Empires of the Undergrowth News

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.

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[h3]"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!"[/h3]

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.



[h2]Achievements[/h2]

• 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
  

[h2]Other [/h2]

• 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.

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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!



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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.

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• 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

[h2]Other Additions & Changes[/h2]

[h3]Mission Rewards[/h3]

• 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

[h3]Creature Changes[/h3]

• 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)
  

[h3]Custom Game Changes[/h3]

• 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
  

[h3]Graphical Changes[/h3]

• 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
  

[h3]Localisation[/h3]

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

[h3]Other Changes[/h3]

• 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

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• 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
  

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.

• 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