As is tradition for Empires of the Undergrowth, it has now exceeded six months since the last roadmap update, and so it is time for a new one. This newsletter will go over what the team has been working on recently, by taking a detailed look at the steps of the new roadmap.
A Myrmecia ereptor worker and her soldier guards from Dino Dude on our Discord
Outwardly, at least, the last few months of development seem to have focused on what might be considered fairly mundane things like texture optimisations and controller support - but these are important steps in themselves. Inwardly, though, we have been working solidly on our next DLC, as was spoken about in last month’s vlog (even though we can’t reveal the exact details of it just yet).
So, let’s start by posting up the lovely new roadmap for August of 2025 - based on Firebreak, one of the extra levels that came along with the Exploding Ant update in March, for a very distinct look to it - and then taking a look at each stop along its path.
For those of you who have joined us in the last few months and haven’t seen a roadmap update up until this point - welcome. The roadmap is a broad-strokes way of letting the community know what our goals are in the relatively near future, and those change quite often - hence the roadmap not being a static thing that stays the same forever. Here is the updated one for August 2025:
Let’s go over each step and discuss what it implies for the project, going forward. We’ll skip over the first step (the Exploding Ant update) since that is now in the past.
Two of our team members (Kartik & Ethan) have been, for quite some time now, dedicated to making Empires of the Undergrowth a truly great experience on controllers. Alongside this is a more general overhaul of the UI elements - almost every piece of UI-related artwork will be updated alongside the improved controller support. Radial menus will be introduced (but only when you are using a controller). I have asked the devs if I could show you a little preview of the revamped UI, but they’d rather get on with it than open it up to premature criticism just yet.
Early in the year, two new artists joined the team - Jack and Aron. They’ve already left their mark on the project with artwork changes to creatures, and they’re far from done. Aron has since specialised to be our technical artist (more on that in the next point) and Jack has been working through a list of artwork updates. Creatures that will be getting the upgrade treatment include the juvenile eastern newt, emperor scorpion, red velvet ant.
Unreal Engine 4, which EotU utilises, has many useful features such as texture streaming which are designed to make experiences better on older or lower-end hardware. If we’re being strictly honest, EotU has not been particularly well optimised to make the best use of such features - until now. The update that went out a few weeks ago included some of the earlier work on this, but more is to come - our technical artist Aron has been going through the game and making optimisation changes to much of the artwork.
The overall effect of this should be improved loading times and frame rates for people using older hardware, as well as more stable frame rates on the whole and more efficient VRAM usage. The days where I have to advise people experiencing problems to disable texture streaming entirely should soon be a thing of the past!
The ever-present wildcard which may or may not get used - extra levels can sometimes happen when one of our designers gets struck with sudden inspiration. Imagine, if you will, a designer waking up in the dead of night with a level-based EotU itch they just can’t scratch. That’s when you might get an extra level!
Custom games are so varied and changeable that I don’t think we’ll ever be done tweaking them, but there are some more tangible changes that will be coming to them. Our environment artist DanC has been working on updating the older art styles that persist in some of the maps to reflect the newer ones, and there are changes coming to balance, AI priorities and suchlike.
Oh, to be by the shoreline as the sun sets! Uber creatures from the 5th tier of the campaign are also due to make an appearance, finally - and I’ll spoil a couple of those now. Two of the ubers you’ll have the pleasure of meeting are the uber centipede, and the uber huntsman spider (apologies in advance).
Until official announcements are made there isn’t a whole lot I can say about this that I didn’t say in the vlog a few weeks back - it’s a DLC that has been in development for a couple of months now, it will be very different from the Exploding Ants DLC, and that’s about all I can say. Obviously we will be aiming for the earlier end of the prediction period, but with everything else that has to come to fruition at the same time it might be later than that. Keep your peepers peeled for news on this.
This is something that has been requested for a long time by a lot of people - including myself! Many a time have I been washing dishes and thought to myself, ‘oh golly gosh, I do sure wish I could stream the official soundtrack of Empires of the Undergrowth directly to this here device without jumping through silly hoops”. Well, my wishes, and the wishes of many other people, are soon to be answered. Speaking of silly hoops, there are some technical and legal issues to work through here so this update doesn’t have a specific decided date just yet - but as soon as you can stream the 4.1 action theme from Spotify, we’ll let everyone know straight away.
Over 200k views - someone must like this track!
This future update is in its early stages and therefore doesn’t have an estimated date, but beyond the currently in production stuff is a large update in the far future. Well, relatively far future as far as software development goes. There won’t be any more news on this until the current DLC has been released.
Forever my favourite part of writing newsletters - if you would like to submit a screenshot for consideration for Screenshot Saturday, the easiest way to do so is to join our Discord and post in the relevant channel there. Tip: if you’d like to take amazing cinematic screenies, hold down shift while pressing the screenshot button (F9 by default) to uncouple the camera from the floor.
A bullfrog enjoying a light snack from Punkleton - also used in the roadmap!
A whip spider popping a whole lot of termites from Orion (Dilphy) - also used in the roadmap!
Velvet conversations from tibikee