Empires of the Undergrowth
Review
A modern RTS worth your time
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
A modern RTS worth your time.
It seems there’s a relatively common refrain in the modern RTS community: the days of good real-time strategy games have passed. Many have tried, and even come with a fair bit of hype, but few have failed to "stick" for any number of reasons. Empires of the Undergrowth has as good a shot as any of them to make a real impact on the genre, but it requires an open mind to its mechanics, and a little bit of patience to get to the meat of the experience.
Command Ant Colonies
Bug-based strategy games aren't unheard of, but they're rare enough to be notable, considering it is a perfect playground. Empires of the Undergrowth takes this very simple concept and churns out something fascinating. For starters, and potentially most obviously, the typical "command centre" of your ant colony is the queen. She sits stationary in your base, and is the one thing you must protect above all else. It is a parallel that not only makes sense, from a real-life-logic standpoint, and in execution adds to the personality and story to your efforts.
Branching out from this central point takes both a bit of excavation and strategic "base" planning, as other classic RTS elements come into play. You're underground, but that doesn't mean you're safe. The map is dotted around you with icons that represent a number of areas of interest: most importantly food and unknown hostile critters. You'll command your army to cut out paths in the dirt to create a network of tunnels that allows them to move further into the fog of war and ferry the spoils back to the queen, hoping that when the enemy markers are revealed that you’re prepared for the ensuing battle.
An Endless Trail Of Ants
As you gain food for the colony, you must plan and build out your base structures in the cutout terrain: places to store excess food, spawn points for additional ants. Each location takes just one hex on the grid, and there's no risk of blocking a path or needing to allow "space" for a "barracks" or something similar, but you'll need to be cognizant of how many spaces you've got set aside for each requirement as your army grows rapidly. It is a simple yet engaging balance that gets more demanding as your experience with the game grows.
While executing this loop you'll be organizing your soldiers and workers into groups, and commanding entire groups at a time, there's no individual control here. Selecting a location with a pheromone marker will signal all the ants in your selected group to path to that point. Outside that they're relatively autonomous. Likewise, any ants in the "colony" group will frantically gather food from identified resource pools and build up egg nests to hatch replacement units.
Unit creation is pretty unique in the genre as well: each tile holds a single egg, and comes with a food cost to cultivate the piece of the ground. When the ant that hatches from that is alive, a new egg forms and waits. When you're in a peaceful exploration mode, your colony will be littered with these prepared grounds, fully formed eggs, and busy bodies expanding and maintaining. And when an ant inevitably dies, another small chunk of your food reserves is expended to hatch its replacement directly from the corresponding egg. An efficient and somewhat chaotic colony structure in Empires of the Undergrowth will echo a real life version: a seemingly endless stream of ants running around working and fighting and feeding.
Observing The Colony
So much of this happens in the game's campaign in a formicarium (read: ant farm), and that's where things get fascinating. There is a story here, and it is primarily focused on experiments being conducted by a few scientists above the heads of your darling ants. It is unexpected, but ends up being a joy, as this story is ridiculous, but written and acted so well it's difficult to not be charmed when the voice-overs propel it forward. I was moved forward in large part because I wanted to see where these story threads went, and the conclusion is absolutely ludicrous in a way I appreciated, given the vibe of the game, though I can see it dividing people.
This ant farm also acts as a sort of hub for your missions in this campaign. It's where you implement base expansion and upgrades to your forces, but the discrete missions are where the challenges and progression really come from. It is a unique structure that I quite enjoyed, just know that each mission starts your forces anew (keeping your upgrades), and the base you are building at the farm is its own, separate thing. This dynamic relationship between the two halves feels refreshing, and at times like a true revolution in the genre.
These missions allow Empires of the Undergrowth to provide a large variety of settings, challenges (including other entire colonies and boss enemies), win conditions, and character, as you'll find a fair amount of narration by an observing scientist. It's just so charming, making the game the most engaging nature documentary I've ever seen. It’s thrilling to watch two streams of ants collide in a war of attrition or seeing your friendlies pile into and around a giant (to them) scorpion or similar, made even better by a well-acted character.
Deep Into The Nest
Unit depth nearly rivals both mechanics and upgrades. At face value, an army made entirely of ants sounds quite dull, but in practice, and with some liberties taken from their real-world counterparts, ranks are satisfactorily varied. While a lot of them deserve to be discovered, the full release of Empires of the Undergrowth features a dozen or more different ants and even termites to add to your roster. Even if a few different units feel too similar in the outset, upgrades can truly differentiate most of them from one another, and having synergy in your various groups can really help you succeed.
Just as varied are the opponents you will face. Spiders, dragonflies, frogs, crabs, oh my! Empires of the Undergrowth is full of surprises, and it is hard not to appreciate throwing little ant bodies at all of them until they fall. And that's just the curated story mode offering.
Expanding Your Network
This lede has been buried (I'm sorry) by the fact that the underground gameplay is sufficiently unique to command attention, but most of your maps feature a dual layer approach: an exit that takes you above ground. This small-but-impactful fact is a strategy delight, allowing you to manage your home base operations soloed off ever so slightly from your offensive ones. I found myself taking a significant amount of time setting my markers, waiting for my forces to dance back and forth between objectives, and just watching the green and red dots on both mini maps doing their thing. Like the ants of nature, it's a beautiful thing.
When you're finished with the story mode, there's a litany of other modes to spend an exorbitant amount of time in. Extra missions, a selection of, well, extra missions that offer even more gameplay variety. Free play, which is akin to the skirmish modes of the genre. And, of course, Battle Arena, a playground where you can spawn a bunch of critters to fight it out. It's safe to say that if you like the strategy of Empires of the Undergrowth, there's plenty to do.
Ants Rise Up
Empires of the Undergrowth is not a perfect RTS game, but it's about as close as you can get. With the multiple layers of gameplay and strategy packaged up in this charming and thoughtful box (or formicarium), no two matches or missions feel quite the same, giving you more reasons to return. A modern RTS effort should absolutely incentivize reasons to play the game, ways to discover and implement new things, and avoid the pitfalls of monetization, and that's exactly what we have here. There are moments when things don't feel entirely in your control, and there are times when understanding the minutiae of which side is winning a particular battle can be murky due to the clipping and overlapping bodies vying for position, but they're balanced out by how small-scale those problems are. Like a few bugs in the garden, you really have to pick nits to classify them as problematic. In a genre as diverse, contentious, and beloved as this, I think there are elements here for just about anyone, if they're willing to give it the chance, because Empires of the Undergrowth is a real-deal classic RTS modernized.
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9.5
fun score
Pros
An incredible level of depth in gameplay and strategy, combined with a charismatic story package and worthwhile tertiary modes.
Cons
A few graphical and pathing glitches, and the story resolution can be hit-or-miss
