Introduction: The developers at Theorycraft Games recently presented their newest title, Supervive, to the global gaming community. After the game entered the Steam marketplace in Early Access, it managed to attract a growing number of gamers, but also the interest of the wider MOBA community, which sees in its mixture of genres a big opportunity that can take the entire battle arena space to its next big step. In a gaming ecosystem that is still dominated by League of Legends and Dota 2, the influx of new thinking could reinvigorate the entire genre and allow for subsequent games to reach even more players interested in fast-paced multiplayer competitive titles.
Article: There is no shortage of gaming companies that are constantly promising to redefine modern gaming in one way or another. Big corporate structures might offer games that aim to shift core gaming genres like shooters or other popular multiplayer setups. Smaller teams, like indie developers, might aim to create such a lasting impact with their games that completely new genres open up because of their success. However, any gamer quickly learns to ignore those claims, even though sometimes, games truly move the entire development space.
Recently, titles like Death Stranding from Hideo Kojima could be described as such a creation, while in other domains, even very simple setups like that of Wordle, have become global phenomena. In the case of Theorycraft Games and their latest game, Supervive, the initial marketing pitch was relatively quiet, even though the aims of the game were very high. As a hybrid MOBE title, Supervive is directly taking on one of the biggest games in the history of the industry – LoL or League of Legends. Now, Supervive claims that its mixture of genres, more precisely MOBA, battle royale, and hero shooter, is finding a lot of traction among games. At the same time, the data from Steam’s Supervive performance backs up those claims, being that the game is steadily growing in popularity mere days after its launch into Early Access. The success it found and the appeal that its unique combination of genres offered could set the future course for the entire field of multiplayer online battle arena games.
Free-to-Play Competitive Focus
Supervive is a game that fully understands its targeted demographic and what it offers to them. The players that the game is trying to reach are gamers who enjoy free-to-play competitive titles, not just in terms of MOBA games, but also shooter games, battle royale releases, and so forth. That is why the Theorycraft Games developers decided to avoid the classic MOBA setup for Supervive and instead supplement it with other genres. Those are in particular the hero shooter genre, where the game design places a lot of emphasis on the abilities of the player character, but also the battle royale setup of having to survive until the end as the last person standing. With this mixture, Supervive manages to overcome the divide between games that demand a level of tactical thinking and those that rely on high-speed combat. For now, that decision seems to be paying off far beyond what anyone envisioned before the game’s launch.
Supervive Gameplay Mechanics
The setup of the core gameplay mechanics of Supervive will feel very familiar to most gamers who play multiplayer titles. The game’s matches take place on floating maps, covered with interconnected islands, where players first pick their Hunter. These are broken into familiar classes, including those that feel like Tank characters, offering a lot of damage and protection at the price of mobility, long-distance combat options, support characters, and so on. From there, players enter a range of options in terms of match rules. That is why Supervive offers squad-based battle royale modes, 4-vs-4 arenas, and other familiar-sounding options, but the game will also hold special event modes. Once in the match, the players take on each other, upgrading their Hunters with loot and avoiding the storm which slowly funnels surviving teams into an ever-smaller patch of map. While there is clearly nothing revolutionary here about the game, the smoothness of the offer of Supervive is clearly striking a chord with MOBA gamers in particular.
Strong Showing
The game has managed to get out of the gate with some great results. It launched into its Steam Early Access on November 20, 2024, and so far, generated over 8,000 reviews, with an average score of 9 out of 10 and a “Very positive” rating. The Steam stats are just as impressive. The game hit an all-time peak concurrent player number of nearly 48,000 and averages around 30,000 concurrent players. There is also a growing community around the game. Its Steam store page has 24,700 followers and a rising amount of video and streaming content. For its launch, it even managed to overcome the number of League of Legends Twitch viewers, showing yet again the appeal that it has for the MOBA players. The holiday season will see more players deciding to try out the game as well.
Next MOBA Evolutionary Step
If Supervive manages to keep the present level of popularity, the next big challenge for the Theorycraft Games will be to keep all those players in the game. That kind of long-term appeal will be tested throughout most of 2025, but at the present moment, its mixture of genres and overall potential to interest the right kind of gamer seems to be holding firm. But, the competitors to Supervive are true giants of gaming. Since both Dota 2 and League of Legends came out, they turned into juggernauts of not just the gaming space, but pop culture as well. LoL presently holds a place in the hearts of millions that is more similar to entities like The Disney Company or other entertainment giants that managed to define entire childhoods for people. So, having a game that can overcome or even replace LoL is an exceedingly high order. But, the more likely outcome is that successful experiments like Supervive will help everyone in the MOBA genre to further evolve and improve their own offer. That is why it is more than likely that 2025 will see Riot Games experiment with new modes and gameplay mechanics in League of Legends. In the end, that is a very desirable outcome. In that kind of future, all big MOBA entities remain in the market, but simply make a bit of room for Supervive, while its popularity allows them to change and improve as well.
Author: Ivica Milaric, game designer and assistant professor of game design at the Novi Sada Academy of Arts, Republic of Serbia