Summary
When I saw the Skibidi title in Supervive’s playtest battle pass, my internal organs collapsed, my skin turned to grey, wispy paper, and the rest of my hair fell out. I am old. So very old.
Pay attention to Supervive, and you’ll spy more terminology aimed at the kids, the youth, and a lot of it feels like a just-past-their-prime teacher attempting to pacify a class of screaming 13-year-olds. Rizz. Hype Squad. Gyatt. Kai Cenat. You get the idea.
But get past this reeking use of already-dated internet speak - my brother, a 14-year-old mega-gamer himself, tells me no one uses rizz anymore anyway - and what you’ve got is a surprisingly robust and highly entertaining top-down hero shooter MOBA battle royale. Absolute word spaghetti I know, but despite all these enormous red flags, I still played it for the entire playtest last night - five hours. When I woke up, I wanted to play it again.
What Is Supervive?
This is League of Legends for the Fortnite generation, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It has borrowed liberally from other games like League, Fortnite, and Apex. A few of the characters are instantly recognisable from Riot’s defining MOBA, like Brall and Tryndamere, Myth and Ashe. A battle bus equivalent from Fortnite is here too, and the UI font is basically just the same. We get the character intros and backstories from Apex, as well as the upgrades, healing, and more interesting battle royale design from the genre’s big hitters.
Somehow it has managed to combine these disparate threads of game design into one well-woven tapestry of fun. These games have all been around for a long time. We need something new, something fresh. Supervive might be the game that actually manages it.
Yes. A MOBA that is fun. An enjoyable new battle royale. And no one even told me to uninstall the game.
There are 14 characters to play with and that’s just in this alpha build of Supervive. The in-game systems are well-fleshed out, the UI is clean, the combat animations feel responsive and punchy. An interesting day-night cycle changes the map as you play, and the longer the game goes on the more dangerous the environment becomes - a really neat take on some of the issues with drawn-out, or too short, battle royale rounds. Getting around the map is a fun process of jumping, gliding, and trying not to get shot into the abyss. There’s a lot here. It seems like a finished product, but we’re still a few months out from the open beta at the end of the year.
Does Supervive Have The Potential To Compete With Its Biggest Inspirations?
Like all shiny things, Supervive’s value really depends on how long it stays shiny for. It’s difficult to judge the longevity of a game like this based on five hours of gameplay and without a much bigger audience putting it through its paces for a prolonged amount of time.
Even over the course of my short time with the game, I could feel the skill gap increasing in a way that might lead to unsavoury language typed furiously into a chat box. A skill gap is a good thing, and higher the better for longevity. It’s clear a lot of care has been taken to make each round interesting, with enough of the fundamentals of both genres of game intact to allow easy entry for new players, while also doing something new - like the day-night cycle and world traversal I mentioned before.
But what exactly is Supervive trying to achieve? It has positioned itself clearly-aimed at people who play Fortnite, but with a game more like your typical MOBA. Generally, though, battle royales and MOBAs have very different audiences. It will prove difficult to balance the expectations of both markets. If it’s a truly great game, then it will carve out a space for itself. If it’s not, it will fail, and League of Legends and Fortnite will be played for another 30 years.
Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be playing Supervive.
