The battle royale genre has become an institution in the video game industry, with near-constant updates for titles like Epic Games’Fortnite, Activision’sCall of Duty: Warzone, and Respawn Entertainment’sApex Legendsfilling up many players' hard drives. Those fanbases continue to grow, withApex Legendshitting a concurrent player record after the launch of Season 9this month in-part thanks to the addition of a character with ties to its popularTitanfallseries. In the sea of these 3D games, Pixile Studios' top-down 2D titleSuper Animal Royaleis preparing to make a bigger name for itself.
While it never reached the same level of mainstream popularity asFortnite,Super Animal Royalehas been in development for nearly as long. Pixile’s co-founders Michael Silverwood and Chris Clogg began working on the game in October 2017 (about a month afterFortnite Battle Royalecame out), with a public Pre-Alpha build releasing in spring 2018 before its Steam Early Access launch that December. Its developer team, mechanics, and fandom has grown a lot in the two-and-a-half years since, and earlier this monthSuper Animal Royaleannounced its 1.0 update will bring it to consoles. Game Rant spoke to Silverwood about Version 1.0 and how it will set a foundation for future content.
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Silverwood and Clogg have been friends since they were three years old, both playing andmodding games likeWarcraft 3through high school before going to The University of British Columbia together in the late 2000s. Both received a computer science degree, with Silverwood double-majoring in business, and they made their first game together while in school:Stratosphere, a competitive tower defense game similar to a “real-time board game” built exclusively for iPad. While this was a critical success, Silverwood said it was a “mistake” to create an iPad-only game with an up-front $2 cost; something they couldn’t turn into a sustainable business.
In the years after they graduated, working in venture capital out of San Francisco while building apps and designing products for tech startups, Silverwood and Clogg prototyped a few new game ideas. They were toying with other strategy-type games in a top-down 2D perspective, as that “allowed us to do a lot as a small team,” but one idea that eventually stuck was seeing whether a battle royale would work in that dimension - inspired by a love ofearly entries likeH1Z1andPlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. After implementing a fog-of-war system where objects obscure a player’s line of sight to ensure there was similar suspense and danger as in 3D battle royales, Silverwood said they had something.
“We thought we love making games so we’ll make them either way, but withSuper Animal Royalewe did see an opportunity where we could both build something fun that people would like and want to play.”
This unique perspective was not the only waySuper Animal Royaleattempted to stand out from its contemporaries. The game features shorter match lengths “so you can win in about six minutes,” according to Silverwood, and uses an art style reminiscent of Flash animations the creators messed with in elementary school. Its subject matter, genetically-engineered Super Animals who are cute but “surprisingly angry and vicious,” creates a “silly juxtaposition” inspired byConker’s Bad Fur Dayor theHappy Tree Friendsweb series.
Super Animal Royalealso takes cues fromFortnite’s storytelling as a shared experience, with changes always taking place to reflect the world’s backstory and evolving narrative which players can discover via exploring. The approach has helped grow a dedicated audience on Discord especially, and Pixile Studios expanded to 11 members early on as the in-game map grew more dense and the amount of Super Animals increased from 50 to 345 - alongside other iterative changes during Early Access.
However, about a year ago Pixile decided to partner with publisher Modus Games rather than continue expanding its in-house team, that way its core members based in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia could keep their content pipeline while using Modus' internal development studio to create console ports. Version 1.0 is planned to release at an undetermined time in 2021, with one of its key features being cross-play matchmaking and cross-saves between PC, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Microsoft platforms. Before then,Super Animal Royalewill be available viaXbox Game Previewstarting June 1.
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“They have a program just like Steam Early Access where you can release early and get feedback. We’re going to do basically the same thing as on PC, putting it into Game Preview first to gather feedback. Then, once it arrives with Version 1.0, it’ll have all the console builds ready to go.”
A seasonal content system and paid “Animal Passes” were also introduced fairly recently; Season 0 beginning in November 2020. These will continue for the foreseeable future, with the next Animal Pass based around a “Beach Party” theme debuting on June 1. This will introducethemed items and cosmetics, including some based on the musical trailer released May 6 to announce Version 1.0, but it will also coincide with map updates such as a revamped shoreline using shallow water that players can wade through.
Silverwood said there are no “pay-to-win” features in the Animal Passes, they only add cosmetics or currency to buy more cosmetics.Super Animal Royalewill also be improving upon certain design systems from the seasonal passes in other battle royales, for exampleremoving the “Fear of Missing Out” factorwith an archive so players can always purchase or finish older passes once they cycle out. “We believe in it being healthier to play the game however much is a fun amount over time, rather than having that incentive to play so much at the end of a season.”
Similar to titles likeOverwatch, new game modesare also in the works as a near-term way Pixile wants to “shake things up.” Already the team has experimented using a 32v32 mode with an alternate capture-the-flag win condition, as well as a “Mystery” mode that randomly changed certain mechanics; for example turning bullets into bananas.
Overall, the plan is forSuper Animal Royaleto stake its own path. Silverwood feels it’s “healthy” for studios to make the best game they can without being too distracted by the competition, even if some of their work can be inspiring. Pixile would rather make something fun regardless of current trends, and the upcoming Version 1.0 is a “big moment for the game” setting its foundation to evolve going forward.
“It’s an interesting way the industry has shifted with this model of live-service games, where as long as players want to continue exploringSuper Animal Royale, we’re building the systems to add content for a long time to come,” Silverwood said.
Super Animal Royaleis available now in Early Access on PC, with an Xbox Game Preview release for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S coming June 1. Versions for Switch, PS4, and PS5 are in development.
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