Hey Super Animals! We hope you all had a very hoppy (and noodle-y) Respawning Day and thanks for bearing with our short Mooseletter delay while we sorted out last week’s Switch hiccup—more on that below. We know a lot of you are wondering about our progress on Super Animal World, so this month’s Mooseletter is all about that. We wanted to give you a clearer sense of why it’s taken so much longer than we hoped and where we are now in the process (without spoiling anything, of course). First, a little history Super Animal World has been a dream of ours since as far back as 2019, when we first experienced the uniquely friendly social space our community created in pre-game lobbies, something we hadn’t really seen in other games we’d played. But before we could tackle something this ambitious, we had to finish the core game: releasing v1.0 out of Early Access and then adding major post-launch content like the Bwoking Dead, SAW vs Rebellion v2, a host of new weapons, items, and points-of-interest, and countless other community-requested features. After several successful seasons, we felt it was the right moment to slow our regular seasonal updates and dive fully into creating Super Animal World. Even while updating SAR these last few years, we were imagining what the island could become if it were brought fully to life outside of the royale. Super Animal World builds on everything that’s already there, but reimagines how players experience it through quests, minigames, storytelling, and social features. It’s a foundation we’re excited to expand on for years to come, and one that we hope deepens the connection both new and longtime players feel to the world, and to each other. Reality check You might’ve heard about the “ninety-ninety” rule: the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% takes the other 90%. As far as tongue-in-cheek developer wisdom goes, this one turned out to be painfully accurate. Early prototyping moved quickly, which was exciting but gave us a deceptively optimistic sense of how fast we could finish the whole thing. What we initially underestimated was just how complex it would be to build an expansion that adds so much new content while also seamlessly integrating with the existing game. On top of that, our original "Summer 2024" target turned out to be more wishful thinking than realistic estimation. We wanted it done then, but we hadn't yet grasped the full scope of what we were building. We did include an "…or when it's ready" caveat, which, let's be honest, we're leaning pretty heavily on right now. Publisher distractions As if Super Animal World wasn’t ambitious enough on its own, we decided to return to self-publishing in the middle of it. It was absolutely the right call, but the transition was messy, time-consuming, and easily set us back about six months of focused dev time (and a solid chunk of our already-questionable sanity). The upside is that we’re no longer beholden to anyone else, and our team is more empowered than ever to bring Super Animal World to life as we’ve envisioned it. The good news: We're turning the corner! Despite everything we’ve been juggling, this month felt like a real turning point. The expansion still needs plenty of polish, but during our latest playtest, a few of us actually paused and said out loud that it finally felt like we were playing a real, integrated game instead of testing separate prototypes. This week, we put Super Animal World in front of 20 external playtesters who had never played Super Animal Royale before. We wanted to see how well our new onboarding and storytelling could guide and engage brand-new players, and whether the experience felt fun and intuitive. Thankfully, it really landed. Even in its early state, the testers genuinely had a great time, and their feedback is already helping us polish rough edges and make the early-game flow even smoother. What's left to do? We've reached a point where core game design questions are mostly solved, and our focus is shifting heavily toward content creation: writing the remaining NPC quests, expanding progression systems, and testing and polishing everything for launch. We still can't announce an official release date yet, but we remain committed to launching Super Animal World this year, and we're working as quickly as humanly (and animal-y!) possible to make that happen. Track our progress To help you follow along with the expansion’s development, we’ve put together some highly scientific progress bars below. We’ll update them each month to show which parts of the expansion we’re actively working on, but not every bar will move every time. Some systems may be on pause while others take the spotlight, depending on what the team is focused on that month. And sometimes bars might even move (gulp) backward, especially if we decide a feature needs a rethink or redesign.

一些重要说明： 并非所有类别都同时开始或结束，每个进度条的完成时间也各不相同。许多功能的实现依赖于其他功能的先行完成，因此不要期望所有进度条都能均匀推进。 百分比反映的是我们对当前进度的最佳估计，而非已花费的时间。例如，“内容与任务”类别目前为25%，但这部分初始工作包含了大量的重写和精心打磨，以确保任务结构达到理想状态。随着基础工作的完成，剩余任务的进度应会加快。 部分进度条在接近尾声时可能会提速。一旦核心系统确定，内容的创建和优化通常会进展得更快。我们希望这次的幕后揭秘能让你对未来的发展道路有更清晰的了解，随着发售日期的临近，我们迫不及待地想在未来几个月分享更多内容！有问必答！

Every month, we put out a call for questions on Pixile’s Twitter and Bluesky and answer them right here in the Mooseletter! Make sure to follow us so you don’t miss the call next month, and as always, feel free to also share your feedback in the SAR Discord or start a discussion right here on Steam. Question: Roadmaps From: Wheezy Will there be more roadmaps regarding the development process/updates? Transparency is pretty important in a community. Surprise! Hope today’s Mooseletter helps on this front. :) We’ll probably return to roadmaps again once Super Animal World is out the door since they’re good for breaking down individual features that are coming next (and we have a lot planned for post-release too). Super Animal World is such a huge project that breaking it down into a feature list doesn’t work quite as well, but we do have categories of features like the redesigned UI and menus that we hope to do deep dives into as the project gets closer to release and they’re ready to show. Question: Mini Animal Improvements From: Silly Will S.A.W add new functions to the minimals such as animations or activities? Minimals can stay as a non p2w experience but they could get special interactions like playing with them or placing accessories on them We don’t have any major changes to minis planned for Super Animal World specifically, but these are great thoughts, and we’ve had a bunch of ideas of our own that we’d like to bring to minis in the future, so keep the feedback coming! Question: Deciding New Super Animals From: RealPlasmaRac How do you decide which super animal to do next?? Do you spin a wheel full of random animals?? We haven't built a giant spinning wheel of animals just yet, but now that you’ve said it, it feels like a missed opportunity. In reality though, we usually choose based on a mix of what players are most excited about and what fits thematically with upcoming updates. There are still tons of Super Animals we’d love to add, and some are already lined up for future events and updates. It’s something we say a lot, but it’s true: if there’s one you’re hoping to see, let us know—your suggestions play a big role in shaping what’s next! Question: Replayability From: Mounticat How does Pixile plan to increase SARs replayability with Super Animal World? Super Animal World adds a whole new layer of activities that give players more reasons to return to the island regularly. Fishing, bug catching, and hamsterball racing offer relaxing ways to spend time between matches, while also complementing core modes like Battle Royale, SAW vs Rebellion, and The Bwoking Dead. With the new Social Hub acting as a natural gateway between experiences, the island feels more vibrant and lived-in, offering a natural flow between competition and connection. Time spent in the new SAW activities also counts toward your progression, since they award XP just like matches in Battle Royale. Question: Community Feedback From: Lock How big of an impact does the community have on what's added to the game? Other than the current season, has there ever been a season that was highly influenced by the community's suggestions? Our community plays a huge role in shaping what we add to the game! Updates like The Dragon’s Loot and Party Animals introduced many long-requested Super Animals and items, while the By Popular Request Pass was a direct celebration of community-inspired cosmetics and designs. Beyond cosmetics, player feedback has frequently guided gameplay decisions too, from the Zip-and-Go revamp, to the infection changes in Bwoking Dead, to which powerups we’ve chosen to tweak (Impossible Tape) or temporarily retire (rip Juicer). While we can't always respond individually to every piece of feedback, your comments genuinely help drive our internal conversations and prioritization. We’re always listening, and your creativity and care make the game better in ways we never could have pulled off alone. Question: Team Size From: bro guy How many people work on Super Animal Royale? Our team is up to 16 now! But some of us are part-time, so all together we probably add up to around 9-10 full-time equivalents. We also work with a few external companies supporting us on things like Quality Assurance and more recently, UI design. Community Roundup Double XP Weekend

上周的任天堂固件更新导致Switch平台上的《超级动物大逃杀》（SAR）无法联机，但我们当天就提交了修复程序，并与任天堂合作以尽快发布。很高兴地告诉大家，问题现已解决！ 为了补偿所有在停机期间损失游戏时间的Switch玩家，并感谢所有平台玩家在我们开发《超级动物世界》过程中的持续耐心，我们将为所有人举办双倍经验值周末活动！ 从5月9日（周五）到5月12日（周一），通过比赛和挑战获得的所有经验值都将翻倍。非常感谢大家的支持，希望你们享受这来之不易的额外经验值！超级动物粉丝艺术展示 超级动物社区的创造力众所周知，我们也很乐意展示大家分享的精彩粉丝艺术。以下是我们过去一个月里的一些近期精选作品！

美术：Noko

美术：Salad Cat

美术：FreddieInDaBoxx

美术：UnflappedFlea

美术设计：Resh1maru 如果你在社交媒体上发布同人作品，请使用标签#superanimalroyale或直接标记我们，这样我们就不会错过！你也可以在我们的Discord服务器中分享，那里有专门用于同人创作的活跃频道和才华横溢的艺术社区。 我们希望这封“驼鹿通讯”能让你更清楚地了解《超级动物世界》扩展包的开发进展。随着内容的不断完善，我们很期待分享更多信息，如果你希望我们在下一期中涵盖某些内容，请在评论中告诉我们！ 获取《超级动物世界》的所有最新消息，请订阅我们的通讯并关注我们的：

你也可以在Facebook、Instagram、Reddit、TikTok和Threads上关注我们。 岛上见，超级动物们！ 附言：我们终于创建了Steam发行商页面！它崭新、官方，还有可供点击的按钮。快去看一看，告诉我们你的想法，并关注它以获取所有关于Pixile的最新动态。 ——迈克尔、洛根及社区团队