SUPERVIVE Could Be My Next 10,000 Hour Game

Theorycraft’s battle royale SUPERVIVE has dominated my evenings over the past week as its public playtest continues. It’s bringing out the feeling I had when I first played League of Legends 9 years ago, a feeling of wanting to improve and sharing that experience of improvement with friends.

Creating the next competitive multiplayer mega-hit is both refreshingly simple and brutally difficult. You need a satisfying repeatable gameplay loop that satisfies players and engaged developers who can iterate on this loop to keep gameplay fresh through successive patches. The former is more difficult than the latter, and we’ve seen many live-service games fall at the first hurdle because their game wasn’t fun enough or because it didn’t encourage repeated play.

However, there are examples of the latter, too. Stunlock Studios’ Battlerite is a game I see people comparing SUPERVIVE to, likely because of the camera angle, the arena game mode and the ‘feel’ of the teamfights. Battlerite also pivoted to a battle royale game mode towards the tail end of its lifespan. Any long-time fan of Battlerite would agree that Stunlock made some crucial errors in managing Battlerite, including a lack of updates, questionable monetisation practices and a dearth of social features.

Theorycraft is comprised of veteran developers who have worked on the biggest competitive multiplayer games, namely League of Legends, Valorant, Overwatch and Destiny. While this doesn’t guarantee prudent management by any means, I’ve seen enough from Theorycraft over the past few months to be confident that the team is very capable of managing SUPERVIVE.

The engagement I’ve seen between Theorycraft and its budding community is very promising, built on mutual respect and open dialogue. During my preview, I was privy to a couple of casual conversations between dedicated playtesters and developers and you can tell that everyone involved just wants to see the game succeed.

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SUPERVIVE is already equipped with a passionate community and great fundamentals, the two things required to launch a potential live-service behemoth.

I’ve been playing with three friends, alternating between ‘Squads, ‘Duos’ and ‘Arena’. We usually play an Arena game between Squads games as a break or ‘detox’ of sorts after an intense game of Squads. Something I really enjoy about SUPERVIVE is that I feel confident entering into teamfights because of my experience with League of Legends. I’m not particularly good at first-person shooters like Apex Legends so I’m hesitant to rush enemy teams, but I always strike first in SUPERVIVE.

The fights in SUPERVIVE are in the vein of MOBAs. Equally-matched encounters are comparable to a fight around a major objective in League or DotA. There is a lot of posturing and probing skillshots, with both teams waiting for their opposition to misposition. Once that happens, the fight explodes open and you can quickly tell which way the wind is blowing. Like any good brawler, there’s still plenty of scope for comebacks and outplays even when your team falls behind.

We’ve won a few Squads games. Our first-ever win wasn’t a clean one, we recalled to our mobile base camp on a train that circles the whole map and hid in the storm on at least three occasions, and we only beat the final squad by hiding in a bush and pouncing on them while they flew over a chasm. However, as we’ve improved we’ve been finding more traditional wins, regularly racking up over 10 knocks as we stomp towards victory. As in other battle royales, winning a game of SUPERVIVE is an intensely satisfying feeling.

As I spoke about in my preview, SUPERVIVE has a lot of comeback mechanics. I often find myself immediately fleeing a losing teamfight, escaping to revive my defeated teammates at the nearest beacon. This doesn’t always work out – a diligent opposition will follow you to your respawn beacon to prevent you from reviving, especially as the circle gets smaller and your options for respawning become more limited.

One of my comeback victories came after two clutch revives as the final squad arrived just a few seconds too late to stop a full party revive on two separate occasions. We managed to regroup and landed a lucky stun on their Shrike, turning the tables on a teamfight where we were clear underdogs. We didn’t make the same mistake as our opponents and finished off their entire squad to secure the win. These wins are very gratifying; you can come back from any position in SUPERVIVE.

I can see the Arena mode being very popular, also. It took League of Legends almost a decade to add a similar mode, so I’m very pleased that SUPERVIVE already has one on offer. A quick game mode where you get straight into the action is welcome. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been using Arena to break up longer Squads games, and also to practice new hunters (characters).

I’ve been primarily playing Shrike and Kingpin, the first a long-range glass cannon and the other a sort of off-tank bruiser. An untargeted Shrike is very powerful as she can two-shot most enemies with her basic ability, but she’s particularly vulnerable to divers like Brall and Joule. Kingpin, I feel, is designed to be a secondary engage. He can wreak havoc if the enemy’s battle lines are broken but he falls flat as the first man into a fight as he’s easily kited.

The current playtest ends on July 4 and I’ll certainly be playing as much as I can before then. I’m very excited to see the progress of SUPERVIVE, perhaps something could finally replace League of Legends in my life?

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