Perhaps it is best to stay hidden in the safety of the nest until dawn comes – as it always will, heralding a new day and new opportunities. Many are more active after dark, meaning more danger for the colonies that live here. Day / Night CycleĪs the sun sets and day becomes night, the shadows lengthen and the creatures of the Undergrowth stir. A Formica fusca (black ant) colony rises from its humble beginnings. We had to ask him to double its length and make it a video rather than a GIF because we thought it was so good. This short cinematic view of the rise of a colony was made by John. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been progress – there has, some of it really beautiful to look at – so let’s crack on. If Empires of the Undergrowth were a piece of Ikea furniture we’d now be at the point where it’s basically assembled, but in tightening one bolt you realize another one needs more work, then that you’ve put a piece in the wrong way round, then another loosens – and boy do we have a lot of bolts to tighten! There’s an adage that more seasoned developers than us are very familiar with – the last 10% takes the longest, and we now understand that. Still, we refuse to rush it through and give you something unworthy of your time.
To talk realistically about release dates – if everything goes as planned (and honestly that hasn’t been the trend recently) we’re talking closer to the end of this month for closed beta. That said, development continues more intensely than ever. We’ve opened our big optimistic gobs too soon and are a bit annoyed at ourselves for that. We’re not the first developers to do so and we won’t be the last, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating for everyone involved. A recent internal audit of the work left to do to get the game to beta stage revealed that we’re likely several weeks out in short we’ve underestimated. We’re not making excuses, and we’re going to try to be as transparent as we can be. It’s now autumn / fall 2017, no matter how you spin it, but there’s no point looking backwards. To get the obvious out of the way – as predicted in our last newsletter, we haven’t hit the target we set ourselves of summer 2017.
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