Two days ago, SUPERVIVE transitioned out of Beta, and now that the game has been globally launched, it’s a good time to take a look at the current state of the game with its v1.0 release and new features.
Those who are living under a rock, SUPERVIVE is the first game from Theorycraft Games, a studio formed by some of the prominent former developers from Riot Games. You can see Riot’s influence really when it comes to a lot of the artistic designs of the “Hunters,” the playable characters in this game. It’s a meld of Anime, League of Legends, and a bit of Modern Western Comic book aesthetic, as seen in titles like Marvel Rivals.
Not only visually, but you can see the MOBA genes at work here with the ability kits and progression systems as well. In some ways, it feels like people who were limited by Riot’s design culture probably ended up at Theorycraft, and you can see a lot of innovations in both Battleroyale and MOBA genres here.
Can SUPERVIVE Live up to Expectations?
This recent release wasn’t just about launching in China and getting out of early access, but they also dropped some significant updates with this 1.0 update, so let’s kinda tackle some of the things they released for those who already tried out the game back in Alpha and maybe weren’t sold on the idea yet.
- Armory – A Meta-progression system where you collect playstyle-altering gear, theorycraft builds, and bring your game-breaking arsenal into every match.
- Map Changes – Changes to the map with more aerial traversal, with the inclusion of a new vehicle known as Skyshark, and gliders now have infinite fuel.
- Solo Play – Transition into 3-player teams instead of 4-player teams, and this emphasizes stronger solo play value in teams.
- New Hunters – The First new character being added in this patch is Wukong, and two others are planned to launch this month as well.
- Much More – A Lot of quality of life changes in matchmaking, addition of warm-up mode, new client and UI for the game, among other things.
While I did play Alpha back in 2024, I can’t say I remember much of my experience, as it was quite limited. One thing I can say for certain, however, is that Framerate, Latency, and overall smoothness of movements and animations seemed overall improved from my last experience, and of course, I saw that the UI had undergone some massive changes too.
There has been some criticism from the community regarding the armory, but I would argue that everything related to it can be fixed and adjusted. It’s hard to say how long that will take, and do the new players have issues with this system, or is that more of the Old guard crying in public?
Progression Systems are Important
I don’t want to say that SUPERVIVE is a spiritual successor to Battlerite and Battlerite Royale, but I can say it’s probably the closest frame of reference we have to a similar game. While SUPERVIVE is a lot more range-based, and I would argue fast-phased in terms of movement, shooting, and pace. I think one of the reasons why Battlerite series shit the bed was the developers not being good enough at scaling a game, but also perhaps due to the fact that Battlerite Royale didn’t have an interesting progression system.
In SUPERVIVE, we luckily have daily & weekly quests and even login bonuses, this mixed with battlepass gives up plethora of things to unlock from different types of cosmetics, whatever it’s skins, emotes, graffiti, or other things.
- Another smart idea they did was the addition of “Mastery,” which allows you to do Hunter-specific quests in exchange for XP and other benefits. It feels like there is a lot of progression I can unlock on a daily basis by playing this game, and that’s good for retention.
It’s important, however, to keep tabs on Steam Charts and see how the player base is fluctuating on a day-to-day basis, and whether it is able to retain a big player base for a long time. We don’t have access to Chinese numbers as of now, so the game could go viral there while staying at normal popularity in the West. I’ve said it always said that the MOBA niche is so hard to penetrate, and historically, many of the games have failed within a year or so.
Best Alternative to League Of Legends
A few weeks back, I booted up the good old Dota 2, and I played exactly two games and remembered how clunky the experience of the game is because they wanted to re-iterate the feeling of even older game (Warcraft 3) with awful mechanics like turn rates, deny, and some other weird things that game used to have. Don’t get me wrong, DOTA 2 has great elements, but ultimately it’s not as smooth and responsive an experience compared to League of Legends.
While I’ve been somewhat tapped out from MOBA games in the past ~5 years, there hasn’t exactly been anything that’s been able to compete with League, Dota, or SMITE and penetrate a market outside of Mobile stuff, which I don’t care about. Predecessor and Gigantic are different stories that we might talk about future.
Right now, SUPERVIVE is the most polished game in terms of gameplay, content, visuals, matchmaking, and overall design. I think this is a true alternative to League despite it being a hybrid of a MOBA and Battle Royale.
There are things we need to see, however, in the future, like Steam Deck support, and it seems there isn’t any controller support right now. At least according to the Steam page, then of course it would probably help if they were on the Epic Games Store and other places to fully support crossplay, and console play cannot be forgotten either, that’s an essential part of creating a bigger playerbase.
Pros:
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Multiple Progression Systems & a Bunch of stuff to unlock
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Combat is fun and fast, and there is some variety between the Hunters
- Graphically nice looking and well optimized (no framerate issues or latency-related problems)
Cons:
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Still needs some small features like Steam Deck and controller support
- Perhaps a bit of a learning curve on the items, due to fast-paced gameplay, it’s not like you have that much time to read descriptions and what some items are doing, although this can be done in practice mode
