Indie developers have often proven that great examples of gaming genres can be made without AAA budgets. Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight took on 2D platformers and became so iconic that its lead appears in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; Toby Fox's Undertale was an Earthbound-style RPG, with its exposure leading to him working on Pokemon Sword and Shield among other things; and Team Cherry's Hollow Knight has left fans hungry for more with the Metroidvania's upcoming sequel Silksong. Pixile Studios' Super Animal Royale could be put in a similar category for the battle royale genre.
The game drops 64 genetically-engineered, humanoid Super Animals onto an island, letting them vie to become the last critter (or team) standing. It began development in October 2017 with a pair of friends inspired by H1Z1 and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Pixile co-founder and CEO Michael Silverwood said it launched "in the middle of the battle royale hype," before the style settled into its own distinct genre. He credits Super Animal Royale's shorter match length and top-down 2D perspective for carving out a niche, but its community has also played a big role in its success. Game Rant spoke to Silverwood about Super Animal Royale's backstory and how fans helped shape it.
Super Animal Royale will release for consoles with its Version 1.0 update sometime this year, but before then it will have another Early Access stint through the Xbox Game Preview program starting June 1. Silverwood said it's exciting to see the game he started alongside Pixile co-founder Chris Clogg jump to consoles with the help of publisher Modus Games, especially after their humble beginnings at The University of British Columbia developing the iPad-exclusive Stratosphere. However, he was just as excited to discuss the Version 1.0 announcement trailer that reportedly took five months of production time.
"We're able to produce these videos ourselves in-house ... but this trailer was a creative risk. We decided to do it as a musical that fleshes out a bunch of the backstory of the world. We were so excited to release it because as a creative project it was one we were really proud of."
That musical trailer for Super Animal Royale came out May 6 and includes a pivotal moment in the game's backstory that Silverwood said has only been hinted at before: "The Incident." The video begins with a theatre performance at a safari theme park called Super Animal World, where the Super Animals start a rebellion to free themselves from being the park's attractions. Super Animal Royale players explore the island ruined by this conflict between Super Animal World and the rebelling forces, but without auxiliary media they are left to sort out the story using environmental cues.
Another source Pixile Studios has used to disseminate crumbs of backstory is the YouTube show Super Animal Royale Tonight. The show is developed "for fun and for lore" according to Silverwood, and is set up like a parody ESPN esports program that hosts fan-submitted content. The segments "Super-est Kills" and "Blooper Scooper" highlight gameplay and funny clips, respectively, and the team created an art critic rabbit named Rabbita Smith who judges fan art - which is also displayed in an in-game gallery and on a website.
However, Super Animal Royale Tonight is a show-within-a-show that stipulates those fan clips are videos of real, forced conflicts being broadcast by Super Animal World as punishment after it reclaimed control of the island. Events in the show, such as attempts by rebels to kidnap hosts Donk Patrick and Howl Michaels, will change corresponding locales around the in-game map.
The second run of episodes for this parody esports program began when Super Animal Royale launched its first Season Pass last year, and Silverwood said new episodes will be synced to each upcoming season. It isn't the only way Pixile has included its community in ongoing development.
"By the time we got to Early Access in December 2018, the Discord was over 7,000 people. That grew out of running weekly tests like tournaments with the community for feedback. Once it launched, we just kept taking what they were doing that's fun and finding ways to integrate it."
Beyond featuring fan content like gameplay clips and artwork, Super Animal Royale also has a content creator program through Discord, and its backstory has become enriched by ongoing jokes. The May 6 announcement trailer includes a Super Animal calling the throwable banana item a "Banan." Silverwood said the development team was playing with fans and found them saying "praise Banan" as they threw the item, and thought it would make sense to create a canonical cult of banana.
"We wrote a whole backstory about the cult of banana, and now you can find shrines to Banan," Silverwood said. Praise Banan can be found all over developer updates posted to Steam, and Pixile Studios went one step further by adding ravens as a breed of Super Animal in honor of a player named Raven who started the trend. A raven statue is used to represent the Prophet of Banan.
As the game continues to evolve with its console release, new game modes, and programs like Super Animal Royale Tonight, its growing audience may also lead to additional opportunities. Silverwood said he hopes teaming up with Modus can give Pixile the bandwidth to potentially start a charity initiative that supports organizations like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) or Cat Therapy and Rescue Society (CTRS); places he has volunteered for five years fostering 69 kittens and counting. Cute animals inspired the design of Super Animal Royale, and giving back has been discussed now that Pixile isn't just a small indie team of two prototyping a 2D battle royale.
"That's the big challenge for any indie studio is that if you're a big company you already have a built-in audience and attention," Silverwood said. "For us, we're unknown at the beginning, so you have to find out how to reach a lot of people."
Super Animal Royale is 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.