Time for another update to the currently-running optional beta! We've been following your feedback both here on Steam and on our Discord[discord.com] - which has been super active recently with the new content. Come and join us!

For any Windows users who haven't joined this beta yet and would like to, the instructions on how to do so are near the top of the previous post. The beta is not available on Mac.

• Team colours for colony creatures can now be toggled on or off from the menu

  • Find it in Menu > Settings > Other

• When not playing as leafcutters in Chowder, leafcutter plants will disappear on level load

• When playing Chowder as leafcutters, enemy corpses will now disappear quickly

• Leafcutters now get starting food matching other species in Chowder

• Added a confirmation to make sure you actually want to restart a level

• Reduced the free camera rotation speed when in keyboard & mouse mode

• Minor improvement tooltips now appear much quicker

• Changes to demo level Surrounded to bring it in line with other levels

• Demo levels now use the updated scoreboard; retiring old one

• Fixed incorrect Royal Guard model being used for big-headed ants and little black ants

• Fixed wood ant melee and ranged soldiers using the same skin

• Fixed eastern newt missing its swimming animation when traversing water

• Fixed sand lizard missing some of its hitboxes

• Fixed the "l" in "Sand lizard" being capitalised in huge creature health bar

• Fixed juvenile shore crabs having a huge creature health bar

• Fixed driver ant workers having an incorrect tile colour

• Fixed exploding ant minor soldier using the major as its icon

• Fixed driver ant worker using an incorrect icon

• Fixed driver ant workers doing nest jobs in Tug of War 3

• Fixed colony creatures sometimes getting stuck after being thrown by an enemy

• Fixed some dialogue box issues for controllers

• Fixed several controller navigation issues

• Fixed poppy plants having untextured bases & leaves

• Fixed lighting changes when using free camera rotation in 1.2 Subjugation

• Fixed Matabele brood chambers for the rotting log environment in demo levels

• Fixed some untextured decoration in Drive Them Back (custom game version)

• Fixed longer level named being truncated in the level selection menu

• Fixed longer unit names exceeding the width of the minor improvements menu

• Fixed overlapping text issue on post-game scoreboard

We have (finally!) released our optional beta for the Beach Brawl update for everyone. Thank you so much to everyone who has been testing this out! We’ve been gathering mountains of feedback and working through the list of issues that have cropped up. 

Ants swarming a shore crab in this shot from AntBZK on our Discord[discord.com]

The beta will be around for a little while yet, so now seems a good time to pause for just a moment to look over our plans for the rest of 2026 and update our roadmap - which we do every six months or so. We’ll then talk about the implications that the Beach Brawl update has for DLC plans.

It’s been great to see such an enthusiastic uptake for the Beach Brawl Update’s beta. The vast majority of the feedback has been posted on our Discord[discord.com] and our Bilibili channel[space.bilibili.com] - thank you for that; it keeps things neat and makes sure I don’t have to juggle too many sources! If you prefer and are able, you can also leave feedback on the Steam discussions bug report board - just leave a comment that your feedback is to do with the optional beta.

I’ve been cataloguing issues common and rare, and the dev team has been working through them at a steady but impressive rate. The plan is to make one or two more patches to address the feedback before we release it to everyone soon.

Invading juvenile crabs in this action shot from Frazzz

For those of you who haven’t joined the beta yet and would like to (please note: for now, it is only available for Windows users on Steam) check out this post for details. If you know how Steam betas work and just want a password - it’s beachbrawlbeta.

Let’s go over the new stuff that is arriving with the Beach Brawl Update - and then discuss the implications that this release has for the plans for DLC in the near term.

The sand lizard (Lacerta agilis) lives in several different biomes in much of mainland Europe. The bright, lime green patterning of the males is unmistakable. It feeds on a wide variety of invertebrates - mainly beetles, spiders and flies - but as an opportunistic predator it will take what it can find. In the case of Empires of the Undergrowth, that means ants and termites are on the menu!

A sand lizard patrols its territory

As a huge-class creature, this lizard operates in a certain part of the map, or on a patrol route in the case of Causeway’s skirmish mode. It represents the second reptile we have in the game, joining the rainbow lizard from the fifth tier of the campaign. 

The sand lizards meets its fifth tier counterpart from Skinnybouffant on Steam

The shore crab (Carcinus maenas), also known as the green crab, is a common species of true crab that is found around much of the coastal areas of northern Europe, and is invasive to several other parts of the world. It feeds on worms, molluscs and carrion - and likes to bury itself in the sand at low tide, which is when they are most often encountered out in the wild.

A shore crab surveys the scene

In Empires of the Undergrowth, the crab makes its most dramatic appearance as another huge creature in Chowder (more on that later) and custom games. Like all huge creatures, it acts as area denial for a section of the map and will require a certain level of damage to take it out all at once - it heals quickly when it is buried in the ground.

The red claw tips indicate that the crab is about to have a tantrum - it'd be wise to vacate the area fast! From Nurgles rot on our Discord[discord.com]Its abilities include a powerful “Tantrum”, in which case it rears up then repeatedly smashes the ground with its front claws, dealing heavy damage to anything in front of it. Keep an eye out for its claw tips beginning to glow - this is the clear indicator that it is about to get very grumpy; it’d be wise to move your creatures out of the way!

Don't talk to me or my son ever again

The shore crab also has a juvenile variant, which is still a relatively large creature but a much softer target than the big one. These can be selected as regular spawns in custom games.

A causeway stretches between two areas of higher land, inaccessible to the creatures of this shallow area that is heavily flooded by the tide. Lizards, crabs and other denizens of the beach reside here, representing a roadblock to the dominance of your colony. They must be subdued.

Causeway

Causeway is the first custom game map that can support up to six colonies - that’s five computer-controlled colonies and the player’s one. It’s designed for a 3v3 battle, although like all custom game maps it can be played in any configuration you prefer.

I personally feel that Causeway is the best custom game map we’ve done - it’s very large, symmetrical, and beautifully decorated. We’ve had a lot of fun designing it and we’re looking forward to seeing all of the weird and wonderful freeplay combinations that you folks play it with.

Based on Causeway, Chowder is a uniquely goopy-looking level: I hope you like your seafood stew! In this variant of Causeway, the northern part of the map is occupied by a huge shore crab, nestled between the remains of a sardine that dominates the decoration there. 

The north of Chowder

The objective of the level is to take out the shore crab, but things aren’t quite so straightforward here - waves of smaller crabs will attack you at regular intervals, and sand lizards guard important resources to the east and west. Careful planning and considered growth will be needed to take on the challenges and reach the final goal of killing the overlord in one final attack.

Rumours of the crabs congregating to celebrate their dominance over the colony with some sort of ritual dance are unfounded.

Outside of the new content, by far the largest and most obvious change in this update will be to the user interface. Almost every element of the UI has been entirely redesigned or reworked in some way - from the menus, to the level selection and the in-game panels.

We’ve worked for a long time and consulted some very experienced and knowledgeable people about updating the UI to give a more logical layout in menus and a smoother, more natural-feeling experience in the game. We’ve returned to some of the earthier colour palettes that the game used to have in its pre-release alpha phase, a long time ago before we even had a store page! Things feel warmer and slightly more characterful, while also being a little slighter and more streamlined than the previous version.

We are well aware that deep changes like these are usually a little irksome to begin with (after all, people like what they know, and change is always slightly painful) but we promise you: once you’ve gotten used to the new UI it’ll feel more responsive and natural than the old one did. 

Alongside the new UI is a complete rework of how the game interacts with controllers / gamepads - every menu and game system now takes these into account and works with them natively, rather than relying on a thumb-controlled cursor as with the previous setup on Steam. 

With the beta currently running, now would be a great time for anyone playing on a handheld (in particular the Steam Deck) or using a gamepad to give everything a spin - with everything being very much designed with these in mind now, we’re hoping the experience is now an actively enjoyable one instead of a compromise. 

During the first round of testing for the Beach Brawl beta, some of you may have noticed some errant critters appearing on a “+” tab in the spawner - oops! Those are creatures that will make an appearance in a future DLC, and despite us putting in a bunch of effort to make sure DLC stuff didn’t filter down into the beta release we screwed up here. Ah well, worse things have happened.

I said in the most recent vlog that the imminent release of the Beach Brawl Update had some implications for DLC in the near future, and now that this newsletter has come around it’s time to discuss those fully.

In the previous roadmap, it was stated that we were aiming for a Q1-2 release for our next DLC. However, it has become increasingly clear that there are some extra things we want to do with this DLC, as well as finding ourselves being less keen than we thought on making another small-scale release as we did previously.
The Beach Brawl update represents new content that is very nearly ready to go - and it made perfect sense to us to give that content out for everyone to enjoy, rather than hold it back for a reworked DLC later on. It’s nearly ready now - it’s being tested; it’s for everyone.

In discussing things internally, we found ourselves wanting to work on something much bigger and more well-rounded. So, our previous DLC plans have been reorganised into a grander one which we hope to release later in the year - in essence, we’ll be combining both of the \[REDACTED] DLC stops on the old roadmap into one bigger one. As is always the case with the roadmap, everything in it is subject to change and this is a perfect example of that happening.

In the reworked timeline, the new, bigger DLC will be marked for release between Q3 this year and Q1 of next year. We will be aiming towards the start of this wide time frame, of course, but such things are unpredictable. Annoyingly for me, this does mean a return to my old phrase of “I can’t tell you what it’s about yet”, but that is my frustration to deal with. Again, as soon as the powers that be let me tell you about it, I will.

This makes a convenient segue to the updated roadmap. It is time to refresh it, this time using the soon-to-be-released Chowder as a backdrop to it.

The March 2026 roadmap - click to zoom

The simplification of things has led to a slightly less cluttered roadmap than before. Let’s go through each stage of it, to quickly discuss what it means.

This one is self-explanatory, but it’s first on the roadmap because we expect it to graduate from the beta test in very short order. Once again, thank you so much to everyone who is helping with the test, and also to everyone who is waiting patiently for it!

We go through 3 distinct phases with testing - internal alpha, our closed focus group, then an optional beta. Although each of these tests gets significantly bigger than the previous one, it is inevitable that there will still be things that we didn’t catch throughout the testing period once we get things out to everyone, and so there is some time set aside for fixes and changes after the fact.

I’d hazard a guess at these coming a few weeks to a month or two post-release of the Beach Brawl update, depending on how much stuff we find ourselves having to fix.

We’ve been working with our publishers Hooded Horse to get Empires of the Undergrowth’s soundtrack up on all the major music streaming services for some time now, and we’re just about ready to go. As long as everything goes smoothly you’ll soon be about to stream 4.1’s action music while on your fourth set at the gym, or listen to 1.2’s plucked strings as you spring clean cobwebs from your living room.

This stop on the roadmap has become a wildcard, and that means that although we don’t have any more specific extra levels scheduled for release right at this moment, that could well change for a variety of reasons. 

Perhaps a dev sits upright in the middle of the night, struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration and spends the small hours crafting it, or perhaps some extended period of time between updates warrants a little extra something to chew on in the meantime. In either case, if extra levels happen they are likely to arrive with little or no prior notice.

There are several things on the list for custom games that we’re slowly getting round to - several tweaks to the AI, balances to food amounts, and a couple of quality of life changes in the menus. As the game’s content grows this also adds extra things to consider in custom games, and so later in the year (before stage 6, or concurrent with it) we will be reviewing feedback for custom games in general.

This is the “combined” DLC mentioned earlier in the newsletter - as it became clear to us that the one tentatively planned to be released in the first half of this year would work better when combined with work for what was a later DLC. We’ve been generous to ourselves with the estimated timing in the new newsletter - from Q3 this year to Q1 of next, but as mentioned above we do hope to not have to use the extreme far end of that window. Sooner or later, time will tell. 

Whenever I get to this part of the newsletter I go and make myself a fresh coffee, safe in the knowledge that I get to spend the next half an hour looking over cool and creative screenshots from the community. If you’d like to submit a screenshot for a future edition of the newsletter, the easiest way to do so is to drop it in the appropriate section of our Discord[discord.com] - or post of the Steam community tab, which I will also peruse on occasion.
Tip - to uncouple the camera from the floor and get some more interesting angles, hold shift while entering photo mode (F9 by default). You’ll be much less restricted this way.

On the hunt for termites with a fresh coat of war paint from Dino dude on Discord

A shore crab charing up its tantrum from AnEnclaveSoldier on Discord

The Ritual from o7wxp™ on Discord

Thank you for all the excellent feedback over the last few days for the Beach Brawl beta! Our Discord[discord.com] has been a hive of activity over the last few days, and I've been working late into the night to log all the reports and reply to all you lovely people.

For any Windows users who haven't joined this beta yet and would like to, the instructions on how to do so are near the top of the previous post.

Here's the first round of changes & fixes for it. Thank you as well to everyone who immediately noticed our, ahem, tiny little mistake in the Battle Arena.

Thank you to Nurgles rot on the Discord for the screenshot used on the cover of this post!

• Huge shore crab in Chowder given more health on all difficulties, and a lot more health on Impossible

• Huge shore crab in custom games given nearly double the health (15,000 up from 8,000)

• Sand lizard in Chowder given more health on all difficulties, and a lot more health on hard and upwards

• Sand lizard in custom games given nearly double the health (6,000 up from 3,200)

• Driver ant workers can now be added to custom colonies

  • These things are going to be very OP in custom colonies, but we suspect that'll be part of the fun

• Better controller integration for the Festive Spider event level

• It is now possible (but rare) for the huge shore crab to die during its Tantrum ultimate ability

  • Mostly relevant in the Battle Arena; it is still technically invulnerable during its ult

• Changes to creature spawning in the Battle Arena

• Increased size of some radial menu text

• Reduced speed and intensity of the lighting effects for the secret crab dance

• Added a new icon for the young termite queen in the Battle Arena

• Pressing escape in the new pause menu will now exit it

• All event levels will now appear for the remainder of this beta for easy testing

  • Feedback for gamepads on the spider levels would be greatly appreciated!

• Fixed the game crashing whenever slave maker ants appear

• Fixed the game crashing when exiting the story mode mission selection menu

• Fixed custom game saves going missing when one is deleted in some circumstances

• Fixed an issue preventing attack waves in 2.2 Queen of the Hill

• Fixed juvenile shore crabs being unclimbable

• Fixed a custom game crash that occurred when only larger creatures were enabled

• Fixes for bullfrog hitbox / attack points

• Fixed some minor improvements being purchasable before the species was obtained

• Fixed termite colonies spawning with closed-off chambers in custom games

• Fixed some narrations not taking more than four colonies into account

• Fixed 2.2's Within Reach achievement spamming failure notices

• Fixed a teensy snafu in the creature spawner

• Fixed great blue skimmer not engaging with the fight

• Fixed exploding ants, exploding termites & trapjaws only spawning at level 1

• Rearrange some wolf spiders in the creature spawner for clarification

• Fixed some creatures missing rank stripes

• Huge shore crabs will no longer swim through the earth

• Fixed the eastern newt missing its textures and materials

• Fixed exploding termite workers missing team colours

• Fixed wood ant soldiers and workers using the same skin

• Fixed bullet ants not having team colours

• Fixed some old icons appearing in the pheromone panel

• Queen abilities are now shown with the correct upgrade rank in the Adaptations menu

• Termite nest lids can now appear on all 6 nests in Causeway

• Fixed some inspect tool tooltips not using the correct UI format

• Fixed some colony number colours being excessively dark in the minimap

• Fixed the scientist's hand icon having a white square on it

• Fixed various missing textures and similar issues in Grasslands

• Fixed custom game map options being disabled in some circumstances

• Fixed some dialogue issues in custom game menus

• Fixed some creature information not appearing

• Fixed some texture issues in Causeway / Chowder

• Prevented event levels from being selected during loading

• Fixed context menus for The Real Final Experiment

• Fixed ghostly driftwood haunting Causeway

• Fixed a particularly stretched texture to the west of 3.1 The Harvest

• Fixed UI cursor not appearing correctly

• Reworked some UI scaling to prevent buttons being inaccessible at higher settings

• Fixed issues with Hungarian translations in custom games and achievements

• Fixed Chinese languages not being centre justified in the language menu

• Removed a translation from Russian localisation to make sure Causeway can be played

  • For now this means one map will be untranslated in Russian; this will be picked by by the translators in the next pass

It's been a long time coming, but it's time to test out the Beach Brawl update! The beta is available on Windows (not Mac at this time), and we'd love to hear your feedback on the changes made.

The largest and most obvious change is to the game's user interface, which has been completely reworked in almost all aspects to update it, make it more logically functional and make it friendlier for gamepad / controller play.

Speaking of which - playing the game with controllers is now better than it ever has been, with new UI elements designed with them in mind. A new radial menu will be in play when using a gamepad. If you're playing on a Steam Deck or with any sort of gamepad, we'd love to hear about your experience using it.

Also, we have two new maps! Custom game enjoyers should get stuck into Causeway as soon as possible - it's a brand new map that can support 5 computer-controlled colonies, so it's perfect for a 3v3. There are also five new uber creatures from the fifth tier of the game. Causeway - Chowder is a special extra level based on its layout with the objective of taking out the huge shore crab.

That's a perfect segue to the final part of the new content - we have two new creatures! The shore crab and sand lizard will be taking up huge creature landmarks in custom games.

If you would like to join the beta, the code is beachbrawlbeta. If you don’t know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:

Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"

1. Choose the "Game Versions & Betas" tab

2. In the box titled "Private versions", enter beachbrawlbeta

3. After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "optionalbeta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu

4. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch.

• Causeway: a new beach-themed custom game map for skirmish & freeplay supporting up to 6 colonies!

• Two new critters to inhabit it, plus variations!

  • European shore crab (Carcinus maenas)

  • Sand lizard (Lacerta agilis)

• New extra level based on Causeway - Chowder!

  • The causeway is home to many crabs, and in particular one very large individual. Build up your forces to take down the huge shore crab before burrowing crabs at night overwhelm your nest!

• Complete redesign of user interface across the game

• All menus reworked & reorganised with a new styling

• Reworked campaign mission launcher is now descending rather than ascending,

• Icons redesigned with improved resolution

• Radial menu added with controllers in mind

• Improved visibility and readability should help with handhelds & TVs

• Added savannah uber creatures:

  • Uber giant centipede

  • Uber alligatorback scorpion

  • Uber rainbow lizard

  • Uber huntsman spider

  • Uber sun spider

• Updated artwork and/or animations for the following creatures:

  • American bullfrog

  • Whip spider

  • Eastern newt juvenile

  • Emperor scorpion

  • Alligatorback scorpion

  • Spiny devil bush cricket

  • Checkered beetle

  • Great blue skimmer (wings)

  • Dragantula (wings)

• Huge creatures can now be enabled or disabled in custom game setup to control what spawns at their landmarks

• New creatures added to Battle Arena

• Added military-style rank stripes in Battle Arena spawner to show creature size

• Added a walk animation to the great blue skimmer (for Battle Arena purposes)

• Added team stripes to colony creatures that were missing them

• Updated victory & defeat dioramas for colonies with updated artwork

• Updated water plane material for a more controllable look

• Fixes to leafcuttter minor tile appearance

• Overhaul of the way dithering works for foliage / terrain visibility dissolve

• Tiles marked for excavation now use a pulsing colour (the old striped pattern can be restored from the “Other” section of the settings menu)

• Changes to custom game launching to configure up to 6 colonies on supported maps (only the new Causeway supports this thus far)

• Added hotkeys to jump to colonies 5 & 6 (currently relevant only in Causeway)

• Termites from landmarks will now spoil on death

• Icons for the DLCs added to the main menu

• Text size increased in several places for readability

• Changes to the spline creature system to accommodate new & updated artwork

• Added option for gamepad with trackpad to support controllers which have a trackpad attached

• Added an option for displaying advanded tile information

  • Defaults to off

  • Causes numbers from contributing tiles to be hidden by default

• Added an option to unlock the camera from 90 degree rotational increments

  • If enabled, the camera will be free-rotating and can be returned to default with another bindable button

• Fixed large underground creatures destroying tiles at the edge of the play area

• Woodworm, woodlouse & earwig nymphs now spawn much less frequently in custom games

• Queens in 1.x levels are now immune for the duration of victory sequences

• Main menu now has a brief camera animation on load & a button press to begin

• Significant optimisations to textures & materials across the game

• Ensured the newer sapling models appear on freeplay maps & landmarks

• Fixed cursor drift when using keyboard to move the camera

• Various spelling & grammar corrections

• Fixed small plant vegetation dissolve

• Driver ant soldier ability now mentions movement speed increase

• "The Savannah" title now displays correctly on its loading screen

• Lignocellulise information will no longer display on storage tile tooltip if the play is using exploding termites

• Vacuum in The Real FInal Experiment now uses newer ant models

• Numerous other small fixes

Empires of the Undergrowth is now 70% off as part of the Hooded Horse Spring Sale.

Command an ant colony and wage strategic battles in the insect kingdom. This ant-based RTS challenges you to build, defend, and expand your colony, using unique pheromone-based strategies and powerful warrior ants to overcome formidable foes.

Hooded Horse Spring Sale[store.steampowered.com]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/https://store.steampowered.com/app/3402420/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth__Exploding_Ants/

Empires of the Undergrowth is now 70% off as part of the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale.

Command an ant colony and wage strategic battles in the insect kingdom. This ant-based RTS challenges you to build, defend, and expand your colony, using unique pheromone-based strategies and powerful warrior ants to overcome formidable foes.

Hooded Horse Publisher Sale[store.steampowered.com]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3402420/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth__Exploding_Ants/

Time for some info about the next maps and monsters to come to Empires of the Undergrowth!

Community manager Mike goes over the changes to the user interface, controller support, and the additions of two new maps and two new critters that will be available to preview in an optional beta for the game, very soon.

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.

Me when I realised I've still been writing 5 at the end of my dates a month into 2026

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, X[www.x.com], Bluesky[bsky.app], Discord[discord.com]).

An emperor scorpion awakes, ready for a night of hunting in the savannah

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!

You should touch that lantern, trust

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.

It’s the Year of the Horse! This statue changes each year to fit the Chinese zodiac animal of the year.

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.

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.

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!

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[discord.com]. 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.

The new radial menu for controllers - don’t worry KB&M users; you won’t be forced to use it!

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!

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[discord.com] 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.

A green lynx spider waits for prey in a pitcher plant lid from danialol

This termite queen is feeling festive from Dino Dude

A frog escaping a terrible fate from tibikee

Empires of the Undergrowth is now 70% off as part of the Hooded Horse January Publisher Sale.

Command an ant colony and wage strategic battles in the insect kingdom. This ant-based RTS challenges you to build, defend, and expand your colony, using unique pheromone-based strategies and powerful warrior ants to overcome formidable foes.

Hooded Horse January Publisher Sale[store.steampowered.com]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/https://store.steampowered.com/app/3402420/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth__Exploding_Ants/