SUPERHOT was released half a decade ago. Thats a hell of a lot of time.
Here are 5 years' worth of memories stitched together in a lovely little video. Enjoy.
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Since the release of SUPERHOT a lot has happened. We have grown from a tiny indie team into a fully fledged game studio.
We expanded the SUPERHOT franchise with new titles, helped publish other games, got a bunch of office doggos, switched to full remote and a whole lot more.
5 years is a great time as any to take a look back at what happened. Lets take a stroll down memory lane, shall we? :)
SUPERHOT prototype
SUPERHOT came to be during a 7day fps game jam.
A bunch of people got together to make a shooter game in a week. This was way back in 2013 (!). We were far less experienced but compensated with blissful ignorance and enthusiasm.
One week old baby SUPERHOT
After we released the SUPERHOT prototype it made waves in the gaming community.
It exploded on youtube. Was trending hard on Reddit. We broke Steam greenlight records within days. That was a crazy moment and running a Kickstarter campaign was the only logical solution from that point.
You can still play the prototype that started it all right here. Around 50k people a month are still playing the prototype on our website which is absurdly cool.
SUPERHOT around the time we completed our Kickstarter campaign
We came back to development and worked on SUPERHOT for a solid 8 extra months. During that time we've fixed a lot of the problems with the original version of the game, iterated heavily on the art style, and experimented with fun, new scenarios for the levels.
By the time we began the Kickstarter campaign, SUPERHOT already had solid support from the gaming community. This helped tremendously with the campaign. Not only with funding but also with spreading the word.
Weve asked for 100k and weve ended up with twice as much. Shit got real, really fast. Thanks to enormous support from Kickstarter backers we managed to jump into the full development process.
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SUPERHOT Beta gameplay trailer
On August 1st, 2015 we've released our beta.
20 levels, first glimpses into the story, endless mode and improved graphics. We don't miss the shotgun though, although we still get emails asking to bring that ugly thing back.
Fast forward to Feb 25th, 2016 SUPERHOT comes out!
Here is our glorious office and bombastic party from the day of release.
We took our sweet time making SUPERHOT. What started out as a small passion project ended up becoming a 2.5 year adventure. SUPERHOT has far outgrown our wildest expectations.
We also never abandoned SUPERHOT. We love the game and do our best to keep it alive and up to date to this day. Since that launch, weve patched the game 41 times on Steam alone. Weve ported it to pretty much every platform and made it available on every store too.
SUPERHOT VR
Immersion level 1000
Not many people remember that literally months after the release of SUPERHOT we finished the development of SUPERHOT VR. We managed to take a short break and we jumped straight back into development. That was crazy times. We had literally no idea what we were doing and VR was this weird unknown world with few rules or guidelines.
SUPERHOT VR dev at work
We experimented hard with VR and made some (in hindsight) bold design decisions that luckily worked out well. Development was a bit of a whirlwind (to say the least) but we managed to make something we were happy with.
Somehow we managed to release SUPERHOT VR just months shy of SUPERHOT launch.
Honestly, we didnt put much faith into it. We were surprised by the reception it got. We ported SUPERHOT VR to every possible VR platform. To this day it is one of top selling platforms on any VR headset.
MCD RELEASE
A few months ago, during a global pandemic, with the whole office working from homes in their pyjamas, we released our third game; SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE.
Boy that was a ride. Originally weve planned to give something back to the gaming community. We aimed for a free level pack for SUPERHOT owners. Nothing big really. Few levels with some fancy game mechanic for added variety.
Life happened and three years later we ended up with a game bigger than the original SUPERHOT. How that happened is a story for a different post.
What matters though is that the only idea we didnt change was the intention to give the game away for free to everyone that bought SUPERHOT before the MCD release date.
Who would have thought that giving away a game for free, to around 2 million players, on different platforms might cause any problems :)
In the end, everything went great. The community loved the game as well as the soundtrack. Oh right there even is a soundtrack done by the great Dj Zardonic.
SUPERHOT guest starring in other games
Surprisingly SUPERHOT became a popular homage topic in the gamedev community. You can find quite a number of titles where SUPERHOT is being featured in one form or another.It's an honour and privilege (really) to see how SUPERHOT and the time only moves when you do game mechanic has inspired other creative souls. There have been SUPERHOT homages in video games, in art and in videos. Theyre all amazing and we always get a huge kick out of seeing these.
For example, There Is No Game, What The Golf, Clustertruck, Cooking Sim, Book of Demons, or SUPER IS HOT plus many many more. Go check em out.
Our never ending thanks to the talented folk who put these together.
SUPERHOT PRESENTS
As a company, SUPERHOT has always been fiercely independent and in complete creative control. We came up and stayed properly indie with no publishers or investors to answer to, nobody is holding us back from doing weird and crazy things (like giving away MCD).
We were lucky to build SUPERHOT at a time when support from our amazing Kickstarter community, the support we got from within the gamedev industry, and our own foolhardy nature were enough to build a healthy studio with nobody but ourselves calling all the shots.
Another of those weird and crazy things in SUPERHOT PRESENTS.
We set out on a mission to find cool, fun, unusual games that might need some help (funding) and support (still funding but also unsolicited advice and mentoring). Our little way to give something back to gamedev community. This mission has been a super success and a few courageous teams decided to join our gang. Without further ado, we proudly present Frog Detective, Knuckle Sandwich, The Procession to Calvary and Teenage Blob!
Soon we will be able to announce another cool game. Stay tuned.
SUPERHOT changed our lives. No really, it did.
A small indie game opened a world to us. Suddenly we were accepting awards overseas, big companies wanted to help with porting our games.
During those 5 years, time moved when we moved. It moved very fast and we experienced a lot of marvelous moments along with some hiccups. Fortunately, we got blessed by a community full of beautiful people that carried us through everything.
Thank you for the 5 years and heres to 105 more!
SUPERHOT Team
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