Super Animal Royale

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 64 Competitive / Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Super Animal Royale, released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a multiplayer-focused free-to-play “Battle Royale”-style game that takes the well-established formula from games like Fortnite and Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds and applies it to the Two-Stick Shooter genre, with a cute, cartoony animal aesthetic.

As far as that aesthetic goes, this game doesn’t do anything super-impressive, but it works well enough for the gameplay, using simple 2D artwork for the characters and the locales they’ll be fighting in. The sound, likewise, is serviceable but nothing special, with decent gun noises, various animal noises, and energetic music in menus and between rounds but not during gameplay. I will note that at least a few times, there seemed to be a bit of lag that caused characters to jump from one location to another, but this was mostly brief and didn’t impact gameplay too much.

As for that gameplay, this is mostly a pretty good pairing of the Two-Stick Shooter genre and the battle royale genre. As one would expect from a game like Fortnite, players are dropped off by parachute from an air bus (flown by a giant bird), scrounging for a variety of weapons from what they can find, and moving to a safe spot to avoid incoming poisonous fog, all while fighting off enemies. Players can dodge roll, and even make use of two fairly unique “vehicles” – an emu mount that increases speed but keeps players from nabbing pickups unless they dismount, and a giant hamster ball that provides limited protection against incoming fire, and can automatically kill enemies it rolls over, but prevents players from grabbing pickups and using weapons while inside, and is a bit unwieldy to control.

The core mechanics and basic idea behind this game are all pretty sound, although I do wish the game made it clearer when your gun needs to reload or runs out of ammo beyond the indicator in the corner of the screen. Also, I feel like some of the game’s special items and mechanics aren’t really properly explained. Players aren’t even told during the very brief tutorial what they’re collecting duct tape for, or how to use health pickups.

Beyond this, I think my main complaint about this game is a lack of variety. There’s a decent selection of weapons, but there’s not much in the way of other upgrades, and it would have been nice to have more to choose from in that regard. Also, there aren’t very many match types – you can go solo, with one partner, or with a small group, and there’s a limited-time event that throws in a random modifier like turning all bullets into bananas or limits players to only handguns.

Before I finish, I should mention the game’s microtransactions. The warning at the top of this article is one I include standard for any game that uses microtransactions, but here they’re not really all that offensive at all. Players can spend real-world money to get currency to purchase in-game content. However, this is all cosmetic-only, and given that this is a free-to-play game, and the game isn’t overly-aggressive in trying to sell this content to you, I feel like this is pretty reasonable.

I’m hopeful that Super Animal Royale will build on what’s already here, because this game does a good job bringing the battle royale format to Two-Stick Shooter-style gameplay. It could definitely use more game modes and a wider variety of support items, and it could do a better job of conveying some information to the player, but overall this game is well worth a look for fans of Action games looking for some good online competition.

tl;dr – Super Animal Royale is a free-to-play game that combines the Two-Stick Shooter with battle royale-style online multiplayer play, and it does a pretty good job balancing those two elements. There’s definitely room for improvement in numerous areas, and it feels like the game could use more content, but this is overall a solid entry in the genre worth giving a try.

Grade: B

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best New Free-To-Play Game

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