So You Wanna Be an Ant God? Empires Of The Undergrowth Says 'Hold My Nectar!'
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
Dive into *Empires Of The Undergrowth*, a brilliant strategy game that defies conventional design by letting you become the will of an ant colony, masterfully balancing deep mechanics with accessible fun, all while making you genuinely feel like an ant god. It’s a proper wizard's brew of clever design and engaging gameplay that tackles a famously difficult concept with surprising grace.
Right, so you know those dream game concepts? The ones that sound utterly brilliant on paper, like 'be a dragon' or 'run a theme park for actual aliens,' but then you try to make them, and it all just devolves into a messy pile of code and regret? Yeah, 'being an ant colony' has always been one of those for me. An absolute banger of an idea, but good bloody luck translating the chaotic, microscopic symphony of an ant nest into something playable and, dare I say, *fun* without either over-simplifying it into a clicker or making it an unmanageable simulation.
Well, apparently, Slug Disco didn't get the memo about 'good bloody luck.' Because I've been tinkering with *Empires Of The Undergrowth* all morning, and mate, they've not just done it; they’ve conjured a whole new reality where you actually *feel* like a god-tier formicid overlord. It's wilder than it first appeared, and frankly, I'm genuinely buzzing.
Now, for those of you who've been living under a rock (or perhaps, a very well-managed ant colony), *Empires Of The Undergrowth* (EOTU) throws you into the… well, the undergrowth. You’re not exactly a human general commanding pixelated ants; you *are* the colony's will. It's a cousin to *Dungeon Keeper* – you tag hexes, your workers dig them out, then you spend food to turn those freshly excavated spaces into nurseries or food storage. From these nurseries, larvae emerge, ready to become new ants or wait in the wings for an existing ant to, uh, kick the bucket. Bit morbid, but hey, circle of life and all that.
Here’s where it gets proper clever: you don't build or train ants directly. Forget your traditional RTS square-dragging and 'Ctrl+1 for my elite squad!' malarkey. You get five set control groups, plus a 'stay-at-home' crew. Your direct commands are limited to a simple 'go here' and a couple of toggles – ignore combat, ignore food. You *could* tell them 'do not climb up big threats and bite them on the arse,' but honestly, why on earth would you? The best bit is that ants from the same nursery are bound together. Build a nursery for 11 soldier ants, and those 11 are gal pals for life, through thick and thin (and many, many spider legs).
Nursery management is a masterclass in elegant design. They aren't discrete rooms, but rather contiguous hexes of the same caste. Spend food to upgrade a hex, and your ants get more effective. A third level requires level 2 neighbours, adding a delicious layer of strategic thinking. Early on, two basic foragers might outdo one super-efficient one. But later, a colony churning out low-level ants burns through food replacing losses far quicker than a higher-level colony. Which is better? Depends on the vibe, mate. It’s never a raw numerical calculation; it’s a feeling. You make decisions based on intuition, like a wizard reading digital tea leaves, deciding when to risk a surface venture at night based on a gut feeling that 'it is now time.'
This granularity lets you mix and match, building an elite guard or a pyramid ratio of castes. Some castes even get special abilities at third level, tempting you to go for a mass upgrade. The game doesn't want you to micromanage every ant; it wants you to set general patterns and direct things by moving nurseries in and out of control groups. You even need to consider travel time, laying down speed-bumping highway hexes like magical fast-travel nodes.
The campaign highlights this beautifully with the leafcutter ants. Their soldiers (mediae) are ace at harvesting leaves, which become fungal food. But their slower, cheaper workers, while carrying less, are essential for sheer numbers. Then you’ve got the 'majors' – super expensive, chunky lasses who absorb attacks while the smaller ants get on with the job. It’s a really interesting approximation of real-life ant behaviour, not unlike an immune system response, where different cells have different roles in the grand defence. It's about managing capacity, really. Attrition isn't just about numbers; it’s about whether your colony can replenish losses fast enough while still bringing home the bacon (or, you know, fungus).
What truly sells the experience is the presentation. A nature documentary-style narrator introduces threats with a dramatic flair that sucked me in way more than *Age of Empires 4*'s similar concept. And crucially, they say 'the ants must' or 'the ants have,' not 'you must' or 'your ants have.' You don't feel like a player; you *are* the ants. Clever underdogs, easy prey, menacing terror bastards all rolled into one. Even with a static queen, the animations give so much character to each scurrying little insect. Spiders feel like vile offences in the nest but weirdly tolerable lurking at the edge of your territory – not worth interrupting the flow of food, unlike weaker games where you’d just zerg everything in sight. This group-order vs. individual-behaviour design perfectly captures those recognisably 'anty' feelings, like a line of leafcutter minors struggling home with a wobbly leaf chunk, or a single ant getting picked off by a predator. It's all so motivating, far more than your usual jingoistic war story.
Now, some of the omissions might sound sacrilegious on paper. No in-level saves (though levels are typically under 45 minutes, so failure just means 'redesign your nest,' not 'rage quit'). No patrolling ants without prompting, no solo scouts, no moveable queen, no egg relocation. You don't harvest enemy ants or remove bodies. But these feel like intentional, smart decisions. They shift the focus from a granular simulation that would essentially run itself to a strategic challenge that puts the 'fun level concepts' front and centre. It's about a nest's fight for survival, not the minute details of ant husbandry.
Ultimately, *Empires Of The Undergrowth* expertly threads that incredibly fine needle between nerdly ant enthusiasm and a genuinely pacey, engaging strategy challenge. It’s like Slug Disco cast a spell to simplify complexity without losing any of the wonder, and bloody hell, it worked a bit too well. Fair dinkum, this is a cracker of a game.
*** *This article was repurposed from "Rally Point: The ants are willing to die for me in Empires Of The Undergrowth" by Sin Vega, originally published on Rock Paper Shotgun on September 5, 2025.*
Tags: strategy game, indie game, simulation, colony management, RTS
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun