Trivia / Empires of the Undergrowth

• Nerf: Mission 3.2 was deemed too hard to beat in higher difficulty that the developers had to nerf it twice. The first nerf lowers mantises' stats and spawn rate, making the mission somewhat beatable to experienced players, even though it still required a lot of minor management. The second nerf, coming out one year later, lowers other creatures' spawn rate while increasing the number and level of army ants.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The story mode is about two scientists doing some tests with their newly developed gene thief colony. You play as other ant species in various missions to get resources for your gene thief colony in the formicarium. Originally, the game would only have one scientist observing the gene thief ants on migration in the wild, while they clash with the local ant species.
  • Antlions were originally considered as new enemies for the challenge mode in the beach missions. The developers have stated that creating models for their traps using hexagon grid is difficult while tiger beetle larvae's burrows are simpler.
  • Velvet worms were meant to be nocturnal enemies in the rainforest missions. Their complicated movements took a lot of time for the developers to work on. Then the change to the overall movement code pushed them to lower priority. The devs have indicated they'll be added back into the game after the release of fire ants and mission 4.x, since their movement profiles are shared with the salamanders and newts being introduced in those missions. Sure enouhg, they were finally added into the game in the "Adventure" update, which backported them into levels 3.x.
• Word of God:
  • There are plans for five different sets of missions, each focuses on one type of ants. The bullet ants won't be counted in this as they are meant to be kickstarter reward. There should be about 10 playable species, some only as gene thief units.
  • Army ants are confirmed to not be playable as a full-pledged species in freeplay mode because they don't have a normal nest system, while the game revolves around defending your unmovable queen. Slavemaker ants are unplayable either as their raiding lifestyle is difficult to implement into the game.
  • Formosan termites became a reward for donating 17500 euros during the Kickstarter campaign. They won over European wasps in vote number.
  • Bullet ants were another kickstarter reward. They were in a similar poll like the previously mentioned termites, with vampire ants as their opponents.
  • There is currently no plan to make wall rebuildable or make queen movable. It would really mess with the movement code which involves picking the shortest path from the queen. The first movement code update took them almost a year without many contents released, which worried many fans about the longevity of the game, so another change is not favorable.
  • Velvet worms weren't included in the original release of the 3.x missions because they required a new pathing system due to how long they are, which wasn't ready in time for the 3.x mission's release. This pathing system was finished in time for the 4.x missions (where they are applied to salamanders and newts), aand the velvet worms were added in during the subsequent "Adventure" update, backporting them into the 3.x missions.