As we barrel towards the end of the immense year that was 2024, we’re still running a long optional beta which is testing some major new features - we hope to get that out for everyone before Christmas. Thank you so much to everyone who has been having a play with it; your feedback as always is invaluable. Poor old John has been run off his feet for the past several weeks trying to implement it!
The bleak depths of winter are nearly upon the colony...
In this final newsletter of the year, we’ll concentrate on the features that will be arriving sooner rather than later, the most exciting of which is probably completely custom colonies for your skirmish and freeplay games! That’s been an interesting one to implement, and we’ll get to that shortly. First, let’s go over the recent extended beta period and how we’ve been gathering feedback.
Beta Testing
Once again, hats off to everyone who’s given some time testing out the latest balances, fixes and new stuff in the currently running optional beta. We appreciate everyone who can spend a little bit of time experimenting with things that are probably not entirely functional yet! This has been our longest optional beta period, and we hope to bring it to a conclusion in the near future and release the results for everyone to see.
As detailed in the previous vlog, we’ve been experimenting with separate stats for some creatures in custom games (as opposed to the campaign) and in some cases separate abilities. The most obvious of these is the big-headed ant major soldier ‘adrenaline’ ability, which gives them a timed buff on entering combat. Also, leafcutter media ants have been rebalanced to be slightly worse fighters but much better gatherers, and black ant soldiers are way tougher with a maximum damage they can take in a single hit.
The thought process behind these changes is that the campaign and custom games have much different needs, and although we’ve had the stats for the two different game modes divorced for quite a while now we haven’t made use of the facility until now. Custom games can be much less predictable than the carefully scripted campaign levels, and certain species are inherently tougher to use. We hope these ongoing tweaks will make some of the lesser used custom game species more attractive to more people.
Custom Colonies
As mentioned earlier, ‘custom colonies’ is a new features that allows a custom game to contain a colony of nearly any makeup that is currently being tested in the optional beta. You can have a colony with a leafcutter queen, but containing big-headed ant supersoldiers, little black ants and termite major soldiers, for example. There are some exceptions for technical reasons (ie, no Matabele medics in leafcutter colonies) but the possibilities are still very expansive.
A termite in an ant colony?? Such things are possible with custom colonies!
Remix Mode
A larger game mode related to this called Remix has recently been introduced to the beta, which allows almost any level (campaign, extra and demo) to be played with almost any combination of colony creatures that make sense. When I say make sense, I mean in the way that there’d be no point trying to beat 2.1 Rising Tide as leafcutter ants given the lack of foliage on that level.
Something a bit weird going on here...
This has proven to be a little tricky since it introduces a bunch of extra considerations, but we’re getting there. Campaign levels played in this way will be apart from a saved run, and played in a standalone fashion similar to extra levels now. This mode also follows the same technical limitations as custom colonies in custom games do.
New Freeplay Maps
Two new freeplay maps are also currently undergoing testing - Grasslands, and Drive Them Back (custom game version). In both of these, there are 8 colony entrances on the surface of which four can be in play in a single game. If playing as a termite colony, you’ll start in one of the 4 termite mounds. Otherwise, you’ll be in a regular nest entrance. This can be overwritten via a checkbox and any colony can occupy a termite mound - I guess you moved into an old one!
The Grasslands of the savannah beckon
In the case of Drive Them Back (custom game version), we’re responding to a long-requested feature of making custom game versions of the campaign levels. While they can’t have the complex scripting that goes on in a story mission, some of the campaign levels are quite suited to custom games from a layout point of view. Please let us know what you think about how Drive Them Back (custom game version) plays, and if the response is positive we may well make custom game versions of other campaign maps in the future.
Tier 5 Achievements
All of the tier 5 achievements are now active in the optional beta, as are ones for the tier 4 challenge mode (with the six-spotted fishing spider). Although we tried to get these ready in time for 1.0 back in June, we wouldn’t have been able to get many of them in so we thought it was best to wait until we had a full set of ‘chieves worthy of your time.
One or two issues with these have been identified now thanks to the testing (again - thank you) so we’re working on getting those fixed up before the patch gets a wider release.
Art Refresh
Although it won’t make it in this side of the new year, the art refresh of tier 3 is continuing and we’ve been extremely happy with the results. Our environment artist DanC was a little sad when he realised that whip spiders aren’t actually spiders and spin no silk of any kind - but we think you’ll agree he’s found a nice alternative in this twisted knot of plant roots act as Big Whippy’s lair in 3.2.
A lair fit for a legend!
Festive Spider
We realise it’s a bit late this year, but if you’re in the optional beta you’ll be able to access the Festive Spider level by clicking on the gift that appears in the main menu! As always, the Hungry Spider levels are deviously difficult and come with their own special achievement for completing them. Expect multiple repeats for this ARPG-like game mode. When we leave the current optional beta and set the patch live for everyone, this will of course be available in the live build.
GameDeveloper.com Article
A few weeks ago, community manager Mike wrote a long “postmortem” style article for GameDeveloper.com that goes over the entire history of Empires of the Undergrowth as a project, from initial ideas and inception to final release. This will be good reading for anyone who has an interest in how a project like EotU grew from an initial frustration with the contemporary offerings at that time, to becoming very much its own thing with an almost accidental discovery of the game’s most unique features.
New Game - Strange Seed!
For those who don’t know - while the only game that Slug Disco develops is Empires of the Undergrowth, we act as a publisher for a number of other indie developers making nature-inspired games. That means that while we don’t work on those projects directly, we help out with marketing and other promotion.
A new project has just joined our publishing ranks - Strange Seed! In this evolution game, you begin as a very basic blob - but have the ability to acquire traits. To solve puzzles and progress, you’ll need to take on traits from things that you eat - as the trailer shows, for example, acquiring a shell to become heavy enough to push open a door.
So, welcome Strange Seed to the Slug Disco publishing portfolio! And of course, welcome Chris of Chronicle Games (the developer). Check out the above trailer and find the game’s demo - we think you’ll be as utterly charmed by it as we were. Join its Discord while you're at it!
Company News - New Hires
For anyone who’s interested in our company goings-on, please welcome Ethan and Kartik, who have joined Slug Disco as C++ developers. They’ll be helping us out with Empires of the Undergrowth, and a variety of other stuff as well. We’re also near the end of the process of hiring a dedicated creature artist, for similar reasons. 2025 will be full of developmental goodness!
Screenshot Central
Always my favourite part of these newsletters - if you’d like to be included in the future, the easiest way to get these to me is to join our Discord and post in the dedicated screenshot channel. To get some interesting angles, hold shift while pressing the photo mode button to uncouple the camera from the ground plane.
A topical Festive Spider shot from ArmyAntGaming
A fishing spider blocks the way of the fire ants from Zvistic
Cinematic driver ants from Medin
The End of Launch Year
Finally, in this last newsletter before 2025 arrives, thank you from the very bottom of our hearts for being here for Empire of the Undergrowth’s full release. We’re not exaggerating even slightly when we say that we’re nothing without your support, and you’ve stuck with us through nearly 7 years of early access. We are far, FAR from done with EotU - and there will soon be an updated roadmap detailing our intended path through 2025 and beyond. See you there!