Empires of the Undergrowth (PC)

Empires of the Undergrowth is a real-time strategy and colony management game developed by Slug Disco, published by Hooded Horse, where you control an ant colony from the ground up - literally. You excavate tunnels, designate chambers for specific functions like nurseries and food storage, manage worker and soldier castes, and send your armies above ground to fight rival insects. The core loop is tighter than it sounds: underground construction is methodical and almost puzzle-like, while surface combat kicks into a genuinely frantic gear when you're repelling waves of beetles, rival ants, or other arthropod threats. It sits comfortably at the intersection of base-builder and real-time tactics, borrowing from both without fully committing to either genre's worst habits. For a strategy player who cares about decision-making depth, the colony management layer delivers. Nest layout matters. Placing food chambers too far from your queen's chamber slows larval growth; cramped tunnel networks bottleneck your workers during raids. Different ant species available across scenarios come with distinct unit rosters and ability profiles - some lean on acid-spraying workers, others on heavily armored soldiers - so there's genuine build variety baked into the campaign structure rather than bolted on as an afterthought. The pheromone command system, which lets you direct worker traffic and order unit formations, rewards players willing to micromanage without punishing those who just let the colony run on instinct. Now, about the learning curve - and this is worth addressing directly. The tutorial campaign introduces mechanics in a staged, sensible order, tying each new system to a specific species and scenario. You're not dropped into a grand-strategy fog-of-war on day one. A complete newcomer to RTS games can follow the campaign's hand-holding through the first few species without feeling insulted, while veteran players will find the training wheels come off firmly by the mid-campaign scenarios. The AI difficulty in combat scenarios scales reasonably, and the enemy insect behaviors feel distinct enough that you actually need to adapt strategy rather than just spam the strongest unit type. Where does it fall short? The late-game campaign content, while solid, leaves some players wanting more scenario variety and sandbox freedom. A true sandbox or skirmish mode with full customization options is something the community has been vocal about. The mod ecosystem exists but is relatively young compared to genre heavyweights, so if you're banking on years of community content keeping the game alive indefinitely, temper expectations slightly. Surface-level visuals are impressive for the subject matter - watching hundreds of individually animated ants stream through tunnels you carved is genuinely satisfying - but the UI can feel cluttered when juggling multiple simultaneous raids and construction priorities at once. For the strategy player who finds Tropico too shallow and Dwarf Fortress too impenetrable, this sits at a very comfortable middle difficulty. The 94% positive rating from close to 18,000 Steam reviewers reflects a game that shipped in a clean state and kept improving through updates. It's the kind of title you load up for a single scenario and look up an hour later to find you've optimized your tunnel network for the third time and forgotten to eat dinner.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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