Empires of the Undergrowth · published
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
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 and our Bilibili channel - 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
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 - 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