Super Animal Royale is a simple and clean 2D top-down shooter battle royale game.

Gameplay wise, the game is fairly solid, if standard for the genre. You parachute (or rather, use an umbrella, Mary Poppins style) out of a giant bird at the start of the game to deploy yourself somewhere on the map. The map gradually gets filled up with poison gas, forcing the players to ever smaller areas. This is a very fast-paced battle royale, with games lasting under ten minutes, so you don’t spend a lot of time wandering around empty space; the map is fairly large, but 64 people deploy on it and you generally engage in a number of fights before reaching the end unless you deliberately try to avoid combat – and even then, you probably will run into other people anyway.

There’s a reasonable variety of weapons, and while sometimes I’d love to see a few more, what is there does the job. You’ve got your pistols, your shotguns, your SMGs, your rifles, your assault rifles, and a few special weapons like the minigun and a poison dart gun that deals damage over time. There’s body armor you can pick up. There are lobbable grenades, which include both conventional grenades, “skunk gas” bombs which deal damage over time to anyone in the zone, as well as somewhat sillier things like banana peels that cause people to slip on them. There is a healing juice you drink to heal, and duct tape you use to fix your armor. There’s even an “accessory” item slot, though what these do is poorly explained in-game.

As with most Battle Royale games, there are five different “tiers” of these items, with the top tier ones doing more damage than the basic variety, along with three different tiers of armor. This, combined with the need to find healing items, drives the player to explore around the map and try and pick up better and better weapons and armor as the match goes on, as well as to get more equipment to heal themselves with.

The game uses a ring mechanic like many other such games; in this case, a cloud of “skunk gas” gradually creeps over the area, poisoning anyone who is inside of it, dealing them a bit of damage as long as they stay in it. The damage isn’t so fast that you can’t move around in it, but it is fast enough that it can definitely kill you – and it bypasses the armor you pick up.

The map itself has a reasonable variety of biomes in it, from tropical areas in the south to snowy/icy areas in the north. Beyond giving visual variety and giving you some idea of where you are located on the map, it also adds in a few different environmental aspects – there are coconuts you can eat in the south, while the icy areas are slippery and cause characters to slide around unless they have the right accessory. These are minor touches, but they add a little bit of charm, and make it so that games play out a little differently depending on where the map shrinks to sometimes.

There’s also a couple of “vehicles” in the game – hamster balls, which you run around in and crash into people with to deal them damage, and giant emus that you can peck at people with. These also serve as additional “health” of sorts, as they have to kill your vehicle before they can start damaging you.

The game does have some flaws, though. Perhaps the largest flaw is that some of the weapons don’t feel very good to use; in particular, the ultimate shotgun is a rather lackluster weapon, and feels like a bit of a disappointment to get due to its high spread. The fact that the game doesn’t do a great job of explaining how different various weapons are is also a bit disappointing; there is a wiki where stuff can be looked up, but when you’re in-game, if you don’t know what a particular weapon or accessory does, you have no way of looking it up cleanly.

It also only has one map, which is a little sad; while I do understand that is standard for the genre, variety is the spice of life, and I would love to see a small number of maps that cycled.

While the game is still technically in early access, it feels very feature-complete on the whole in terms of the actual core gameplay; it’s a battle royale game and it has all the features that it “needs”.

Aesthetically, the game is pretty solid; the players are all animals, and there’s a cohesive sort of look to the game overall.

Your character’s species is purely cosmetic, and over time, you unlock additional animal species like any other cosmetic; you get “DNA” after each match which counts towards a random animal, and there are consumable magnet items which “attract” a particular type of DNA, meaning that you only get that kind of animal DNA for the next three games. You get more DNA the longer you go in the game, with the most for winning, and always get a minimum amount even if you die very quickly. There’s a reasonable variety of animal species, and each of the species has a number of different palette choices, as well as more sophisticated differences, with different ears/faces/beaks/tails and the like. Almost all of the animals correspond to real world animals, though some of the palette choices are more fanciful variations. The animals pretty much all look cute, and there’s a very large number of choices in the game.

On top of this, you also get cosmetic items – clothing, face coverings (like glasses or eyepatches), hats, as well as cosmetic weapon variants that change how the weapons look while you’re carrying them (notably, they don’t change how they look on the battlefield, which is handy, as it means they always look the same). You get some of these cosmetic items periodically, and the longer you survive, the more likely you are to get them. The drop rate does feel a little bit slow, but there’s also frequently events going on that drop cosmetic items independent of the “standard” background ones, and you also get cosmetic items for achieving various in-game achievements, which vary from dancing in front of a no-dancing sign during a match to unlocking secret rooms to getting large numbers of kills with a particular type of weapon to rolling around a great deal.

Overall, this gives you a pretty solid basis to work with, and I’ve got a half dozen preset looks at the moment that all look pretty reasonable. Importantly, you can save these looks and name them, so if you want to quickly swap between them you don’t have to laboriously go in and do so.

All in all, I’ve been having a lot of fun with this game. The fast pace means that dying doesn’t feel bad, and there’s a reasonably active player base. There are separate queues for solo play, duos, and full squads, and when there’s fewer people around, bots autofill the missing slots, and they feel okay to fight against on the whole – not as good as players, but they work well enough, and can kill the players if they manage to surround them.

This was worth the $10 I spent on it, and I’ve been having fun playing it.

Super Animal Royale is a simple and clean 2D top-down shooter battle royale game. Gameplay wise, the game is fairly solid, if standard for the genre. You parachute (or rather, use an umbrella, Mary Poppins style) out of a giant bird at the start of the game to deploy yourself somewhere on the map. The map gradually gets filled up with poison gas, forcing the players to ever smaller areas. This is a very fast-paced battle royale, with games lasting under ten minutes, so you don’t spend a lot of time wandering around empty space; the map is fairly large, but 64 people deploy on it and you generally engage in a number of fights before reaching the end unless you deliberately try to avoid combat – and even then, you probably will run into other people anyway. There’s a reasonable variety of weapons, and while sometimes I’d love to see a few more, what is there does the job. You’ve got your pistols, your shotguns, your SMGs, your rifles, your assault rifles, and a few special weapons like the minigun and a poison dart gun that deals damage over time. There’s body armor you can pick up. There are lobbable grenades, which include both conventional grenades, “skunk gas” bombs which deal damage over time to anyone in the zone, as well as somewhat sillier things like banana peels that cause people to slip on them. There is a healing juice you drink to heal, and duct tape you use to fix your armor. There’s even an “accessory” item slot, though what these do is poorly explained in-game. As with most Battle Royale games, there are five different “tiers” of these items, with the top tier ones doing more damage than the basic variety, along with three different tiers of armor. This, combined with the need to find healing items, drives the player to explore around the map and try and pick up better and better weapons and armor as the match goes on, as well as to get more equipment to heal themselves with. The game uses a ring mechanic like many other such games; in this case, a cloud of “skunk gas” gradually creeps over the area, poisoning anyone who is inside of it, dealing them a bit of damage as long as they stay in it. The damage isn’t so fast that you can’t move around in it, but it is fast enough that it can definitely kill you – and it bypasses the armor you pick up. The map itself has a reasonable variety of biomes in it, from tropical areas in the south to snowy/icy areas in the north. Beyond giving visual variety and giving you some idea of where you are located on the map, it also adds in a few different environmental aspects – there are coconuts you can eat in the south, while the icy areas are slippery and cause characters to slide around unless they have the right accessory. These are minor touches, but they add a little bit of charm, and make it so that games play out a little differently depending on where the map shrinks to sometimes. There’s also a couple of “vehicles” in the game – hamster balls, which you run around in and crash into people with to deal them damage, and giant emus that you can peck at people with. These also serve as additional “health” of sorts, as they have to kill your vehicle before they can start damaging you. The game does have some flaws, though. Perhaps the largest flaw is that some of the weapons don’t feel very good to use; in particular, the ultimate shotgun is a rather lackluster weapon, and feels like a bit of a disappointment to get due to its high spread. The fact that the game doesn’t do a great job of explaining how different various weapons are is also a bit disappointing; there is a wiki where stuff can be looked up, but when you’re in-game, if you don’t know what a particular weapon or accessory does, you have no way of looking it up cleanly. It also only has one map, which is a little sad; while I do understand that is standard for the genre, variety is the spice of life, and I would love to see a small number of maps that cycled. While the game is still technically in early access, it feels very feature-complete on the whole in terms of the actual core gameplay; it’s a battle royale game and it has all the features that it “needs”. Aesthetically, the game is pretty solid; the players are all animals, and there’s a cohesive sort of look to the game overall. Your character’s species is purely cosmetic, and over time, you unlock additional animal species like any other cosmetic; you get “DNA” after each match which counts towards a random animal, and there are consumable magnet items which “attract” a particular type of DNA, meaning that you only get that kind of animal DNA for the next three games. You get more DNA the longer you go in the game, with the most for winning, and always get a minimum amount even if you die very quickly. There’s a reasonable variety of animal species, and each of the species has a number of different palette choices, as well as more sophisticated differences, with different ears/faces/beaks/tails and the like. Almost all of the animals correspond to real world animals, though some of the palette choices are more fanciful variations. The animals pretty much all look cute, and there’s a very large number of choices in the game. On top of this, you also get cosmetic items – clothing, face coverings (like glasses or eyepatches), hats, as well as cosmetic weapon variants that change how the weapons look while you’re carrying them (notably, they don’t change how they look on the battlefield, which is handy, as it means they always look the same). You get some of these cosmetic items periodically, and the longer you survive, the more likely you are to get them. The drop rate does feel a little bit slow, but there’s also frequently events going on that drop cosmetic items independent of the “standard” background ones, and you also get cosmetic items for achieving various in-game achievements, which vary from dancing in front of a no-dancing sign during a match to unlocking secret rooms to getting large numbers of kills with a particular type of weapon to rolling around a great deal. Overall, this gives you a pretty solid basis to work with, and I’ve got a half dozen preset looks at the moment that all look pretty reasonable. Importantly, you can save these looks and name them, so if you want to quickly swap between them you don’t have to laboriously go in and do so. All in all, I’ve been having a lot of fun with this game. The fast pace means that dying doesn’t feel bad, and there’s a reasonably active player base. There are separate queues for solo play, duos, and full squads, and when there’s fewer people around, bots autofill the missing slots, and they feel okay to fight against on the whole – not as good as players, but they work well enough, and can kill the players if they manage to surround them. This was worth the $10 I spent on it, and I’ve been having fun playing it.