SUPERVIVE Preview

During Steam's Next Fest period, I had the opportunity to try out the upcoming SUPERVIVE title, a battle-royale top-down shooter where you will be able to embark into the world either with a duo partner or with up to three other players in order to try to be the last one standing.

Battle royales as a genre have been slowly dwindling down. Whether it's burnout due to the sheer amounts of titles still in circulation or the monopoly that Fortnite still seems to somehow have, it's rare to see a new contender join the ranks. Despite possible burnout, Theorycraft Games decided to shoot their shot with SUPERVIVE.

Checking out the latest upcoming title, it's easy to recognise its art style and gameplay, which are similar to Battlerite Royale, Stunlock Studios' very same approach with their original IP, Battlerite (which is still going somehow!). Despite how initially unsuccessful the original release was (and how much of a saving grace the Royale variant was a while later), the latter is quickly dying off, while the former still stands with about a hundred concurrent players daily. SUPERVIVE is coming into an oxymoronic competitive and uncompetitive scene, where the battle royale genre is seeing fewer entries while still having genre standard behemoths block the path for newcomers, and Battlerite Royale is at a state that is begging for someone to scoop up its original release.

Its success, however, will likely depend entirely on the gameplay itself. Having tried it first-hand, SUPERVIVE gives you the opportunity to pick from 16 different hunters and queue up with one to three other players (as mentioned prior). Each round has a unique premise with different buffs, debuffs, or changes happening to keep the matches fresh, and you'll also experience a day-night cycle while you farm monster camps and equip your gear.

The drop leader will be able to decide where in the path the team will land, and once there, you'll want to take the opportunity to engage in PvE in order to gain levels. MOBA fans will then recognise the gameplay loop: defeat the creeps, gain experience, unlock levels, gain new abilities, gather gold, and skirmish with opponents. Though it remains relatively the same, the perma-death factor keeps you on your toes and makes encounters far more tense, as a respawn isn't promised out the other side of each battle.

Every character has six different abilities (though one of them is a passive). Your five castables are your auto attack (slotted to your left mouse button) and four abilities (each set to the right mouse button, Left Shift, Q, and R). Intuitively, Theorycraft Games keeps the abilities familiar within the buttons, as your movement skill will be slotted to the Left Shift button, meaning all you need to do is learn what each ability does, and your Ultimate will always be in R.

Calling myself a genre beginner would be a laughable understatement — having played very few battle royales, and even fewer so in this style, I'm still a newcomer to this all. Speaking on the balance of each of the 16 hunters would be lying, as there were some that felt particularly outstanding, but the fact of the matter is that in these sorts of games, it's usually a skill issue. Having played a fair few myself, I did find a discrepancy between the amount of power I had when playing Ghost or Shrike, both of which are long-range hunters who use guns (though Shrike's more of a sniper). Ultimately, it all would otherwise be irrelevant when accounting for the fact that every ability is a skill shot, meaning that you'll need to have good aim if you want to get the victory royale (or the W for the young'uns out there).

What I enjoyed about SUPERVIVE the most is the fact that it feels relatively active throughout most of the game. Having played Fortnite and been the coward that tries to avoid third-partying any encounter, it felt nice to have monster camps to try out your skills and familiarise yourself with the kit and combos. It's an enjoyable mixture of PvE and PvP, where encountering an opponent squad treaded the line between exhilarating and terrifying easily, and it was always straightforward to tell which were opponent abilities and what I should be dodging.

Truth be told, I think SUPERVIVE has a lot of potential. After having lost my first match, I quickly booted the game once more to try another one, and the characters I played all had quite drastically different gameplay styles that kept the matches unique. The skill-based nature of it, with the familiarity of overlay and buttons of standard MOBAs like League of Legends, kept me coming back until I got my first victory royale, and truth be told, I look forward to its release to try it a bit more with my wife and see if maybe this becomes a title we drop into every once in a while.

SUPERVIVE releases sometime in Q4 2024 in Early Access.