It has been extremely difficult to keep this a surprise, but we’re super excited to finally be able to say that we’re leaving Early Access, releasing v1.0 and launching on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 TODAY! And we seriously couldn’t have done it without all of your love and support over the course of these 2.5 years, Super Animals.
We’re so proud not only of the game, but also of this wonderful community that has grown around it. We’re so lucky to be on this adventure with all of you. On behalf of everyone on the Pixile and Modus teams, thank you.
More than anything, we view v1.0 as the beginning of a new chapter for Super Animal Royale, and a strong foundation to build on top of. The list of ways we plan to continue evolving and improving upon the game are endless and we’re already hard at work on the next updates (so keep that feedback coming!), but it’s important to celebrate milestones and this is a big one. So let’s get the celebrations started by diving into all that is new in this major v1.0 update!
The Highlights
See some of what’s new, and the top clips and artwork from the SAR community in the latest episode of Super Animal Royale Tonight! You can also check out all of the fanart contest entries on our website here and previous episodes of SAR Tonight here.
Here are some of the highlights that you can look forward to when you boot up v1.0:
- Season 1 arrives alongside the Animal Pass Archive that lets you activate previous seasons that you own alongside the current season (no more FOMO!)
- New cross-play platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5 join Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S (cross-play matchmaking and cross-save supported today, and cross-platform parties for duos and squads coming in the future). Google Stadia and Geforce Now cloud streaming support are coming soon too!
- Mini Animal pets: yes, your Super Animal can now have a smaller animal as a pet.
- Map update: Super Animal Farm expands to include Mini Ranch, a petting zoo for Mini Animals.
- Super Frogs (5 breeds total)
- New Super Powerups + changes to existing Super Powerups
- Variety x SAR Petember collaboration to raise funds for service dogs for kids in need
- Steam achievements
- South America server + Brazilian Portuguese language
- Controller improvements, gameplay refinements, gun balancing, performance improvements, and more!
Season 1: Super Animal World Pass
The first Animal Pass after Early Access is themed after Super Animal World itself, the safari park you know and love that played host to visitors from around the world before “The Incident” changed everything. Find outfits and cosmetic items from many fine S.A.W. establishments including Slow Food, CRISPR Cafe and the Welcome Center. There’s also a Mini Capybara pet and the perfect emote for celebrating the arrival of Season 1!
Animal Pass Archive
The current season costs 550 SAW Tickets to unlock, and now with the new archive system, previous seasons won’t go away for good: you can activate any previous pass that you own to earn progress on it alongside the current season, or purchase a previous season that you missed for 750 SAW Tickets. The XP you earn goes into both passes too (not split between them)!
Season 1 Starter Pack DLC
The arrival of Season 1 also means we have a new Starter Pack DLC that includes a new Skullcat breed, 2 cosmetic items, and a great deal on SAW Tickets (enough to use on purchasing the new Animal Pass):
- Super Warrior Skullcat
- Warrior Outfit
- Macuahuitl (melee weapon)
Starter Packs can still only be purchased during their season, so if you’re interested, make sure to pick it up before Season 2 and a new Starter Pack arrives!
Welcome new players on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation
In addition to Steam, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S players, as of today you’ll now start seeing Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5 players in your cross-play lobbies! All versions of the game also support cross-save by logging in with your Super Animal Account, so you can bring your Steam progress with you wherever you play.
Cross-platform parties (to enable inviting friends from a mixture of platforms to squad up with you) are not yet supported, but we’re excited to say that the feature is actively in development so you can look forward to it in a future update! We’ll update you all as soon as we have an exact ETA on when it’ll be arriving.
The console versions are launching first in North America, South America, and Europe, but will also be coming to Asia later with their own local launch! Cloud streaming versions for Google Stadia and Geforce Now will also be available in the near future.
Improved Controller Support
Alongside the porting process, we also spent some time refining controller support for the game, so all you controller fans can look forward to some nice improvements:
- The controller reticle style has been updated and now rotates towards the aiming direction.
- The aiming reticle only shows while you are actively aiming (to help avoid confusion with walking direction).
- The distance of the reticle has been standardized and is closer to the animal which helps a lot with aiming.
- For lining up shots at range, dots appear beyond the reticle so that aiming both near and far with a controller feels better under the new system.
- In settings, controller users also have two new toggles if they want to refine their control method: a toggle to turn off the left stick affecting aim (so aim only changes while using the right stick) and a toggle to show the reticle when moving with the left stick (if you want to bring back the way it worked pre-v1.0).
Mini Animal Pets & Map Update
Your Super Fox can now officially have a Mini Fox as a pet (because of course every animal needs an animal as a pet).
Mini Animals are adorable purse-sized versions of traditional animals, originally designed by S.A.W. as pets for park guests to take home as souvenirs. Like a stuffed animal you have to feed. Unlike the Super Animals, Mini Animals are quadrupedal and small brained. The idea was to make traditionally untamable beasts suitable as pets by engineering them to be, if not exactly tame, at least mini enough to prevent serious maulings.
- Adopt one of 8 Mini Animal pets from the SAW Shop for 750 SAW Tickets, or earn the Mini Capybara in the Season 1 Animal Pass.
- Mini Animal pets follow you around the island while you’re alive… and will sleep faithfully by your gravestone if you die. Don’t worry, the SAW Scientists thought ahead and bioengineered them to be immune to Super Skunk Gas (it just puts them into a hibernative state).
- They have both a run and walk animation depending on your speed, and will cower when you're standing still and shooting, as well as from nearby explosions.
- Mini Animal sounds can only be heard by their owner (client-side) aside from once the player dies, in which case their sleeping sounds can be heard by everyone.
- Line of sight to see Mini Animals is tied to their owner’s line of sight, so using a pet won't give you away unless you yourself are visible.
- If you prefer, you can choose to have your Mini Animal pet only show up in the lobby and not accompany you during the match. Toggle this setting in the Customize screen when you equip your pet.
- Private Match hosts can disable pets using the /pets command.
Map Update: Mini Ranch
Visit the S.A.W. Shop’s special branch at Mini Ranch dedicated to producing and selling Mini Animals on Super Animal Farm. S.A.W. Shop’s “Mini Mart” blends the high end consumer aesthetic of S.A.W. Shop with the chaotic, “is anyone watching these children?” vibe of a petting zoo.
- Super Animal Farm has expanded to the east to include the new Mini Ranch point of interest.
- Visit the ranch to see roaming Mini Animals that you can pet.
- The Mini Mart gift shop includes animated ads from back when Mini Animals were sold to Super Animal World guests.
Super Frogs Are Here
Say hello to the first Super Amphibian from SAW: the Super Frog! You can now unlock the Super Frog and its 4 additional breeds in the Research Lab, starting at level 30:
- Super Frog
- Super Tree Frog
- Super Rain Frog
- Super Horned Frog
- Super Dart Frog
New Super Powerups + Improvements
- NEW: the SAW Impossible Tape powerup will instantly repair your opponent’s damaged armor upon their death, saving you tape and time. Impossible you say? Not for SAW Scientists. Note: level 3 armor will only be repaired to 2/3 ticks.
- NEW: the Bandolier powerup increases your max carrying capacity for ammo, super tape, grenades, skunk bombs and bananas.
- UPDATED: the Skunk Gas Vial has been redesigned as the Skunk Gas Snorkel. The new design better reflects its current functionality that was updated in previous patches. It now prevents coughing while in Skunk Bombs but all other functionality remains the same.
- Claw Boots now let the wearer move just as fast in shallow water as on land (removes the movement speed penalty of shallow water).
- Banana Forker now also doubles the amount of health you gain from eating coconuts, mushrooms, and event items. It also increases the range at which you can eat them.
Variety x SAR Petember Fundraiser
We’re super excited to be partnering with Variety - the Children's Charity to raise funds and awareness for service dogs for kids in need this September! Content Creators can participate by hosting a charity stream, and players can tune in and donate to earn an exclusive pack of SAR cosmetic items:
- Variety Tuxedo
- Variety Tophat
- Variety Petember Umbrella
We’ll also be revealing a code on September 1st that everyone can redeem for free to help spread awareness for a great cause, so watch the SAR Discord server and social channels for that!
Your participation in Petember will help children get the service dogs they need. These real life Super Dogs change the lives of kids living with autism, anxiety, and epilepsy. If you want to get involved or learn more, check out the full Petember website here, pup:
Learn more: levelupforkids.org/superanimalroyale
Gameplay Updates & More
- Steam Achievements
- South America server + Brazilian Portuguese language
- The Skunk Gas has been updated to use a shader rather than particles, which improves performance for low end graphics cards and provides better clarity while in the gas.
- Guns now play an added "low ammo" sound when shooting while near the end of their clip.
- Pinging items & objects now last 10.5s rather than 7.5s.
- Teammate map markers now have an audio spam buffer set to 2s rather than 0.8s, and the in-world paw marker now has an anti-spam buffer too, set at 2.6s.
- Pressing shoot while in an emote will cancel the emote rather than instantly shoot. As well, there is a small buffer on being able to shoot after the emote ends (this buffer also applies if cancelling an emote manually).
- Hamsterballs now have a maximum damage of 101, so slight turns/movements will no longer have the issue of sometimes doing 99 damage and narrowly missing a full rollover kill.
- Grenades, Skunk Bombs, Bananas, and Super Tape now visually show 2-packs when dropped (rather than appearing as a single item visually) so you’ll be able to see more clearly exactly how many items are on the ground.
- We finally have a fancy credits screen, accessible from the main menu! It features the one and only Pete the Sloth, playing Pete’s Song from the Super Animal Royale Soundtrack by Jake Butineau.
- The Super Animal Account flow has been improved with additional screens to provide better clarity around logging in, creating an account, or skipping the process (which you can do if you only plan on playing the Steam version).
- Added a "Recent Players" option to the main menu where you can report and mute players after encountering them in a match.
- Updated the design of the Animal Pass progress widget on the main menu, and made it possible to see progress on both passes at once if you have an archive pass active.
Gun Balancing
- Thomas Gun's spawn rate in Rebel Caches has been slightly reduced (spawn weight in rebel caches lowered from 3 to 2, which matches the rate of M16 drops in caches). We felt it was a bit too common relative to its power, and as such have adjusted it to be slightly more rare.
- Running now increases Thomas Gun recoil by 20% (previously was 9%), and the initial recoil pattern is more volatile. However, random spray recoil has been reduced from 5.8° to 5.7°.
- Running now also increases SMG recoil by 15% (previously was 9%), and the initial recoil pattern climbs faster. However, random spray recoil has been reduced from 6.1° to 5.9°. This change along with the Thomas Gun change help balance their power relative to rifles and differentiate their weapon class more.
- AK bullet speed increased by 6 (common is now 178, uncommon is 186, and rare is 194). M16 bullet speed increased by 8 (epic is 204, legendary is 212). These bullet speeds enable more long range reliability to help differentiate them from Pistol & SMG class weapons.
- Thomas Gun bullet speed lowered by 5 (epic is now 160, legendary is 170). This change helps bring it more in line with the submachine gun class of weapon that favors firing rate over range and accuracy.
- The Pistol, Dual Pistols, and the Silenced Pistol had their additional bullet speed from rarity decreased from 10 to 9. For example, the bullet speed of an epic Pistol is now 162 (down from 165). The change is fairly minor but it is part of our overall goal of balancing weapon speed this patch, and creating a clearer differentiation between short/medium range weapons and longer range weapons.
- AK now has a more volatile recoil pattern for its first 3 shots, followed by a more centered pattern after that. Random recoil has been reduced from 4.2° to 3.6°, however running increases AK recoil by 33% now (previously was 21%). These changes encourage more burst firing and creep movement to stabilize recoil, for those who learn the new firing pattern.
- M16 now has 40% increased recoil while running (previously was 32%). This is in-line with the AK change to encourage creep firing for accuracy.
- M16 has a smoother recoil pattern after the 4th shot (but before randomized recoil kicks in). This allows for a bit more control and predictability.
Optimizations & Bug Fixes
- Improved the style of all the animal head umbrellas (they’re now better matched to their respective Super Animals and eyes aren’t spaced as far apart as before).
- Reduced the size of the map file from about 6MB down to 4.3MB.
- Preallocated more objects at match start so there is less chance of stuttering during Eagle flight.
- Fixed a bug where shadow casting objects were allocating new rather than recycling as the player moves around.
- Improved performance of the fog of war shadow system by 10-15% depending on the region of the map.
- Improved performance of recycling ground texture tiles.
- Reduced animation update frequency for far away characters so they don't use as much CPU.
- Increased the duration that news entries on the main menu display before changing to the next entry.
- Fixed arm stretching issue when shooting the Magnum.
- Fixed head bobbing when your character is creeping and shooting a Thomas Gun.
- Fixed character aim stutter issue when using a controller and pointing the joystick straight up or straight down.
- Fixed slight controller joystick movements causing inadvertent creep zoom (only intentionally using the creep button will trigger creep zoom now).
- Fix for controller navigation sometimes being incorrect after changing Milestone tabs.
- Fixed a bug for controller users where the quick chat wheel would show where you died rather than where you are spectating.
- Fixed a bug where controller navigation would break on the controller bindings screen when changing from a keyboard to controller.
- Fixed a bug where players could bind map marking/unmarking to the same key as "open map".
- Fixed map screen not showing custom controller bindings for marking and unmarking.
- Fixed controller bug where rapidly claiming milestones would cause selection of the item reward popup to be lost.
- Fixed a bug that caused the hot spring at Penguin Palace to lose its animations and sound.
- Fixed grenades being throwable over the Sphinx walls.
- Fixed hedges on the side of the bamboo resort that had a small gap that mole crate items could pop into.
- Fixed compression artifacts in the Hopperfield Tophat.
- Fixed game chat activating while typing in the report description box (if your chat hotkey was bound to a letter key).
- Fixed a display issue with the rounding of S.A.W. Shop bundle prices.
- Premium item rarity backgrounds now show in the Milestones tab for Super Edition milestone rewards. They also now display in the Animal Pass reward preview panel on the main menu.
Last but not least, we’re also re-activating Mystery Mode at launch for a limited time, until Sunday, September 12th at 11:59pm PDT!
We hope you all have a great time with v1.0 and as always, let us know what you want to see in our next updates in our Discord server or on your preferred social channel (Discord, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or Steam Discussion Forums). See you on the island, Super Animals!