Winter is… approaching. Since the last newsletter we’ve released what we’ve called the “interim update”, version 0.13 – interim meaning between Freeplay and the upcoming major update. That update introduced the planned challenge modes to the 2nd tier Formicarium levels, added a new level to Freeplay, addressed several issues, and included a spooky spider-based extra that you guys seemed to have a lot of fun with. In the meantime, the guys have also been working solidly on the next set of levels for the game, which of course will feature leafcutter ants. Let’s dive in and see how we’ve been doing!
Category Archives: Empires of the Undergrowth
August 2018 Newsletter
Greetings all! We hope you’ve enjoyed your summer. Time moves on relentlessly, and as we chug the first pumpkin spice latte of autumn we’ve made significant strides in the progress of the leafcutter levels as well as plenty of other exciting things. We’ve recorded with our voice artists Mary Jo, Eric and Callum (Scientist 1, Scientist 2 and Narrator respectively) for the next levels and we’re delighted with their work. Before we conclude our work on 3.1, 3.2 and Formicarium Challenge 3, there are some missing bits and pieces in the existing game that need finalising in preparation. Our current plan is to do an interim update between now and the leafcutter update, and that’s going to be fairly soon. Let’s get on to what that’ll include!
A lovely green Formica ereptor colony from jasong
June / July Newsletter 2018
Greetings everyone! This has been another one of those months where the general timings and various circumstances have meant we’ve not managed to get the newsletters done to the regular schedule – so enjoy this newsletter for both June and July! The biggest news since the last newsletter is obviously the release of Freeplay mode on the main branch. It’s been available for everyone for several weeks beforehand in beta form, so those of you who were most keen are likely to have been fairly familiar with it when it finally landed for everyone on 2nd July. We’ve also got some great progress to show you with our next Formicarium update – Leaf Cutters ants!
Freeplay Released!
May 2018 Newsletter
Good afternoon, morning and variations thereupon ladies and gentlemen. We’re back to the monthly newsletters after the dual one last time – we’re about to pick up pace on the news front! It’s very near the end of the transitory phase now – all three developers are full-time on the project from now on, and we’re finalising the plans for everything going forward. However, we do have to give a special mention to one of our team – John, our lead Freeplay developer, has been celebrating the arrival of his baby daughter. Congrats to him on the expansion of his colony!
March / April Newsletter 2018
Well met, one and all, for the March / April newsletter! As many of you know, a lot has happened since our last newsletter – the most important of which is the public release of the Freeplay beta. If you weren’t aware of that and would like to participate, there are details on how to do so in the rather extensive section below this arbitrary introduction. In fact, let’s end this arbitrary introduction and get straight to the best bit.
There are some pretty amazing Freeplay setups – like this one from Steam user Enablin
February 2018 Newsletter
Hi all – gosh, March already! Time flies when you’re having fun – and for that reason it certainly flies when you’re developing a game about ants. We’ve recently been assessing the way we tell you all about the future of the project, and we realize there’s a deep need for us to communicate better – as we posted in a mini-update a couple of weeks ago. Although we have been developing Empires of the Undergrowth for several years, we only launched on Steam in December and therefore we’re new to having a big community that we have responsibilities to. We want you guys to feel justifiably assured that things are progressing well (as they are) – and for this reason we’re going to be doing our best to communicate here. We’ve been doing these newsletters for some time – but this is the first time we’ve worked out that we can actually post them properly formatted to Steam, rather than just a link to elsewhere. Always learning.
Screenshot credit: Garenator on Steam
What We’re Up To – How EotU Is Coming Along
Hi ant fans! We’re increasingly hearing complaints that we’re not being communicative enough. We do our best – but we’re new to this, so we’re always learning. This isn’t going to be a full newsletter (that will likely come next week) but just a bit of a round-up of what we’re up to currently.
January 2018 Newsletter
January Coalescence
Aah, the heady mists of winter! As we put the plum pudding aside and wipe the final crumbs of mince pie from our ever-increasing chins, the fog has lifted and we’ve now had enough time to collect our thoughts and make our plans going forward. Levity aside, we’ve not been idle over the last few weeks – far from it. Matt has been making some fundamental changes to the game’s workings and John has been continuing on his Freeplay mode project – which we’ve done a lot of streaming for.
How we feel after Christmas – screenshot by Steam user Limey21
December 2017 Newsletter: A New Year
“As the sun rises over a new day, the tide recedes. The nocturnal creatures return to the shadows and once again, the harvest must continue.” – The Narrator
A new year dawns. It feels like Empires of the Undergrowth has been out for at least a decade now. It’s been just under six weeks! A very happy new year to all of you – let’s talk about our plans in the context of 2018 and how well the game has been doing. In short, it’s done way better than we’d dared to hope and given the small size of our team, that has some quite profound implications. On to it!
November Newsletter: The Launch Edition
It’s a little bit difficult to know where to start with this newsletter, given the massive kaleidoscope of experiences and emotions the last week has given us. Let’s just blurt out the immediately obvious stuff. The game launched on Steam. The game has been doing very well on Steam. The game has a very positive reaction on Steam.
To say that we’re grateful would be a comedic understatement. Whilst we’ve always been confident that we had a good idea when we went about designing Empires of the Undergrowth, we were never sure if other people would agree. I guess we should have picked up that other people thought so too when we had a successful Kickstarter, or when we had a bunch of YouTubers cover the game without us even asking, or when the demo was consistently in the top games of IndieDB, often topping it, and still is. But we’re a bit too thick apparently.
Enough of the humble bragging – the game is launched and it’s performing well. The most pressing question is what comes next? Well, we had a meeting.