IT’S FINALLY HERE!
Empires of the Undergrowth’s version 1.0 is now released, featuring the Matabele ants as the final focal species of the game, as well as the termites in a co-starring role. The whole campaign is now playable start to finish, along with all of its challenge modes and a greatly expanded custom game offering. But we’re not finished yet.
Please enjoy the launch trailer!
The major changes as well as the significant improvements and quality of life alterations are detailed below, but this release is much too big to fit everything into a reasonably-sized post! After the changes, read on to see our updated roadmap, showing where we intend to take the game now it has reached version 1.0.
Headline Features
Main Game Modes
- The story of Empires of the Undergrowth reaches a cataclysmic conclusion, now playable in its entirety with a fully narrated documentary-style campaign inspired by real world scenarios, and shocking challenges in an adjacent sci-fi setting
- Battle for survival in the wild, then bring the spoils of war back to your formicarium and unlock ugradeable ant species to meet the challenges set by the evil scientist
- Play endlessly customisable missions in skirmishes and freeplay games against environmental creatures, AI colonies, or both!
- Take on the Arcade with a multitude of inventive extra levels, both nature-inspired and more fanciful, and the Battle Arena to watch the chaos unfold
- The campaign is repeatable with end-game rewards and New Game Plus
Final Campaign Tier 5
- Enter the heat of the African savannah with the Matabele ants
- Obligate termite eaters, they must raid nearby nests as their only long-term viable food source
- Mighty titans of the undergrowth threaten the very existence of the Matabeles at night
- Driver ants and African stink ants give fierce competition to the Matabele ants
- The Matabele will nurse their wounded back to health - a near-unique trait among invertebrates
- Play a special campaign level as the termites!
- Play a scenario as one of 3 termite colonies under threat of the Matabele, stink ants and other hungry predators
- Farm for fungus by collecting decaying plant matter from the surface, but beware the midday sun!
- Return to the formicarium for the REAL final experiment, where the plans of the scientist are finally laid bare and the ultimate battle must be won
- Beat the campaign to add the end-game reward of mighty bullet ants to your colony, as well as several other units!
- Take your enhanced colony into custom games, or repeat your colony’s journey with tougher challenges in New Game Plus - but this time you can take your formicarium upgrades into the mission with you!
New Challenge Modes
- Take on the fire ant missions with an added twist; the six-spotted fishing spider has joined the fray, causing havoc at pontoon construction sites
- The sinister assassin bugs prowl the savannah in the Matabele ant missions, taking victims and disguising themselves with the dead bodies of their prey
Custom Games
- Matabele ants and termites are now selectable as separate colonies in custom games!
- Matabele colonies must search out termites to eat
- Termite colonies must find patches of lignocellulose to grow into fungus
- New savannah creatures will now spawn in custom games when activated - take on alligator back scorpions, earwigs, centipedes and more!
New Extra Level - Tug of War 3
- Tug of War 3: battle with new units, including the enormous bullet ants and Matabele, in this continuation of the tug-of-war style of extra levels we’ve added previously
Other Major Changes
- New main menu, loading screens and buttons
- Expanded arachnophobia mode (you can just have the hat to be visible)
- Increased rewards across the board for first-time level playthroughs
- New music in 5.1 & 5.2, as well as in the final formicarium
- New Battle Arena (surface) and new options for creatures
- New decorations and underground looks for the formicariums
Quality of Life Changes
- New Inspect tool (right-side of the pheromone panel) to show creature stats; stats will also now show in tooltips
- Clearer display of challenge mode and its rewards
- Important notifications should now be more obvious
- Numerous small quality of life changes
Fixes
- Fixed an issue preventing fire ant’s ‘Last Stand’ ability from triggering
- Improvements applied to swamp and beach environments
- Several issues with minor improvements fixed
- Numerous small fixes
The Future
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we’re not done yet. A few days after release there will be a newsletter going through this more closely, but we wanted to put the post-1.0 roadmap out a little early with the launch, so people can see what the immediate plan for the months ahead is.
Now, off to the savannah with you! And if this is your first time playing Empires of the Undergrowth, welcome. If it’s been on your radar for a while, we hope it’s been worth the wait! It’d be odd not to get slightly emotional at the end of a huge project like this one, and indeed I'm close to bawling my eyes out writing this out now. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us through the years. We love you all, and we literally couldn’t have done it without you.
We’ll see you in the Undergrowth,
The Slug Disco Team