“Fear does not exist in this dojo, does it?
No, Sensei!
Pain does not exist in this dojo, does it?
No, Sensei!
Defeat does not exist in this dojo, does it?
No, Sensei!”
Karate kid
The ever evolving aspect of early access will never bore me. The fact that we can constantly reshape SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE is really freeing. Obviously we will have to stop one day but it is amazing to see how the game changes and how peeps interact with it.
We redesigned the UI of runs and now we are trying to explore it a bit more. We felt that Ninja and Addict Minds seriously lacked a proper introduction. Up to this point players unlocked the Minds without any possibility for learning their skills and playstyle. Also in SUPERHOT we had a whole opening stages for teaching the player about jumping or hotswitching. It made sense to follow our previous design decisions. Therefore we designed a series of levels that will give a brief run through the way a given Mind works.
For obvious reasons I decided to give you a peek into a level dedicated for Ninja first ;)
Our 3d artist Tomasz managed to pulled off a level that looks nice and clear while at the same time presents the theme in a playful and creative manner.
We didn’t want to just go for the dojo-style level. We wanted to keep the theme but sprinkle it with our “glitch in the system” seasoning. SUPERHOT’s universe is a computer generated world, an artificial simulation of life(life is also a simulation, nothing is real). It is a computer generated world with an obvious flaw. The level needed to resemble this idea. You will be able to notice it in slowly floating rooftops or doors gliding above your head. Whole level gives you this glitchy feeling that we love. A sweet piece of level design within a limited visual language.
Obviously you might never notice any of that stuff since you will be too busy slashing fools into oblivion of nothingness. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. We understand.
Trust no one. The System will set you free.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE- Foundations Update
Hey there!
Today's update will add content that we plan to build upon in the future. Yeah, it will “lay the foundations” for future iterations. Hence the cheezy name, forgive me for that ;). We updated various corners of SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE, traveled far into the system all for the bettering of your experience.
So let’s take a peek at what did we prepare for ya’ll this time:
UI
Pyramid pop up menu.
We came up with an entirely new menu system.
It will lay groundwork for making the progression clearer and more meaningful. Your run through the game will be far more unique due to your own choices. You might go straight through the runs or you might try unlocking a certain parts of the pyramid. You might just be hardcore and try to unlock every single stage in the pyramid.
More details about new pyramid menu over here
Levels
Glitch Barriers
It’s a system that makes geometry suddenly pop out in the middle of a level.
The further you go into the game the more glitched barriers will appear. Levels that you thought you knew will change along with your progression in MCD. This is also an intro to our concept of “glitch in the system”. We are still doing some heavy iterating on this so both how they look and how we use them might change.
A bit more on the Glitchy Goodness here.
Mushrooms
We decreased number of mushrooms on higher difficulties. Personally, me love me some shrooms but we noticed people complain about them spawning like crazy so we listened and complied. Here to serve.
MINDS
We did some minor gameplay optimalisation for all minds:
All MINDs move 10% faster.
MINDs bounce off enemies when jumping on them.
Ninja
I am a shameless Ninja main so all the tweaks for this mind always make me happy. There has been some minor movement of skills in mods menu for general gameplay sake. But important change comes with the addition (or tweak actually) of TrickThrow, previously BouncyShuriken. It will make easier catching thrown projectiles and on top of that it will unlock piercing enemies on all knife throwables . After current update you will be able to pull off some spectacular and ridiculous combos.
Exact Ninja changes :
Moved Faster Movement MOD to different category.
HiddenShuriken moved to tier 1 (from tier 3)
Recall shuriken moved to tier 2.
Changed BouncyShuriken to TrickThrow.
Moved TrickThrow to tier 3.
TrickThrow makes all shuriken-like throwables bounce back toward the
player after hitting an enemy.
TrickThrow makes all knife-like throwables pierce through enemies.
Added DeathStomp MOD as tier 2 MOD.
Cutting bullets is easier even without deflect bullets MOD.
Enemies
Again, you made some valid and reasonable comments regarding enemies so we tried to deliver. Someone made a good point about concrete guys not feeling as “concrete”. We try to make them feel different by changing how certain actions work on them. One of those experiments led to changes in throwables. From now on they will stick to them instead of killing.
Another change comes to Red Dudes (or Agents as some of you pointed out) with katanas. Up to this point they weren’t really creating much danger. As Czarek once called them, they were “Katana delivery” rather than an actual threat.
So we gave those poor guys an option to cut off your hands if you try to attack them unarmed.
They even wave you goodbye :)
P.S.
A lot of you pointed out at the lack of story updates (who knew, people actually care about story, damn). We had to steal all the guys responsible for Story Updates to fill up the ranks for Mechanical Updates.At the moment we are looking for new peeps to help out with shaping the content of MCD plot.
tl;dr Story updates are suspended until we refill our story driven ranks.
That's it. Go test this update out and let us know what you think.
Hug people. All of them.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
MCD Friday DevLog#11 - GLITCH
"A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix.
It happens when they change something."
Trinity
Hey you.
Next week we are dropping another update so I’ll try to keep this DevLog short and spoiler free ;) .
In SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE we are aiming at that growing sense of “error in the system”. That something went wrong. Something breaks down and is out of place. This might be anything from a car stuck in the wall to an abrupt dead end in a level.
Up to this moment those hints of “cracks in the system “ were mostly visual. So if the player wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings (which is completely understandable if red, crystal guys are shooting at you) he might miss some of those hints and system easter eggs. Nothing wrong with that but we realised that we might try achieving the same increasingly glitchy feeling with a bit of meddling into gameplay itself.
We did some experimenting with different elements of gameplay and came up with few cool concepts.
One of those experiments led us to glitch barriers (don’t quote me on the name though).
"Was that here before?"
"A wall in the end of stairs...very useful"
Think of them as a border or a plane that suddenly pops out in the middle of a level.
The further you go into the game the more glitched barriers will appear. Levels that you thought you knew will change along with your progression in MCD. This will influence how you play the game since it screws around with what you are accustomed to.
"What??"
We all have our habits and patterns that we create unconsciously. Glitch barriers will be one of a few ways to break those, making SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE a bit less predictable and therefore more exciting.
How they look and are setup on the level might change a lot so please don’t get used to them too much. Treat them as a prototype for now.
There is still more stuff we experiment with but let’s leave something for the next DevLogs.
Exercise daily.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
MCD Friday DevLog #10 -THE PYRAMID
Hey
GUI of SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE has always been a bit of an issue for us. You see, up to this point we have been using GUI based on SUPERHOT and it’s all fine and dandy but those are two slightly different games. MCD is not as linear with playthroughs as SUPERHOT and our GUI should be able to reflect that. Hence the introduction of Pyramid GUI for runs!
Each sector of the pyramid will have to be unlocked with HotCoins. You will not only unlock next runs but Minds and additional bonuses as well.
Will it change much? Well yes and no. It will give us a shit ton of possibilities to diversify how you play MCD. Completion of runs will obviously stay the same. You will just have more choices to make along the way.
Some parts of the pyramid might be impossible to unlock straight away unless you grind out enough HotCoins others might need a a bit of exploration of the internet.exe side of MCD.
This will make players progression through the game unique to their own choices. You might go straight through the runs or you might try unlocking a certain parts of the pyramid. You might just be hardcore and try to unlock every single stage in the pyramid. Your choice :)
Why pyramid though?
First and foremost it lends itself well design-wise and theme-wise . Additionally it fits nicely within SUPERHOT universe lore. Yep we do have lore.
Overall It’s a small change but it will open up possibilities for our future shenanigans in SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE.
PS. If've you read my previous DevLog you might be wondering who will get the swag bags.The pictures were pretty vouge so this wasn't easy.
Well here are the winners:
fergus8quin
Aliencore
JustAnotherAnon
Since I made up the rules I can break them, I will give bonus awards for going DEEP with the analysis for:
the_arioch and
Cú Cuinn
I will contact you all to get your home address and stalk you at night send the package :) .
Brush your teeth daily.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
MCD Friday DevLog #9 - A GLIMPSE
Heeey
Last week was pretty darn busy for us with SXSW and GDC back to back.
Fortunately we have won Gamers Voice Award for SUPERHOT VR and a few days later we received best AR/VR Award during GDC!
This was pretty crazy experience. SXSW was especially interesting since we had a possibility to meet and mingle with players at our booth.
I thought that to compensate for the last week’s lack of update I will make this less bloated with text and a bit more visual. During a week of my absence from SUPERHOT studio, guys made some really fun content. Not everything will be available straight away in the upcoming SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE update but I had to at least give you peek :) .
As the title suggest I obliged myself to give you a glimpse into upcoming levels/content.
What I haven’t done for quite some time is to give you guys a bit of a tease before we have an actual release of content. Please keep in mind that, since it is early access, design might change ten times on a daily basis.
So without further ado:
Can you tell anything from them? What is the main theme of each level? What are those locations?
Let us know what you think about them.
Oh and first three people to guess the themes of levels will get a swag bag from us ;) .
No, seriously just guess the themes of upcoming levels and I will send you a reward.
Back to work
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE-Skills Pay The Bills Update
Hey there!
How about that? Another update!
This one really adds a lot of “umpf” to the general gameplay.
We made some changes to MINDS so that they differentiate from each other even more.
I feel that we are getting closer to that overall vision that we had in the beginning. We are slowly giving the players features and gameplay mechanics that we wanted. It’s still a long way ahead but this update should hopefully give you glimpse into the future of SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE ;)
Let’s get right to it shall we?
Gameplay:
EXPAND MENU
Due to clarity reasons we did some tweaking of the overall look. As you might noticed EXPAND menu gained several different MODs for each of our MINDS. Therefore you can create custom builds for your runs. They really change the feel of the game and give a ton of new satisfying solutions.
Another obvious thing that you will notice is the fact that we replaced score with HC (Hot Coins).
You will acquire them by completing levels and decrypting new runs. In the future we plan to add several new ways of amassing HotCoin wealth but for the time being we need to tackle how the general economy works.
HC will be used to unlock new MODs for your MINDS. Once unlocked it will give you an option to chose another, more advanced MOD.
We removed Full Heal MOD but from now players will autoheal 1 heart once they reach the store.
NINJA
Oh me likey Ninja. After this update I enjoy it even more.
Ninja starts the game with 2 hearts and can't increase their number.
Also from the beginning of the game Ninja will use Soft Punches and Lousy shooter MODs. Which basically means that it will take one more punch for Ninja to finish a guy and his reload time is a bit longer as well.
All that is not important really. What is important is the new Deflect Bullets MOD. No one button nonsense. It’s skill based. It’s timing based. It’s sexy. It’s satisfying as hell and you will die a lot while trying it. Fun!
All the Ninja MODS are as follows:
Faster Movement (Uhm you move faster)
Deflect bullets (Slice bullets to send them back at the enemy.)
Piercing katana (Thrown Katana goes through multiple enemies)
Master Swordsman (Increased range and speed of katana slashes)
Recall shuriken (Recall your piercing throwables just like a katana)
Bouncy shuriken (Piercing throwables bounce off enemies)
Hidden shuriken (Pressing “throw” when unarmed spawns a shuriken)
ADDICT
Addict now starts with Soft Hotswitch instead of Hotswitch MOD. That means that enemies will only get stunned after your Hotswitch.
Addict starts with 3 hearts and can't increase their number.
Even though I still have a soft spot for Ninja those MODs really made me smile.
Addict will have three levels of hotswitch now. THREE! Dude, just reach Ultra Hotswitch! No question asked.
MODS for Addict:
Start with pistol (Start every level with a pistol)
Start with shotgun (Start every level with a shotgun)
Start with rifle (Start every level with a rifle)
Strong punches (Break the enemy with one less strike)
Strong Throws ( It take less throwables to break enemies)
Slomo jump (Jump in slow motion by holding space)
Hotswitch ( Disposed body breaks after Hotswitch)
Perfect Hotswitch (Switched body doesn’t lose his weapon)
Ultra Hotswitch (You can hotswitch multiple times in a row)
MUSHROOMS
Oh and boy oh boy we have Mushrooms as well! You know that type of red mushrooms that grow on the wall and explode with a glorious cloud of bullets whenever you get to close or shoot them? They also make this creepy sound to let you know about their location? Spawn on levels on higher difficulties?
No? Ok so read up about them over HERE .
Bugfixes
Minor fixes for existing bugs.
Potentially a ton of new bugs ;)
Keep cool and call your mum sometimes.
Szymon From SUPERHOT Team
MCD Friday DevLog #8 - MODIFICATIONS
"Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time." Alfred Russel Wallace
Hey
So this will be a mixture of topics because there is a few things I want you guys to be up to date with.
SUPERHOT is 2 years old!
First and foremost SUPERHOT has been released over 2 years ago! Damn time flies(enter a time joke here).You can watch how the game changed throughout the years of development on our Anniversary stream over HERE. That was a very sweet trip down the memory lane and, personally some stuff where a first see for me as well. Thanks for being with us all this time.
Dude where is my story update?
I know that a lot of you await story updates and worry what the heck happened with them.
They are coming. We haven’t resigned from separate story updates but we had to leave the crazy two per month schedule thing since it was taking a toll on the quality of the content. Our story dev team iterated like crazy but not every single change was visible on the surface (like the behaviour tree a bit more about it over here). We want the Story Updates to be a wee more beefy so from now on we will release them on a less regular schedule. Next story update should arrive later March.
Soo what about next gameplay update?
Oh we plan to drop it on ya’ll on 8th of March. There will be a bunch of updates to the “core” SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE gameplay.
One of those will be an update to the in-game shop. Finally, right?Choice in our mod store has been scarce to say the least ;) .
We needed to give a bit more options to the hands of the players as soon as possible.
So before adding new mind it only made sense to actually give people more options in the shop
Therefore upcoming unlockable mods in the store will be focused around two current minds Addict and Ninja.
Available purchase will revolve around current skills and themes of Minds and expand them to add a bit more depth to the gameplay.
So let’s do a short run through what’s in store (hah I made myself smirk).
Preview of upcoming mods in MCD store.
Addict Mods:
Start with (weapon) -A set of mods that allow player to start with specific weapon (pistol, shotgun,
rifle, katana etc)
Strong punches -Punches deal one more point of damage (Basically it will take two punches
to get job done instead of three).
Ultra Hotswitch -After performing a hotswitch you have X seconds until the cooldown kicks in.
During that time you can keep hotswitching as many times as you want. The
cooldown is longer than in normal hotswitch.
Ninja Mods:
Piercing katana -Thrown katana can go through multiple enemies.
Master Swordsman -Higher range and lower cooldown on melee katana attack
Shuriken recall -Can summon not only his katana but also any other “sticky” throwable. Just
press “E” while targeting a throwable.
That’s it folks. I will give you a full run through mods and all remaining goodness next week after we release the update.
Stay healthy, sleep at least 8 hours.
Szymon from SUPERHOT team
MCD DEV LOG #7 - SHROOMS
“The only evil that associates itself with mushrooms is taking too little.” Terence McKenna
Mushrooms are truly special beings. They thrive on dead matter and can’t really be considered a plant due to the lack of chlorophyll. They are in the kingdom of their own. Weird and powerful.
Spore.
Here in SUPERHOT studio our minds tend to wander. We let it go so that ideas can come.That’s how you make magic. You let it happen.
One day Panos, our hot-headed level designer, came crashing down the studio with this unhealthy glow on his face.
“Shrooms!” He yelled.
“Mushrooms are the environmental Hazard!” We could still hear his voice long after he locked himself in his room.
Two days passed. No one knew whether Panos sleeps in the studio or starts work really early. You could only hear his roaring voice coming from his room. Well, at least we knew he is alive.
On a third day he came back. A bit thinner, hair resembling a forest after a storm, with a smirk cutting across his pale face.
“Thi-this! Play this, Szymon, ask nothing!” Said Panos with an order in his stare.
So I did. Mushrooms have arrived.
Mycelium.
Those were the early days of a very early prototype of exploding “mushrooms”. Once shot at or triggered with a throwable they responded with a burst of bullets, killing everything in radius. Simply "beautiful destruction" (I borrowed that term from Cub Swanson, he deserves your googling) with a puzzlish twist.
"Hmm should I shoot that thing on the wall?"
"Oooh Snap!"
While creating so many game object bullets might be dreadful for our fps count it opened up so many tactical opportunities for players that we simply didn’t care. We had to implement it in MIND CONTROL DELETE as soon as possible.
Andrzej, one of our programmers jumped on this task with a fury and dedication. We are still testing it and working on optimization but if everything will go according to plan you should be able to test our shrooms in the next update ;)
Mature mushroom.
Andrzej is currently adding some randomization element to them. So they might fit more into our glitched feel of MCD. We want our shrooms to spawn in various spots and have also different spread of their deadly spores.
MIND CONTROL DELETE mushroom in it's natural environment.
While it brings an undeniable joy to shoot multiple red dudes with one glitch mushroom ,they also bring a bit of stress to the table.You see,not only the player is entitled to use them, enemies can trigger them as well. Now when you play MCD you have to plan your next moves not only according to enemy placement but also those damn shrooms.
Hopefully soon you will be able to have a go at them yourself.
Stay healthy and exercise daily.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
MCD DEV LOG #6 -TREE OF POSSIBILITIES
“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.“ Joyce Kilmer
Hey there.
Sometimes we make an advancement in certain part of the game that comes unnoticed. It might streamline our workflow and deeply enrich the game but on the receiving end, in the hands of the player, it might end up completely overlooked.
A great example of such situation might be with our recent addition of new behaviour tree system to SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE.One of our programmers Marcin Jozwik came up with a pretty judicious solution for, till now, quite linear story development systems in our game.
Look a tree.
So what is it?
In last Story Update, the system of relationships between individual elements boiled down to a one-to-one relationship, each new story element (like our ASCII article, note, chat) has been unlocked only by one condition. That would be actions like opening a specific article or conducting a particular conversation. With the development of our ASCII Story part of the game, such a basic system started to become insufficient. The demand for more complex unlocking conditions for individual elements increased and more emphasis was put on integration with events from the "core" gameplay elements of MCD. That is why, with the upcoming story update, a new dependency management system based on behavior trees will be introduced. Designers will get a fresh, new visual editor in the Unity engine based on the xNode library.
So now individual relations (one action - one reaction) shall be replaced by logical expressions. This will enable us to create waaay more complex conditions consisting of a combination of sequences and selectors.
So uhm, what does it do exactly?
Well let’s say we want you to be able to unlock a certain page in MCD internet.exe . Previously you would have to do exactly specific action in certain part of the game to do that. Now we can check multiple actions for that, not only one. Also since we can present any event from the game as a node (eg. shooting 123 red guys, beating a highscore in your run or playing ninja 1000 times) it makes it possible to consider it as condition for unlocking the given story element. It gives us multiple options for designing how to blend story with gameplay without having to change the game code. Coolness!
Tl;dr We can do more cool shit. Trees are awesome.
Stay safe,stay healthy eat your greens.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
MIND CONTROL DELETE Patch Notes (Alpha 2.0.1m)
Hey there
We released a patch with some teeny fixes for MIND CONTROL DELETE today.
Bug fixes:
hotswitch into enemy with knife will not detach your hands from your body
spelling of rogue corrected
shooting into glitch weapon enemies hand does not make them drop
weapons
small tweaks on replays
Stay safe and drink your green tea.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team
