It’s time for the first newsletter of 2026. We’d like to offer a warm welcome to everyone who’s joined us recently in the Steam and Hooded Horse sales over the holiday period, and introduce you to how we do our newsletters and vlogs! These newsletters come out roughly bi-monthly, with a vlog in the intervening months. The idea here is to cover everyone’s personal preference for how they get their EotU news delivered – everything that is covered in one will be covered in the other, with some overlap for new things.

The team is now at the end of a long process to complete a large overhaul for the game’s user interface, as well as for improvements and optimisations to much of the game’s artwork. There’s a very strong possibility of an optional beta being run in the near future to allow wider testing of these extensive changes before we roll them out to all users. More on that a little later on, but keep an eye open for news on that shortly – here, and on our social media (YouTube, Xitter, Bluesky, Discord).

The time of posting this newsletter (28th of January) is an opportunity to introduce our new players to our seasonal levels, as it marks 2026’s appearance of the New Year’s Feast event. So, let’s begin our newsletter, and our Year of the Horse, with that!

New Year’s Feast – Event Level

If you boot up EotU at any time over the next few weeks, you will notice a colourful lantern has appeared on the main menu. Like all of our event levels, selecting the new thing will do something fun. Clicking on it will bring you to New Year’s Feast, our special Lunar New Year which this year celebrates the Year of the Horse.

The level features a unique soundtrack (which is also included in the supporter pack), and has some special narration in Chinese to fit the theme.

New Year’s Feast is one of our more whimsical levels, giving you control of a unique colony of fire ants as they prepare their hotpot feast for their new year’s celebrations. You must send your ants to gather the spices in the ingredients list – returning them to the queen will activate a temporary buff that affects your units in various ways. A little extra spicy pep in your step for a short time, if you like.

As you continue your foraging activities, you’ll encounter other ants in perilous situations that can be rescued and brought home, unlocking that species for building as well.

The level features explosive firecrackers that can be found in various spots – ants will automatically pick them up if gathering is active, and their fuse will light when approaching enemies. Firecrackers cause heavy damage to enemies and send them flying, as well as damaging otherwise invulnerable rock walls underground which, with some creative planning, could open up otherwise inaccessible pathways.

!!! SPOILERS FOR LEVEL END !!!

Finally, the level ends on a special encounter with the legendary Nian beast. Enjoy my best Attenborough impression in this video about it (my best, not the best) and always remember: any resemblance to a newt in a costume is entirely coincidental.

!!! END SPOILERS !!!

There are several event levels and modes in EotU – also active at the moment is the Festive Spider level, which can be accessed by selecting the gift instead of the lantern. When there’s a full moon, try the cobweb for the Hungry Spider. Around April, things may well get explosive!

Upcoming Beta Test

The long road to the UI overhaul and reassembling the project in the aftermath is now coming to a close – the focus group testers are currently giving bug reports and feedback on this and have been for a couple of weeks now. We’re just due a localisation pass and then we’ll be able to get an optional beta out to everyone.

For those of you who haven’t taken part in an optional beta before – when the time comes, we’ll post on Steam about it and there will be a code to enter to unlock it. This will activate a special branch of the project, and once your game has updated you’ll notice the difference immediately.

With this particular beta, we will be looking for feedback about issues with the new UI changes (which are game-wide) and therefore any reports will be appreciated for any issue in any part of the game – post them in the Steam discussions, or join us on our lively Discord server. Plenty of levels in EotU have unique UI elements that are made just for them, and with our closed testing group being small there are bound to be issues that haven’t been found yet.

We will also be looking for feedback from anyone who prefers to play the game with a controller, and perhaps on a handheld device like a Steam Deck – the control systems for gamepads and handhelds have been completely updated, and better controller support was one of the main motivations for the UI overhaul.

That said, no-one who joins in an optional beta is at all obliged to post feedback, and everyone is welcome to try it out with the understanding that there may well still be some wrinkles to iron out before everything’s good to go.

There may well be a couple of extra goodies thrown in to play with when the beta arrives – so keep an eye out for news!

Screenshot Central

If you’d like to submit a screenshot for this section of the newsletter for a future edition of it, the simplest way is to join our Discord and then just put your best screenies up on the relevant channel. Alternatively, post on the Steam Community and I’ll also check that out every once in a while.

Pro tip: to uncouple the camera from the floor and get some much neater angles on your shots, hold down shift while pressing the photo mode key (F9 by default).

This month, all three Screenshot Central pictures came from the Discord.