Optional Beta Available Now 0.22221* - Extra Levels for Testing

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
It’s time for an optional beta! This beta has some fixes for long-standing issues and, more excitingly, comes with 4 (!) new extra levels for testing and balance. Extra levels are fast to develop as most of them don't need extensive new systems and artwork; we can make one of these in just a few short hours but testing them for balance is another thing. They need some feedback!

We are looking for feedback on balance in the 4 new extra levels. You can leave them on our Discord, Steam forum, or right heere.

If you’d like to help out, we’d be very happy for you to give them a spin now! You’ll need to be a Windows 64 bit owner on Steam to join the beta.

PLEASE NOTE! Once the testing phase is over and this update goes live on the main branch, the new extra levels will be removed from the list again, and will reappear monthly after that (exact dates to be announced as the time approaches).

If you would like to join the beta, the code is givemeextraextra. If you don’t know how to join a beta and would like to, follow the instructions below:
  1. Find Empires of the Undergrowth in your Steam library, right-click on it and choose "Properties"
  2. Choose the "Betas" tab
  3. In the box titled "Enter beta access code to unlock private betas", enter givemeextraextra
  4. After the "Access code correct" information appears, make sure you've chosen "Open beta" from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into" drop-down menu
  5. Press close - the game will now update to the beta branch
0.2222 Patch Notes
  • New extra levels added to be rolled out monthly, but available in this beta for testing for a short time:
    • Occupation - a wood ant level not unlike the campaign level New Home
    • Cramped - a heavily infested leafcutter level with a surface, kill all enemies!
    • The Culling - a black ant level with interesting enemy spawning mechanics
    • Enemy of my Enemy - a unique game where digging is instant and done with the mouse; packs of enemies are hostile to each other. Get them to kill each other before they kill the queen!
  • Fixed an issue where non-aggressive buried enemies were heading to the queen when dug out
  • Fixed an issue where after a freeplay save one of the enemy colonies would become un-enterable
  • Fixed an issue where ubers were linked to the wrong freeplay setup check boxes
  • Fixed a pathing issue on The Crucible demo map
  • Minor optimisations in plant climbing
  • Changes to how AI colonies in freeplay decide which resources to harvest from
  • Cheating freeplay colonies can now resurrect more than one dead group at a time if they have no resources and their ants in groups are all dead
EDIT: Has been brought up to version 0.22221 with a small patch.

0.22221 Patch Notes

  • Fixed an issue preventing creature spawning and marker placement in Towhead
  • Removed a UE4 cone shape from Cramped that shouldn't be there
  • Removed campaign rewards and narration from The Culling ending
  • Reverted some changes to resource targeting that were causing issues
 
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HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
I don't know why, but after a few seconds with the game running and not having left the main menu yet, the game closed itself and started again... Weird? (Only happend after my 1st time launching 0.2222)
 

VarmintLP

Queen
Backer
Is it possible to stream this on Youtube or Twitch? Would propably help you more to see what exactly happened in case of bugs and glitches but I would rather have your approval for it than just go ahead and do it. I know some people want to keep their new projects a secret until the project is done or in an open beta state.
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
Is it possible to stream this on Youtube or Twitch? Would propably help you more to see what exactly happened in case of bugs and glitches but I would rather have your approval for it than just go ahead and do it. I know some people want to keep their new projects a secret until the project is done or in an open beta state.

Yeah feel free, if we want people not to stream or make videos we'll explicitly say that (that happens when we operate a closed beta for campaign level testing).
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Some feedback on the The Culling extra level and some (odd) things I encountered there:
* I noticed the creature pack positions can significantly impact difficulty. If you are lucky on day two, the hermit crab pack gathers on the south-west corner, which leads to a lot of travel time to the nest. If that group is ignored until it reaches the nest, it gives more than a minute of extra time for the player to do things.
* Choose colony rewards screen is shown upon level completion.
* Formicarium mission 2.2 victory narration and subtitles upon level completion.
* After a playthrough on normal difficulty and multiple failed attempts on insane (night 3), I think mission difficulty is higher compared to the already balanced levels.
 

VarmintLP

Queen
Backer
SO. I just finished a stream of 3 hours during which I tried to first figure out a good strat and later during my close to 2 hours round on what lies behind those big exclamation marks. I only encountered a small glitch / bug where I had a piece of food with 7 units lay in the outworld entrance of the nest and it was impossible for the ants to grab. The reason why I lost in the end of the last round I suppose was food. I had to build back my colony a lot and didn't manage to keep enough food for rebirthing available. It basically was impossible for me to get any more resources. It would help actually to find some leafs inside of the small chambers with insects to restock on food or to have either a second plant at the place of the wipespiders or one with more than 1,2k food units. I explained it a bit at the end of the stream. During the stream I talked a bit about how ants would actually think or handle the long paths. They would basically create shortcuts and it would be amazing to have one way spots to dig open to create shortcuts. For example you get to the crickets on the bottom right. If you beat them all just have a shortcut digging space so you can make the path shorter. Otherwise it will only create fake playtime by making the paths unnecessarily long. My 2 hours are proof of that basically. ^^

Anyway to watch the full stream you can go here.
It may not be fully processed and I only noticed short or close to the end of the stream that my mic may not have been picked up properly but that should be fixed now.

Will try to play the other levels as well.
 
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VarmintLP

Queen
Backer
Alright so I just finished playing the other 3 levels. I tried them all on Insane, which is pretty hard core to say the least. I finished one of them successfully and it felt slightly too easy. However there is always room for more.

Around 1:43:00 is when I finished one extra and left some feedback in case you don't want to watch the whole level.

For the other two extra's I didn't do a big feedback as the enemy of my enemy is slightly too crazy to add a lot of feedback and because I was only messing around to have some random goofy fun. :p

For Occupation: It is a hard start but if you get past that first initial encounter, then you are good to go, even on insane.

Also why insane? Well insane provides some kind of challenge while the other level difficulties would not show me enough challenge unless they were too difficult for me to get past a certain point where I would so, I have to lower the difficulty. However I am sure that except for enemy of my enemy I would have been able to beat them with ease on hard.

Now here is the whole stream for you to watch.

If you have an update that I should try or if they have been update and need another feedback, just let me know. It was fun doing some level testing and with some constructiv critic I can also improve my own feedback skills to give you guys a better feedback. At least if you think I should pay a bit more attention to certain aspects.
 
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