Over 3 years in the making, Supraworld is the latest in the Supraland series, 3D metroidvania exploration games with a focus on interactivity and challenging puzzles. A new trailer revealed this week shows off the shiny graphics and teases some of the denizens and puzzles you'll encounter in this long-awaited bigger-and-better sequel.
The first Supraland arrived back in 2019 and amassed quite a large audience of fans with its open 3D world, multitude of secrets, unlockable abilities and most of all, its commitment to well-designed, satisfying puzzles. Too many games in the metroidvania realm of exploration-platformers focus on the platforming and combat and leave the problem solving and thinking as a surface-level afterthought, and this is a series proudly pushing back against that trend. Supraland: Six Inches Under followed in 2022, a subterranean sequel that was also very well received.
The series occupies an interesting niche in the puzzle-game landscape: they're bigger and more visually impressive than lots of the fan favorites in our scene, and the sort-of-stick-figure stylings along with lots of other typical videogame trappings might give an immediate impression of something crafted with a younger or more mainstream audience in mind. But they've turned out to be the rare series of games that finds a way to bridge that gap: appealing to a wide range of gamers while being deep enough to come highly recommended by many puzzle aficionados.
Here are some excerpts from the Supraworld Steam page, advertising this focus on exploration and problem solving over combat:
Most of the time is spent exploring, solving puzzles and doing detective work. Combat is a relatively small part of the game and is sometimes also puzzle heavy.
Supraworld trusts you to be clever and is not holding your hand. Therefore the target audience are experienced players who are tired of the same old generic adventure games and are longing for something that challenges and surprises them in new ways.
There is pretty much no useless decoration in the game. Everything you see is there for a specific reason; and it's not to clutter up your monitor with useless details.
My bet is that lots of these statements sound very appealing to many in our audience. Supraworld is still currently in the phase of a generic "coming soon" release window, but this latest trailer bodes well for more news soon. You can wishlist the game on Steam, and if you want to dip your toes into the series, the previous entry Six Inches Under is currently 60% off.
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