Over and Out
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.
Ungar, who made a 15 minute video describing their idea: https://youtu.be/DgM5AqXvFZs Heolx, for cheekily submitting a Heart of the Swarm map.
Buglife charity donation
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.
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.
Thank You
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.
Screenshot Central
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
Crash Fixes & Windows 32 / Mac Update
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.
0.320034 Notes
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.
Notes for Windows 32 bit / Mac
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
New Year's Feast & Fixes
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.
"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!"
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.
Version 0.320032 Patch Notes
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:
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
20% off Empires of the Undergrowth
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:
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!
The Custom Game & Achievements Update is OUT NOW!
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.
Headline Features
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
Other Additions & Changes
Mission Rewards
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
Creature Changes
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)
Custom Game Changes
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
Graphical Changes
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
Localisation
Many updates & fixes for existing languages
Support added for the following languages:
Hungarian
Italian
Portuguese
Turkish
Traditional Chinese
Ukrainian
Other Changes
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
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
Fixes
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
Optional Beta Update
This is very likely to be the final update to the optional beta before we set it live later this week, unless there’s something that needs urgent fixing. Please test if you have some time - and thank you to everyone who’s been doing that over the last few weeks!
A bunch of fixes for some achievement issues that have arisen in testing, and a few other bits and bobs. The achievements should now all be localised for all of our supported languages on Steam, and a Win32 build is now included.
Version 0.320031 Patch Notes
Fixed the I Love Sashimi achievement - turns out this one was just properly glitched
Fixed No Entry and The Way Is Shut achievements (bonus point to the first person who tells me the reference)
No Entry now stops checking once it has been failed, less nagging
The Free Willis achievement will now say the correct one has succeeded / failed
Stopped At Arm's Length achievement always succeeding
Moved an underground food item in 4.1 preventing all food being gathered (relevant for Toad In The Hole achievement)
Separation Of Duties achievement now checks the ladybird health to make sure it escaped from damage and was not just leaving with an aphid
Rearranged some other achievement stuff
Fixed a movement problem for ereptor colonies in a loaded custom game in Imprisoned
Fixed an issue on Imprisoned where rising / falling water notifications were the wrong way round if saved on the highest or lowest water point
Fixed an issue on Imprisoned where colonies hiding would not happen on the lowest water level when water is about to rise
Fixed a rare simultaneous defeat & victory situation in freeplay
Fixed dwarf salamanders in 4.1 not being properly eaten by the bullfrog
Fixes for AI colony hiding process
Optional Beta Update - Steam Achievements Now Active!
Finally, doing the achievements in the beta will count on Steam! The 100+ new ‘chieves have been properly hooked up into Steam’s systems and will now register permanently if you get them during the optional beta.
Remember: Steam achievements are permanent and cannot be reset once accomplished.
If you’re not participating in the beta yet and would like to, please see the initial post for instructions on how to join: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/463530/view/6939545579750168983
Changes
New achievements will now be registered on Steam! They’ll need to be repeated if you’ve done them in the optional beta already
All achievements now have lovely new square icons
Extremis now uses newer ability icons
Singular enemy spawning in freeplay increased when day / night cycle is disabled
Level 3 leafcutter mediae & majors can now remove a phorid fly ever 2 minutes (down from 3)
Several changes to Festive Spider:
Early game a bit less difficult with more food
Waves rebalanced in several spots
Fixes
Fixed a bunch of achievements that weren’t triggering properly
Fixed a problem in Festive Spider where an upgraded tower could be knocked back
Moved some food in demo level The Nest to keep it out of a cavern wall
Imprisoned leafcutter plant spawns repositioned to ensure full leaf access
Minor improvements are now applied to fire ants at point of purchase
Adaptations panel jelly value will now update on purchase of minor improvements
Larger velvet worms can now be climbed properly
Fixed a crash that could occur when a creature firing a projectile was deleted before the projectile lands
Imprisoned now uses a different UI timer to prevent interference with other timers
Vlog 8 - Releasing EotU in 2024
Vlog 8 is here, and it's been increasingly clear to us over the past several months that we're finally approaching the full release goal for Empires of the Undergrowth. The long road of early access is drawing to a close, and release plans are being worked on.
We will be releasing the game fully during 2024.
This vlog goes into a bit of detail about where we are with it, and while we're not ready to commit to an exact date (and never will do unless we're sure we can meet it) I hope you can gather from my enthusiasm that it really is a-comin'.
Current roadmap (published November 2023):
Fixes & changes for the Optional Beta
Another few fixes for the latest optional beta update!
V0.320022 Patch Notes
Fixes
Fixed an AI base building issue in Imprisoned
Gave wolf spiderling the frog hat
Fixed a rendering issue with level 2 tiles that receive -2 refuse debuff
Fixed an issue with the effect of refuse tiles on upgrade points at distance -1
Fixed an issue where leafcutter initial resources were deleted on saving & loading if there were no non-leafcutter colonies in the game
Fixed an issue on Imprisoned where creatures on islands without a colony on them could fail to spawn
Fixed ants being stuck in certain situations
Fixed several aphid issues
Sand Spit now displays its map info when loading a custom game
Changes
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)
