Hey Super Animals! Thank you for an incredible Super Animal World launch, and for all the feedback so far. It’s been a huge help as we plan what’s next, and it helped guide a lot of what we prioritized in the roadmap below.

We've also got a bit more context on what we’re focusing on first and why. Also: despite their size, we managed to sneak Super Elephants into the Research Lab this week. More on that later, but first let’s jump straight into what’s coming next to the island.


v2.0 was a massive lift for the team. It reshaped the game loop around the Social Hub, added story quests, and introduced new activities like fishing, bug catching, and hamsterball racing. Shipping all of that at once was a huge effort, but we didn’t want you waiting until 2026 to get your paws on it, so the team pushed hard to ship it by the end of the year.

The goal was to get a strong foundation in place and keep building on it this year. We wouldn’t call it “Early Access 2.0” because SAR is already a very mature game after 8 years of development, but for the Social Hub side of things, it’s the start of a new era of iteration. We’re getting back to regular quarterly seasonal updates, which means a faster feedback loop and more chances to polish and expand what v2.0 kicked off. We’re going to keep building on the Social Hub, but we’re also shifting more attention back to the battle royale and our other game modes, with improvements and polish across the board.

Everything in this roadmap is subject to change as we dig into building it all, but we wanted to give you a sense of our upcoming priorities and how we’re thinking about the next updates to SAR, while still keeping a few surprises up our super sleeves!

The Year of the Super Horse event kicks off next month with new Super Animals, challenges and cosmetics!

It’ll also include some smaller quality of life improvements, like tagging certain quests as “long-term” so they don’t clutter your HUD, tuning down a handful of quests that were a bit too difficult, and making Louie’s later pearl hunting quests more forgiving. We also spent some time cleaning up smaller stuff, like typos, a few hamsterball race track tweaks, and some behind-the-scenes optimizations that reduce memory usage (especially helpful on Switch).

This will be our first big update since Super Animal World, and we’re packing it with improvements based on your feedback. Now that v2.0 is live, we’ll be iterating faster with big seasonal updates throughout the year, starting with one early this spring.

You can look forward to highly requested UI upgrades like a search bar for cosmetics in Customize, faster and easier queuing (and re-queuing), and more polish across our newer screens and features. We’re also improving the Social Hub experience for groups, including making it easier to get onto the same server as your friends.

We’re shifting more focus back to the battle royale and our other core game modes too. We can’t share all the details just yet, but we’re actively working on it now, so keep the feedback coming. We’ve also heard you on match fullness, so we’re designing a Featured Mode system to encourage players to queue into specific modes (including Hamsterball Racing) at certain times, while still keeping your freedom to play what you want.

Beyond the Major Spring Update, we’ve also been planning the rest of the year and have a few items we’re particularly excited about to share.

You might have noticed the beaver construction site in the northwest of Murre Woods. The beavers are still hard at work, and later this year they’ll be unveiling a museum where you can view all the bugs you’ve caught. And yes, your fish will be getting a proper place to show off too. We’re also planning to keep expanding bug catching and fishing over time as we build out those systems and mechanics.

That’s right, we’ll be doing more collabs, and we already have a few lined up! We’re especially excited to team up with other indie studios and highlight games we love, like our collab with Snoozy Kazoo for the in-game Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion items (which will return once our new collab setup is ready).

If there’s an indie game or character you’d love to see in SAR, let us know. We can’t promise anything, but we’re always happy to reach out and see what we can make happen!

Despite SAR’s cute combatants and terrible puns, a lot of you have gotten really, really good at this silly animal game over the years, and we love watching it. We’ve always loved seeing your skill on display in things like SAR Tonight’s Superest Kills segment. We want to do a better job supporting competitive play going forward, while still keeping SAR easy to pick up and welcoming.

We won’t try to turn SAR into an esport (unless Donk and Howl force us), and we’re definitely not done adding wacky stuff either. But we do think there’s room to better support competitive play without sanding down the chaos everywhere else, and we’ve got a few ideas we want to test later this year. We also want it to still feel like SAR even when things get intense and competitive: friendly, funny, and not too serious.

Now that the Social Hub is up and running, it’s time to keep expanding it and adding more things to do. We’ve got new activities and world events planned, along with more quest lines and NPCs to meet.

If there’s anything you’d like to see added, let us know! Except gambling. Gambling gets suggested a lot and we can’t do that.


We figured you’d have a lot of questions, so we’re hosting a Reddit AMA on r/animalroyale this Tuesday, January 20th at 5pm PT until 6pm PT!

Come ask us anything about Super Animal Royale, Super Animal World, Pixile Studios, or what’s next! We’ll do our best to answer as many as we can. :)


And if you want another opportunity to hang out and ask questions, Pixile Plays is returning to Twitch next Thursday, January 22nd at 3pm PT! Join Kaity, Logan, and Michael as we play some games and chat with the community.

Make sure to follow our Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv] so you get a notification for when we’re live.


Now that we’ve addressed most of the elephants in the room… let’s address four more. (Sorry.) Super Elephants are available in the Research Lab!

• Super Elephant
  
• Super African Elephant
  
• Super Pink Elephant
  
• Super White Elephant

The Lab Labs are always working on new Super Animals, so let us know what you’d like to see next in the comments or on Discord.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/997360/Super_Animal_Royale_Soundtrack/
Catbaux’s amazing Super Animal World tracks are out now for your listening pleasure on streaming platforms like Bandcamp[catbaux.bandcamp.com], Spotify[open.spotify.com], and Apple Music[music.apple.com]! The Steam soundtrack has also been updated with the new tracks if you’d like to support Catbaux further.

Watch the full playlist on YouTube


At the time of posting this, our Dr. Dogna and Zombie Joe Youtooz pre-orders end in about 24 hours, closing at 12pm PT on Friday, January 16th!

Pre-order here: https://youtooz.com/collections/super-animal-royale

As a bonus, they both include in-game cosmetics:

• Dr. Dogna includes a code for the new Mini Tiger With Wire pet
  
• Zombie Joe Monitor Buddiez 2-pack includes two in-game Zombie Joe hats

We hope you enjoy this look into what we’re working on and we can’t wait to answer more of your questions! Your continued support means so much to us.

For all the latest Super Animal Royale news, subscribe to our ​​newsletter[animalroyale.com] and follow us on:

[bsky.app][discord.gg]You can also follow us on Facebook[facebook.com], Instagram[instagram.com], Reddit, TikTok[tiktok.com], and Threads[threads.net].

See you on the island, Super Animals!

- Michael, Logan, & the Community team

It’s hard to believe Super Animal World has already been out for two whole weeks. It’s been a blast playing with all of you, and we’ve loved seeing your clips from around the island!

Now it’s time for the third and final week of CRISPRmas celebrations. With all three weeks now unlocked, you have until Friday, January 2nd to complete the full set of challenges and unlock all of the event rewards before CRISPRmas wraps up for this year.


A true CRISPRmas miracle has also arrived in the Research Lab: the Super Toy Horse! It may look like a hand-painted wooden toy straight from Santa Claws’ workshop, but thanks to Dr. Dogna and the Lab Labs, it’s fully alive, kicking, and ready to gallop its way to the top of the food chain. And as with all event breeds, it’s a permanent addition, so you can unlock it at your own pace, even after the CRISPRmas festivities conclude.

• Candy Cane Glasses | Collect Candy Canes (1337)
  
• 1500 XP | Smash Snowmen (15)
  
• Oversized Knitted Sweater | Get Melee Kills (3)
  
• 750 Carl Coins | Dance at the Penguin Palace Stage
  
• Cinnamon Sticks | Get a Kill at Penguin Palace

• Super Toy Horse (Available at level 60)

Enter code CRISPRMAS in the main menu to redeem Santa Claws’ outfit and get into the spirit of giving! Just don’t ask where we got it. This one’s on him.

• Santa Hat
  
• Santa Outfit
  
• Santa Beard

Quick reminder if you’ve been thinking about grabbing one: our Super Animal Royale x Youtooz vinyl figure pre-orders are open until January 9th!

Pre-order here: https://youtooz.com/collections/super-animal-royale

As a bonus, they both include in-game cosmetics:

• Dr. Dogna includes a code for the new Mini Tiger With Wire pet
  
• Zombie Joe Monitor Buddiez 2-pack includes two in-game Zombie Joe hats

We hope you all love them as much as we do, and find really creative places to stick your Monitor Buddiez. Send us pics on our socials or Discord if you do!


We also rolled out a number of bug fixes this week. Additional fixes are still on the way for Nintendo Switch, so thanks for your patience. And thanks as well for all your reports! They’ve been a huge help in tracking down some of the issues that were harder to spot until servers were live and busy.

• Updated dialogue translations and fixed several cases where the dialogue bubble would glitch out due to formatting.
  
• Quests that end with a cutscene will now play the video even if the player cancels out of the dialogue early before getting to it.
  
• Reduced cases of “Matchmaking request timed out” errors.
  
• Players can now use the matchmake accept hotkey while fishing and during item show-off (accepting is no longer blocked).
  
• Fixed the BananOS character animation playing while fishing.
  
• Fixed a bug where the matchmaking queue wouldn’t reset for other party members if the party leader disconnected.
  
• Hit animation now plays for victims of the tundra monster.
  
• Fixed tracked quest UI not updating progress.
  
• Fixed Bug Spray melee missing a swing sound.
  
• Fixed gems appearing in the Welcome Center after using the photo booth.
  
• Fixed the gem reveal emote not showing gems in transparent photo booth photos.
  
• Controller users with (A) bound to 'Use / Pickup' no longer have NPC dialogue and responses accidentally skip.
  
• Fixed binding (A) on controller glitching out in settings.
  
• Fixed one of the mole NPC icons being incorrect.
  
• Fixed the Supercharge Fox icon.
  
• Fixed Fish Frenzy on the map sometimes appearing blank.
  
• Fixed a missing translation on the default controls popup.
  
• News entries now only show the external link icon when they open in your browser rather than in-game.

If you want to see all the huge new features included in the Super Animal World expansion that launched earlier this month, including Week 1 of CRISPRmas challenges and rewards, check out the full Steam patch notes here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/843380/view/622187705533466306

Week 2 of CRISPRmas can be found here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/843380/view/648085384362722669

Keep up to date on what’s happening on the island by following us on:

[bsky.app][discord.gg]You can also follow us on Facebook[facebook.com], Instagram[instagram.com], Reddit, TikTok[tiktok.com], and Threads[threads.net].

Before we sign off for the holidays, we wanted to express one more extra-big thank you to all of you. Super Animal World is the single biggest project we’ve ever attempted, and these past few weeks have been a whirlwind, so it’s meant a lot to see so many of you showing up with your friends to play and enjoy it.

We’re going to take some much-needed time to rest and recharge, and then come back ready to keep polishing, improving, and building on this new foundation for the game. We’re also really looking forward to getting back into a steady rhythm of quarterly major updates so we can move faster and keep expanding SAW in meaningful ways.

Once we’re back and have had a chance to digest all your feedback, we’ll share a clearer look at what we’re focusing on next, along with a few of our biggest takeaways from launch.

Until then, we hope you all enjoy the holidays and have fun on the island, whether questing, exploring, or battling. Merry CRISPRmas and Happy New Year, Super Animals!