Freeplay Mode
The first thing that we will be getting out now, after many requests and also ourselves getting antsy to work on it, is freeplay mode. Freeplay will be a much slower-paced, longer-form game mode where your colony will grow slower, taking on increasing threats in a saveable environment similar to the formicarium but separate from it.
It'll have a surface, a variety of starting options (including which species of ant you wish to play as, or if you want to import the properties of your formicarium colonies) and over time it'll be added to with new creatures, artwork, level options and balance changes. The nature of this mode means that it can receive updates much more frequently than the formicarium story mode.
It's John's baby, and he's really keen to get working on it as soon as he can (for now we're still dealing with bug reports and fallout from the early access launch). He hopes that it'll be much more of a community project than the formicarium mode, and he'll be doing live streams that you can join in, watch him do some development, and suggest things / ask questions. These may well be irregular at first, but in the new year it's likely these could well become scheduled and regular.
As far as time scale goes - we really want to get this fast-evolving game mode out into the wild sooner rather than later, and we'll be getting our closed beta testers on it as soon as we can. In a basic form, we may be able to get to that stage within a few weeks. After some closed testing (but highly unlikely to be as long as the early access beta period was), we'll get it out to all of you guys. The thought of watching your colonies grow over a longer time period delights us.
New Levels
In the next stage of formicarium mode (3.1, 3.2 and Formicarium Challenge 3), we want to introduce some new ants. In real life, leaf cutter ants form long trails to gather cuttings from the surrounding foliage, which they take to underground chambers. Here, a fungus grows from the decaying plant matter which is very nutritious and provides the colony with much of its sustenance. We have some ideas for introducing this mechanic to the game and some great community suggestions. The mechanics tend to evolve as we develop them, so we can't realistically talk about their final form just yet. But you know where we're headed!
Time scales are more difficult for this - there's a lot that needs to be prepared for a full-fledged level (as well as the design, there's a ton of custom scripting, artwork, music, and voice acting that needs to be written and recorded). Whilst John does regular updates for freeplay mode, you can realistically expect the next set of levels to be a few months into the new year. Again, as we all know from past experience, to put exact dates on things like this is fatal - issues crop up, have to be overcome, and things change. I think practically every developer working on an ambitious project has experienced this, and we've had plenty of these issues already!
