Here's the path this ant sim took from mobile pitch to full-blown RTS on PC.
November 14, 2024
Game Developer Deep Dives are an ongoing series with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren’t really that simple at all.
Earlier installments cover topics such as how camera effects, sound FX, and VFX created a smooth and high octane movement system in Echo Point Nova, the technical process behind bringing The Cycle: Frontier to Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and how the developers at ROAR Games designed three distinct, overlapping game worlds within one cohesive narrative in Tenet of the Spark.
In this edition, Mike Connor, community manager at Slug Disco, gives a retrospective on the development of the single-player RTS title Empires of the Undergrowth.
Hi, I'm Mike Connor, community manager at Slug Disco. At the time of writing, it's been about five months since we released our first title, a single-player ant RTS called Empires of the Undergrowth. It had been in Early Access for a long time—from late 2017—and had been in some form of development going back to 2014.
In this article, I'll go over the broad history of the project and talk about some of the challenges—including developing and abandoning our own engine and coming up with something that made the game feel truly unique, as well as the pitfalls we tried to navigate (which mainly came from our own naivety). With varying degrees of success, our tiny team chipped away at our game while trying to keep a community informed and happy over a long development cycle.
Slug Disco Studios was formed by three college friends in 2014 in order to make Empires of the Undergrowth. It took on its first new employee in early 2017, a community manager. It has since expanded to include a dedicated environment artist, two additional coders, and a larger marketing team.
Empires of the Undergrowth is an RTS based in the world of ants, in which players excavate a subterranean nest to house their queen, raise her brood, and store food. This acts as the player's base. Overground, they collect resources, challenge enemy colonies, and deal with many threats from other creatures and the environment itself. It is set in a documentary style, with each real-life-inspired mission being narrated as if by voiceover for a TV documentary. Alongside this is a "mad scientist" sci-fi story where the player's persistent home colony of genetically modified ants battles against experiments thrown at it by an evil scientist.
It began as a mobile game with Dungeon Keeper-like underground mechanics and tug-of-war style overground gameplay. It's sometimes said (only semi-jokingly!) that the bitter disappointment of the now-defunct mobile version of Dungeon Keeper was the final kick up the arse needed to get the project started.
The trailer for the final species of ant added to the game with 1.0.
Over time, it has evolved far beyond that initial premise. It has very much become its own thing—with a pheromone-based control system with individual toggles for resource collection, fighting, and more. While the bones of its original inspiration are still clear to see, nothing else works quite like how Empires of the Undergrowth turned out to be as it found its footing.
Empires of the Undergrowth entered Early Access on December 1, 2017, and went to full release on June 7, 2024.
Empires of the Undergrowth was originally envisaged as a mobile game. Smartphones were relatively new when the idea was first being kicked about, before the current microtransaction and ad-heavy revenue model had fully established itself. In our adorable naivety, we were certain that people wouldn't mind paying outright for a well-made, quick-and-easy game that was free of such things.
At this point, the game was intended to be a tug-of-war where the player dug out and built tiles underground while an AI opponent did the same on the opposite side of an east-to-west map. Units would fight for areas of territory in waves, with only minimal control needed from the player.
A very early protype of the game, running on our proprietary engine.
Since we wanted lots of units and shadowing, it seemed logical to us to begin work on our own engine that would strip away a lot of what we considered the bloat of premade engines, and concentrate on the features needed for good performance on the mobile devices at the time. This continued for well over a year, while we struggled to find an audience for this undertaking.
It eventually became quite clear to us that the only chance we had of actually getting anyone apart from ourselves interested in the game was to move it to a more sensible platform: PC. Although it was a wrench to turn our backs on so much work for mobile, in the end, it was a blessing. It allowed the game to flourish far beyond its initial limited controls, and the bones of an actual RTS started to form. By posting on various forums and social media platforms, we noticed the first tangible public interest in the project.
Leaving the mobile concept behind brought up the possibility of a much more fully-featured game, and one single change by one of our devs brought this into stark contrast. Originally, the player would simply create jobs, and ants would come and do them autonomously. By adding a "call-to-arms," a single point placed on the map with a right-click that would bring all of the player's ants to that spot, the basis of what eventually became the control system was made.
It didn't take much of a leap of imagination from there to envisage the call-to-arms point as the end of a pheromone trail, which is what ants use to lay down and reinforce foraging paths in the real world. Over time, we realized that having multiple "pheromone markers" on a map and assigning ants to them would give the feeling of controlling a swarm spreading out in multiple directions—but it was missing something.
Colorful pheromone markers denote the end of a foraging trail. Image and caption via Slug Disco.
It didn't seem right to give the player outright control of individual ants since it was starting to feel like we were on the edge of something really rather special while still paying homage to our Dungeon Keeper-inspired roots. We've all seen ant trails, traveling in sensibly routed lines, back and forth as they carry forage back to their nests. We found that by having the ants travel back and forth, with the pheromone marker acting like the end of a trail and the queen its beginning, suddenly, this haphazard, awkward system sprung to life and started to feel like an ant colony. You weren't commanding units who would respond instantly over radio; you were making pheromone-based alterations to their behavior.
In this way, we eventually found the game's USP to be a set of systems that make the player feel as if they are making "suggestions" to the living, breathing superorganism that is an ant colony, eschewing the traditional drag-box-and-right-click that most RTS games employ. Taking it a step further, if the responsiveness of the trails is tuned just right, the player can get a sense that they're taking the role of the 'hive mind' of the colony; the emergent gestalt entity that is the sum of many tiny decisions made by hundreds of individuals.
At this point, the game was still being made in our proprietary engine. In hindsight, this was because of the sunk cost fallacy—we'd already thrown away a huge amount of research and optimization when we dropped the mobile idea, and clinging to the remains of the engine was definitely out of sentiment rather than logic.
In late 2015, we decided to attempt a Kickstarter campaign to get the word out, using footage recorded in this engine. While it was functional for most of what we wanted to do, it was not easy to work with and did not look particularly great.
A trailer to go along with the first Kickstarter attempt
The Kickstarter was not successful, reaching only £8,438 of its £15,000 goal. People liked the Attenborough-style voiceover and the clear documentary slant we were aiming for, but this wasn't enough to get most people to bite. While the simplistic graphics were likely part of the reason for this, there were two far larger ones.
The first is overambition. Our first Kickstarter was replete with stretch goals, unrealistic expectations, and clearly getting far ahead of ourselves. These were not made out of deliberate exaggeration, but with that overambitious optimism that comes with being entirely new to something much more complex than you can really appreciate. Serious backers can spot this a mile off.
The second one was that we had no working prototype or demo. It's difficult to ask members of the public to trust in first-time game developers who can't at least show that their idea is sound in principle, has a fun game loop, and has the potential to end up being worth the early investment.
Since we had gained some momentum online and the word had gotten out more (even with the failed Kickstarter), we knew that we should strike while the iron was hot and try again in as short an order as possible. If we were to do better the second time around, we would have to address both of the major points mentioned above.
We felt we needed to get a working demo out reasonably quickly at this point. Reeling things in a bit, with heavy heart, we said goodbye to our in-house engine. We looked at several options, and in the end, there were only two choices that made sense to us: Unity and Unreal Engine 4. After extensive testing, Unreal Engine 4 was chosen due to its flexibility, great out-of-the-box graphics, and C++ implementation (the team was very familiar with C++, and the original engine was written in it).
An early shot of the game in Unreal Engine 4, a huge upgrade from our own engine. Image and caption via Slug Disco.
It wasn't long before a demo was written, and even using the original assets from the custom engine, it looked much better right off the bat. A music track was written for the demo, which helped to add atmosphere and establish the tone of this subterranean world. Swallowing the instinctive pride that led us to try to make our own engine completely from scratch was a learning experience.
The earliest versions of this demo are still available for download on IndieDB.
With a demo now collecting feedback and even getting some dedicated videos by content creators on YouTube, the time was right for a second Kickstarter. We reeled in our goal to £10,000 and set much more modest stretch goals—things that were definitely achievable.
Instead of offering lofty but unrealistic things such as whole separate campaigns, multiplayer modes, and fully-featured level editors, we instead had them offering single creatures to the game from a limited selection, which was also useful for us in whittling down the choices between the many millions of insect species we could have chosen from.
The combination of being more realistic about the ambition of the project and having a working demo that clearly showed the game loop, as well as a feel for its setting, meant that this time, the campaign not only succeeded but achieved 180% of its asking goal.
Suddenly, we found ourselves with a lot of people eager for our game and quickly tried to organize that with a discussion forum. That worked to some extent, but with such a small team of three, it became clear that the owners would need to spend almost all of their time on the project doing development work, leaving little room for community management and other marketing tasks. While everyone was involved with everything (and still is to some extent), a dedicated community manager was the logical first hire.
The decision to bring on a community person towards the start of 2017 was the correct one, as the number one important thing with an Early Access title is to keep people well informed of what is going on. Updates to the demo helped a lot with that, but things like newsletters could become much more detailed, and having someone to quickly respond to technical support questions and create and reply to social media posts gave the community the confidence that their investment was not going to waste.
At the beginning of December 2017, roughly 18 months after the successful Kickstarter campaign, Empires of the Undergrowth entered Early Access on Steam. Other platforms followed later. At this point, the game's story mode had been divided into five "tiers", each representing a completed and polished package of content. Early Access launched with the first two of these five ready to play.
In this way, large updates would be few and far between; the remaining major updates came out in April 2019, June 2022 and June 2024 respectively. There were many smaller but still significant updates inbetween, such as a freeplay or custom game mode, a battle arena for testing army compositions, and several extra levels that were apart from the campaign story.
Some of the very early feedback we got from paying members of the public was that the game was in good shape for an initial Early Access release, and this influenced our philosophy going forward. An older school of thought with Early Access was to release little and often, but we weren't so sure. With our small team size, making completed packages took at least a day for one of our devs (and often quite a bit more if there were errors to work through), which was costly. Making packages for all system demographics (Win x64, Win x86, Mac, Linux) was only really justifiable for larger updates.
While it was clear that some players were happy to report bugs (pun always intended) and provide detailed feedback, the majority of early adopters were expecting a polished product that grows over time. This meant that major releases would come slowly, but would also mean they would generally be better received than smaller iterative ones. Giant leaps, rather than small steps.
Thankfully, there are, of course, tools that allow experimental features and balances to be tested by people who were keen to do so, and optional beta tests became a valuable tool. We were lucky enough to get very detailed and well-thought-out feedback from a lot of people, and some of these became an integral part of our community.
Shortly before the second of our major tier releases in 2022 (the "Fire Ant Update") we gathered some of the best together into a focus group, which to this day provides initial feedback for releases, usually before they go out to anyone else. Hold on to your best community members and look after them.
Image via Slug Disco.
Empires of the Undergrowth spent just over six and a half years in Early Access. This is far longer than we intended and, indeed, far longer than anyone expected. The early hiring of a community manager was crucial in ensuring this could happen. Their focus was often on reassuring people that things were happening (a common complaint for titles that update rarely or infrequently)—it is not fair to expect people to do more than a cursory search when asking if a game is dead. Several approaches were taken to conclude that search with a positive result:
Honesty: first and foremost, people appreciate developers who understand their own limitations. For example, when asked why we didn't have release dates or ETAs for certain updates, the truthful answer of "We suck at guessing when we'll be done" was often the best approach
Frequent engagement: although it is often advisable not to be too active on discussion boards (and certainly not to get into arguments), showing a presence in answering queries and helping with technical issues is very beneficial. For those who want to talk more in-depth, Discord is ideal
Formal news: progress newsletters were infrequently made before a dedicated community person was hired, but with them, concentrating on it, these could be regular and far more detailed. Later in the development cycle, a similarly regular vlog was also made as a visual counterpart to newsletters for those who dislike a lot of reading
Roadmaps: even when they change a lot, having an up-to-date roadmap goes a long way to reassuring a potential buyer of the immediate future. We updated ours every six months and continue to do so
Positive response to feedback: the temptation is often to get defensive, but having someone who can be somewhat impartial to feedback, even harsh or seemingly unfair, and process it in a more digestible way for devs is valuable
Extras: we developed semi-regular extra levels during particularly long stretches of the dev cycle. These almost always used existing assets and were more stripped down, taking only a few hours to develop as opposed to months for a full campaign mission
Surprises: although we were usually open in the broad strokes of what was coming next, we occasionally dropped complete surprises on the community, which were always well received. For example, the arrival of the 'Adventure' extra level without an announced date and the fact that players could play as termites in the final tier
The game left Early Access and went to v1.0 in June 2024, with the final tier of the campaign story (the "Matabele Ant Update"). We had acquired a publishing partner, Hooded Horse, a little over a year before full release—we'd been self-published up until that point. They certainly helped us feel that the release was going to be suitably grand after such a long time.
The launch trailer, made by our friends at Hooded Horse.
As of the time of writing, Empires of the Undergrowth has sold in excess of 450,000 copies during its lifetime.
"It's hard to say what I would have done differently as what happened ultimately lead to the creation of a game I am extremely proud of", says developer John. "It is extremely hard to finish a game, sticking to it for that much of your life and stopping yourself from being pulled onto other exciting projects you keep thinking of. You lose the ability to tell if your game is even fun anymore."
"However I am not proud of its back-end structure and organization, we would never really have had an idea of what works in project organization and coding standards without making the mistakes in the first place. I would probably have spent more time making smaller projects and getting used to dealing with the code base, then restarted with the lessons learned for our full ant-based vision. That said, that is basically what we will be doing now—we just took the long way around to get there!"
One big, massive elephant in the room here, from a technical point of view, is multiplayer. "Without a doubt, I would plan for multiplayer early on," says Matt, the engine specialist on the team, when also asked about what he'd do if starting again. "I always envisaged multiplayer as being a part of it, and despite all the advice that was even about back then, we still kicked the can down the road expecting to get it running at some point."
In a complete redo of the project, the groundwork for multiplayer would have been established very early on and the rest of the game would be built around that. In the end, the promised story mode had to take precedence and now it is highly unlikely that we can justify multiplayer for this project—but thankfully, Empires of the Undergrowth will not be our only project.
Thank you for reading the not-so-short history of Empires of the Undergrowth!
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