Good News: More Robots. Bad News: Also More Robots

Store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD/
Those of you who’ve been with us for a while might remember that this winter we ran browser playtests and even launched the game on itch — pretty successfully, we’d say. We experimented a lot there: tested different algorithms, explored how itch works, and even built a small internal tool to figure out the best tags for the game.

We wrote a detailed breakdown of those experiments here:

TL;DR: the itch launch was a success — not so much because of wishlists, but because of the incredible feedback you gave us. Seriously, the amount (and quality!) of comments was huge, and it helped us a lot.

So, we moved on to a series of closed playtests where we’re now polishing the core features. If you want to join — hop into our Discord and follow SuperWEIRD updates.

After the closed playtests (keys required), and once we feel confident about the core gameplay, we’ll invite the Discord community to test co-op.

So yeah — join, subscribe, and don’t miss the early tests.

And just to avoid confusion:

If you signed up for the big Steam playtest — the one with the “Request Access” button — that’s a different thing.

That one is an open playtest, and it will happen later, after we’re done with the closed testing phase.

So… what did we do for two months?

Well — we’re building a more complex, expanded version of the game for Steam. The last two months looked like this: release a patch → send keys to new players → watch feedback → repeat.

We’ve done that cycle four times already.

What did we learn?

First of all — we added worker robots.

We were getting comments about this even back in the browser version: splitting one stream of robots into multiple flows just wasn’t very intuitive. It was hard to keep track of who was going where.

But after watching people play the more complex Steam version, it became very clear — we weren’t imagining things. Players simply didn’t understand what they were supposed to do with the robot flow. Sending your precious robots to chop wood instead of defending the base seemed a little painful every time.

So we made a tough call and split them into two types:

1. Workers — they craft and deliver resources
2. Fighters — they follow roads, pick up what they’re given, and go deal with Goofy Goo

The second type spawns automatically. When danger appears, a road appears too — and these robots go take care of the problem.

Your job as a player is to quickly adapt your infrastructure so that worker robots can keep the fighters supplied.

Sometimes… things look like this.

It makes a lot more sense when you actually play it. Trust us.

But overall — this change worked really well.

One weird problem

There was one issue left: when all threats were cleared and no new areas were connected, old robots didn’t know what to do… and just “died.” Players got genuinely worried — it felt like they were doing something wrong.

So we “fixed” it.

How? We changed the animation.

Compare this:

Now, instead of dying, robots just… fold into a little hat. We’re not even joking — that alone solved the problem.

NPCs, cats, and… hydration?

We’re also continuing to add new NPCs.

We’re also thinking about adding a fish that reminds players to drink water if they’ve been playing for too long.

What do you think?

How to get more involved with SuperWEIRD?

To make sure you don't miss any big events (such as playtests), you can:

• Join the closed playtest
• Follow our YouTube channel for the latest development news
• Subscribe to our mailing list to get in-depth stories about the game
• Join our Discord to chat with us directly
• Add the game to your wishlist (click the button on the widget below)

Stay awesome, stay SuperWEIRD!