1. Empires of the Undergrowth
  2. News

Empires of the Undergrowth News

Fixes & Changes - First post-release patch for Empires of the Undergrowth

We've released the first patch of fixes and changes for Empires of the Undergrowth, following its release into 1.0 last month. This deals with most of the more common issues that have been reported - more patches of this scale and type are likely to come in the near future.

Thanks to everyone who's been helping to test this patch in the optional beta over the past several days!

[h2]Changes[/h2]
  • 5.1's titans can now spawn in huge creature landmarks in freeplay
  • Added a system to restore saves from backup in-game rather than manually (not yet localised)
  • Added some extra protection when reloading or quitting the game when defeat rewards are being saved
  • Increased save backup number to 5 (up from 3)
  • Bullet ant tech tree video added
  • Scroll added to behaviour toggles box (will only appear when needed)
  • Added more recent localisation for Polish and Czech
  • Updated lighting for custom game levels and extra levels, and changed some underground tile grids to the new ones
  • Whip spider main menu icon is replaced if arachnophobia mode is active
  • Added arachnophobia hats to hybrids
  • Creature stat list can now show percentages to a single decimal point

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Reduced chance of all backups corrupting
  • Fixed some small reverb problems in Tier 5 lab music
  • Food taken from dead critters should now look closer to what it comes from
  • Wood ants now turn to their targets before each shot
  • AoE resistance now displays as a percentage in the Inspect tool
  • Creatures mounted on another are now killed when shaken off and landing off the tile grid
  • Fixed low resolution shadows in Tug of War 3
  • Large underground creatures in 5.1 and 5.3 can now only demolish a tile if at least one of its neighbours is demolished
  • Quadrupled VRAM allocated to overground tile grid textures - should improve issues when rapidly moving camera around the map
  • Inspect tool health-per-second now includes buffs (such as the Matabele medic aura)
  • Fix for whip spiders rapidly pinging from their creature encounter narration in 3.2
  • Bullet ant species hex now used in the improvements menu
  • Allowed marker placement through some plants that were blocking it in 3.2
  • Matabele colonies should now always drop termites when they sell a tile
  • Creatures that reach zero health while mounted will always drop to the floor to actually die
  • Water on the minimap removed on 5.3
  • Termites will no longer take sun damage in the ending cinematic of 5.3
  • End game messages now say the NG+ level that has been unlocked if this is not the first NG+ completion
  • Corrected some issues in the credits
  • Fixed a ping issue in Occupation 2
  • Texture size optimisations (should help with some blurry issues)
  • Skimmer in Battle Arena will now fly and land when there are enemies at the midpoint
  • Fixed some overhanging moss in the final formicarium / terrarium
  • Fixed an issue where loading a damaged creature with a star level would restore its health
  • Prevented ants walking into a rock in 5.1
  • Fixed an issue where several ants hatch costs were being affected by upkeep in custom games
  • Fixed an issue where bullet ant lean pupation was not applying in custom games
  • Fixed an issue where UI scaling 150% would cause formicarium rewards to be off the bottom of the screen and hence unselectable
  • Fixed an issue where Matabele colonies would drop seeds instead of termites when an upgrade was cancelled
  • Speed chambers now drop lignocellulose for termites and termites for Matabele when sold
  • Fixed an issue where food refunded into storage chambers owned by Matabele ants was seeds (and hence was worth a lot less)
  • Great blue skimmer displays health in battle arena again
  • Fixed an issue where ants would leave via the top of a tunnel exit on Strawclutch
  • Fixed an issue where poppy plants would appear on some custom game levels when loaded that were not meant to be there
  • Earwig nymph can no longer spawn as part of a wave in freeplay
  • Fixed an issue where huge creature landmarks if they could not find a slot could cause all other landmarks in the current queue to not spawn
  • Fixed an issue where under some circumstances less lignocellulose would spawn than was supposed to in custom games
  • Fixed some issues preventing AI controlled Matabele ant colonies from hunting termites
  • Lignocellulose landmarks now can only spawn weaker termites early game, ramping up to larger ones later game

Empires of the Undergrowth at Hooded Horse Summer Sale

[h2]The Hooded Horse Summer Sale Has Arrived![/h2]
Until July 11th, explore the fascinating world of ants in Empires of the Undergrowth at a 35% discount. Also, check out the fantastic discounts on all Hooded Horse titles during the Steam Summer Sale.



[hr][/hr]
Empires of the Undergrowth is a real-time strategy game where you manage an ant colony, gather resources, and defend against predators. Check out the recent 1.0 release!
[hr][/hr]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][h3]From Today Until July 11th[/h3]
The discounts on Empires of the Undergrowth and all other Hooded Horse games are available through July 11th — perfect for enhancing your summer gaming experience. We're excited to see the worlds you build and the adventures you undertake.

Happy gaming!

Optional Beta - New Freeplay Titans & Bug Fixes

Along with the 5.1 titans making it into freeplay, this optional beta has a bunch of fixes and improvements to make the game more stable.

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.

[h2]WARNING: YOU ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO MAKE A SAVE BACKUP[/h2]

Saved games are in C:\Users[YOUR USER NAME]\AppData\Local\EotU\Saved\SaveGames

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. More info on where games are saved is in the Steam forums (but some of the information here will soon be obsolete, if this beta goes to plan). Copying the data in that folder to somewhere else will keep it safe from any potential issues.

Code: customtitans


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


[h2]Updates / Changes[/h2]

  • 5.1's titans can now spawn in huge creature landmarks in freeplay
  • Added a system to restore saves from backup in-game rather than manually (not yet localised)
  • Added some extra protection when reloading or quitting the game when defeat rewards are being saved
  • Increased save backup number to 5 (up from 3)
  • Bullet ant tech tree video added
  • Scroll added to behaviour toggles box (will only appear when needed)
  • Added more recent localisation for Polish and Czech
  • Updated lighting for custom game levels and extra levels and changed some underground tile grids to the new ones
  • Whip spider main menu icon is replaced if arachnophobia mode is active
  • Added arachnophobia hat to all hybrids
  • Creature stat list can now show percentages to a single decimal point


[h2]Fixes[/h2]

  • Reduced chance of all backups corrupting
  • Fixed some small reverb problems in Tier 5 lab music
  • Food taken from dead critters should now look closer to what it comes from
  • Wood ants now turn to their targets before each shot
  • AoE resistance now displays as a percentage in the Inspect tool
  • Creatures mounted on another are now killed when shaken off and landing off the tile grid
  • Fixed low resolution shadows in Tug of War 3
  • Large underground creatures in 5.1 and 5.3 can now only demolish a tile if at least one of its neighbours is demolished
  • Quadrupled VRAM allocated to overground tile grid textures - should improve issues when rapidly moving camera around the map
  • Inspect tool health-per-second now includes buffs (such as the Matabele medic aura)
  • Fix for whip spiders rapidly pinging from their creature encounter narration in 3.2
  • Bullet ant species hex now used in the improvements menu
  • Allowed marker placement through some plants that were blocking it in 3.2
  • Matabele colonies should now always drop termites when they sell a tile
  • Creatures that reach zero health while mounted will always drop to the floor to actually die
  • Water on the minimap removed on 5.3
  • Termites will no longer take sun damage in the ending cinematic of 5.3
  • End game messages now say the NG+ level that has been unlocked if this is not the first NG+ completion
  • Corrected some issues in the credits
  • Fixed a ping issue in Occupation 2
  • Texture size optimisations (should help with some blurry issues)
  • Skimmer in Battle Arena will now fly and land when there are enemies at the midpoint
  • Fixed some overhanging moss in the final formicarium / terrarium
  • Fixed an issue where loading a damaged creature with a star level would restore its health
  • Prevented ants walking into a rock in 5.1
  • Fixed an issue where several ants hatch costs were being affected by upkeep in custom games
  • Fixed an issue where bullet ant lean pupation was not applying in custom games
  • Fixed an issue where UI scaling 150% would cause formicarium rewards to be off the bottom of the screen and hence unselectable

First Post-Release Newsletter! May-June 2024

We’ve put many of our best years into Empires of the Undergrowth, and it is finally released. Welcome to our first newsletter in a post-1.0 world! For all of the many new people who are joining us, you are most welcome, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the game since launch on Friday, 7th June 2024. It’s been a rollercoaster of a few days for us, to say the least, and we’ve got a lot to talk about - so let’s get to it.

Matabele ants in a custom game from Zvistic

First and foremost, thank you so much for making sure that our launch to full release was a successful one. So far, our highest concurrent player count was on the Sunday after launch - peaking at 6,367 - absolutely annihilating our previous best of 2,509 which happened nearly 2 years ago when the fire ant update was set live. These are stunning numbers for our little ant game, far higher than we could have hoped for, and we will be eternally grateful for that.

On launch day we also posted a new roadmap, detailing some of our plans for the immediate future of Empires of the Undergrowth. This newsletter will mainly deal with that, but we’ll also talk about some of the coverage that the game has been getting and how the launch itself went.

1.0 Launch


In the early evening of 7th June, we took a short break from our preparations to do a short livestream celebrating the reach of 1.0. It was great being able to take a quick breather with more than 800 of you watching at one point, and to be honest this was for us as much as it was for everyone else! The recording of the livestream is available on YouTube for anyone who would like to have a look:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We did all the traditional things you do in a launch livestream - briefly interrogate an environment artist, mix a themed cocktail, that sort of thing. Cue me getting through the entire livestream in good humour only to get emotional at the very end of it - an absolute classic. As always, a privilege to share a little about our process and our team at the end of the road. Well, at the end of this road, anyway.

The Immediate Aftermath - Roadmap


Even after a project that has done objectively fairly well for several years, you can never guarantee that that will translate to a bigger player base at the end of proceedings. Thankfully, you folks came out swinging for us, and we had both our best day of sales AND concurrent player count on launch day, up until that point (beaten over the following weekend, however!).

Roadmap:



On the day of launch we also released an updated roadmap. While our roadmaps are always subject to changes in ordering and even inclusion, it gives a good idea of what our immediate priorities are to continue content and improve what’s there. Let’s go through the roadmap now and discuss the major points in a bit more detail.

[h2]Fixes & Improvements[/h2]

Our first port-of-call is to fix the inevitable list of glitches and issues that pop up when a lot more eyes are on the game all of a sudden. Obviously we did our best to get everything tested properly before release, but with a small dev team and a volunteer focus group (as well as some limited professional QA) it isn’t possible to catch everything until a whole bunch more people are seeing it. Over its long development time, Empires of the Undergrowth has become a fairly big project, after all.

Some of the very common ones have already been identified and fixed, and we in fact hope to get back to doing optional betas fairly regularly. The first of these may well be ready in the short term - so look out for that.

Savannah AO improvements - before & after

In the above pictures, we've included some improvements to the ambient occlusion system that are currently in the works in a before / after form - this should add extra detailing to bare areas like the open parts of the savannah. We hope to get this into a test build as soon as we can.

[h2]Balance[/h2]

When in a closed testing environment, one of the things you have to be aware of is that everyone who is involved is at least somewhat familiar with the game and therefore things are likely to be a touch easier for them than the average player. This is really a ‘feel it out’ kinda situation, and although we’re relatively happy with how the difficulty turned out there is certainly some work to be done here. 5.1 could probably do with being a shade easier on lower difficulties, for example, but the general consensus will develop over time in what we need to be doing here.

Balance therefore won’t be one of the things that is worked on immediately (we’ll be working on glitch fixes first) but as it becomes clearer what direction we need to go in it will come a little bit later.

[h2]Tier 5 Achievements[/h2]

One of the things we were a bit perturbed to have to leave out of 1.0 is achievements for the final tier of the formicarium story. This was simply a time thing, but we absolutely intend to go back in and finish off the ‘chieves for tier 5. We promise not to make them too devious this time. Maybe.

[h2]Rainforest Art Refresh[/h2]

About 3 years ago we hired a dedicated environment artist to the team. The 3 core devs are all generalists, really, because that’s what you have to be with an ambitious project and a tiny team! DanC’s art has now defined the look of Empires of the Undergrowth, and the last bastion of the old style remains in the rainforest biome that the third tier of the game takes place in (as well as some extra levels and custom game maps).

A trail of leafcutter ants from Heolx

We have gone through the game and updated the earlier artwork, so the rotten log and the beach are now up-to-date with the more modern look. The rainforest was left until last, since it certainly represents the best of the older style. With 1.0 now out of the door, there’s time to go back and update the jungle to fit better into the rest of the game.

[h2]Savannah Maps[/h2]

Our lovely new savannah biome has a sort of semi-arid beauty to it, and it’d be a real shame if we didn’t create some custom game maps using them! At least 2 new custom game maps using these assets are planned in the short term, perhaps with more to follow. They will of course feature the towering spires of the termite mounds, which are the primary visual feature of the savannah.

Driver ants clash with stink ants in this shot from AntBZK

[h2]CSV Setup for Custom Games[/h2]

This system is still very much a work-in-progress, but the idea here is to allow users to create custom game setups via CSV (comma-separated value, or spreadsheet). It will require the users to learn a little bit about the system (we’ll provide some simple documentation when the time arrives) but it should allow for some more funky stuff to be achieved than just basic setup saving.

If this all goes to plan there’s no reason why we couldn’t open this up to the Steam workshop, and allow people to share and download clever custom game setups that way.

[h2]Ubers / Huge Creatures[/h2]

We are also due some variants of the tier 5 creatures being added properly into custom games. The sun spider, African giant centipede and emperor scorpion are all due to make an appearance as huge creature landmarks in their larger or ‘titan’ forms.

The emperor awaits, from Orion (Dilphy)

5 new creatures will also get uber variants, because who doesn’t love a walking lightshow that is an existential threat to your colony? I won’t spoil all of them now, but one of them will be the uber alligatorback scorpion.

[h2]New Extra Levels[/h2]

Freed from the stress of completing a nearly decade-long project to 1.0, we will have a bit more time to do some of our more fanciful / experimental (or both) levels. For those who haven’t tried them yet - making extra levels takes practically no time at all compared to the campaign, because they typically don’t involve extensive new asset and / or system creation. Given that they exist outside of the canon of the game, they also give us creative license to be more experimental and create scenarios that wouldn’t be appropriate to the campaign.

An overview of Adventure, one of the more ambitious extra levels

As the roadmap says, these extra levels may come at any time as they are devised. They take a few hours to a couple of days each to produce compared to months for the campaign, and if developer John (who has made all the extra levels thus far) gets an idea he likes he may well just do it and release it in fairly short order. We’ll try to give a little bit of a heads-up about that, though, so keep those eyes peeled!

[h2]Further Custom Game Changes[/h2]

It is likely that custom games will remain an area of tweaking and changes for some time to come, and it is by far the game mode with the most subjective taste involved. Although it is very customisable, getting those default values right always takes experimentation and iteration, as well as getting the gist of player consensus as well. Another option open to us, which we haven’t used yet, is individual stat changes to creatures that are different to the campaign.

The AI is also due further tweaks and changes, and although its newer decision making system is more sophisticated than the old one by a large margin, there are still some areas where it can get stuck in a logic loop that prevents it from sending trails out, and we’ll be weeding this issues out as we continue.

[h2]Firecracker Mode[/h2]

No comment. Coming 2025. Boom.

[h2]And more![/h2]

We’ll be continuing to do changes, new maps and extra levels, and perhaps even bigger updates for the foreseeable future. The roadmap will continue to be updated every 6 months, and we’re very happy to have been secured by the successful launch to continue work on the project. There is a lot more stuff we want to do, and we now have the chance to do it.

Thank You


The part of the launch live stream that turned me into a big soppy mess was when it came time to thank you, our players. You have been exceptionally kind and patient with us, as we completed our dream game and brought it to fruition, over a far longer time than we ever expected it to take us. Oh, our naivety all those years ago!

Thank you to our players, those who have contributed with testing and suggestions, our supporting artists and voice talent. Also to Hooded Horse, our co-publishers, whose guidance and superior wisdom has steered us through the trickiest part of the project.

Screenshot Central


It feels like it’s been an age since I got to do my favourite part of the newsletter, but it hasn’t even been 3 months (it feels like a year). If you’d like to contribute to this section in the future, the easiest way is to get on our Discord and post in the appropriate screenshot channel there. Alternatively, you can post to the Steam community and I will occasionally have a search through there. This month it is, predictably, tier 5-themed.

An Aloe shadow looms over the savannah from ~SlushieChris~

A basking rainbow lizard from NightEqual2374

Bonk! An emperor scorpion stuns its prey from AhYesAnts

I'm not watching trailers this weekend, I'm playing this ridiculously good RTS about ants




It's one of those grand weekends of lots of trailers, aka the 2024 summer gaming showcases, but I'm not watching those. I'm playing Empires of the Undergrowth, an absolutely excellent RTS about controlling an ant colony. I'm enjoying it so much, in fact, that the only one of the shows I'm going to break for is ours—The PC Gaming Show. Otherwise I'm only putting down the reins of my little ants for work. Like what I'm doing as I write this...
Read more.