The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE

Hey There

In this fresh out of a game editor update we bring you four new levels, refreshed melee enemies mechanics, a sprinkle of latest challenges aaaand a new Mind!
Let’s get to it, shall we?


Introducing Dog Mind.
Having its lore roots reaching far into original SUPERHOT this fellow has far different playstyle than you might be used to. Considerably more hectic and rapid in playstyle. Dog Mind concentrates more on melee, in your face, close quarters combat rather than “traditional” SUPERHOT mechanics.
His main skill is furious charging straight into opponents. Once you upgrade it you can chain charge multiple enemies at once. Really pleasant.
All guns in the Dog Mind hands (paws?) turn into throwables or melee weapons.
Dog still needs a lot of love from our animator and programmers but we wanted to give it to you as fast as possible.



Here is a breakdown of MODs available for Dog.

Starting MODs

- Kill Heal - Dog doesn't heal in Expand windows. Instead the more it destroys the more HP it gains. Killing is healthy for you.
- NoShooting - Dog can't shoot. Obviously.
- Charge - pressing "E" makes the Dog charge and strike an enemy.


Path of Skill
- KillerCharge - enemy hit with charge dies instantly
- KillerRecharge - killing enemies lowers cooldown on charge
- ChainCharge - Dog can charge several enemies in succession

Path of defence
- BulletsPunching - Dog can punch incoming bullets
- Berserk - during a melee fight Dog can't be damaged
- LightningReflexes - Dog reacts so fast that bullets and enemies seem to move slower

Path of aggro
-HitItWithAStick - longer range and smaller cooldown on melee weapons. Also can use weapons when charging.
- TeleportStrike - Dog teleports towards attacked enemies on short distance
- StarPunch - every enemy that gets hit dies after few seconds. Omaewa mo, shindeiru!



Prison

There have been a riot, tables have been flipped, prison bars are opening, red guys are coming. Use everything to fight it out!
Introducing deadly prison forks.

Dojo

We love those Asian themes long time. Dojo is following the tradition of the reoccurring eastern inspiration.
Try timing throwing a bonsai tree between moving punching bags AND hitting a red guy. So satisfying.

Gas station

There has been an abrupt stop on your roadtrip. You’ve run out of gas. You just wanted a newspaper. Maybe you wanted a fast pee. It doesn’t matter because OH my! The red guys are coming!


Gym

Boy was this level redesigned a million times. The theme clicked immediately but the flow of the level changed a million times. Have fun spreading death with barbell plates and protein shakes.


A slight update to the enemies mechanic. We did some mean experiments and from now on melee weapon enemies will be able to bounce back any throwable that you throwat them.


Right now we are entering a new phase of developement of
SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE. Which means that we have most of the parts of the game in place but the game itself lacks polish and some caring eye for details. We want to spend more time on diggin deep and polishing the things that are already there.
What it means for you is less frequent updates and on smaller scale than up to this point.
That might be a working menu, new set of skills or a patch with bugfixes.




Never skip legs day.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE

“Your spirit is your true shield”
Satoshi Ueshiba

Adding new features to a still growing game should help you push the overall gameplay.
Change and improve upon the basic, core concept.

That’s the stuff that echoes somewhere in the background when we design new content for SUPERHOT:MIND CONTROL DELETE.
This week I want to give you a peek into *STILL IN DEVELOPEMENT* our new enemy type.
As always this is a preview of early concepting phase. Stuff might change, maybe we will add flying flaming skulls or dog mounts. Design is a journey, who knows ;) .



Introducing Shield(ed) Enemies.
Different enemies should impose slightly different approach onto the player.
While MushroomDudes push you to plan when you shoot and force you into defensive, concrete types require precision and positioning. So thinking behind Shielded enemies was a place somewhere inbetween those two.


Except for obvious difficulties that shield enemy brings to the table he adds some interestings tactics options. Similarly to mushroom infected red dudes, shield enemies might be used towards players advantage. In the end ,it is a moving shield that to some extent can be controlled right?Quite often I found myself hiding behind them and using their flying shields as a cover from other enemies. Knowing you guys, there will be a ton more possible tactics that we didn’t even think about.




Flying shields are a very early work in progress idea, we thought about changing their material into concrete or not having shields but throwables instead. They do pose a few gameplay performance and design consistency questions though.
If we were, for example, going to change shields into throwable objects how would that impact fps count of MIND CONTROL DELETE? Having so many different objects being spawned at the same time might be taxing on overall game performance.
Also, if an enemy is surrounded by flying throwables, can I grab one and throw it? If not, why?
And so on and so on, this is just on of many paths behind the design process.
Soon you will be able to give those guys a go yourselves.



Take care of you inner kid.
Happy Children day!

Szymon from SUPERHOT team

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE



Hey there!

With this update for SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE we add some seriously exciting stuff. This game is evergrowing amalgam of community driven ideas (thank you for being friggin awesome) and design experiments. It already came a long way but I can't wait how it will look once we are out of Early Access.
For now let's see what's new in today’s update shall we?







An abomination born out of your crazy minds and our shaky hands. We had some shy prototypes of this dude but when our Discord started to go back and forth about an enemy covered by mushrooms we knew we have to step it up.
More about this fellow over HERE
Basically mushroom infected enemies will explode after you shoot them, hit with throwables or just come into contact. They are equally dangerous for both player and other red guys. No one is safe from MushroomDudes.


We decided that minds need some kind of introduction within the game.
A soft start, for the player where he can get accustomed with skills and general vibe of particular mind. Therefore we added 3 additional levels for each of minds.
They are not only tutorials that teach you how to play a certain mind but also create a themed background.






As usual we did slight reshuffling of mods and added few new ones. Do let us know what is your experience with them.

Ninja

Two new mods for the Ninja Mind. Sexiness factor of this guy just jumped a notch.
First of all we have Recall Recharge. Thanks to this mod every kill that you score with katana will reduce the cooldown of your Recall skill. It makes the ninja gameplay even more frantic.
Next one is Flow Recall mod. Once unlocked, it makes your katana bounce between enemies in a wonderful display of blade brutality. It works almost like a certain Captain’s shield ;)

Additional changes to mods for Ninja mind are as follows:

• moved Faster Movement to Swordmaster path
  
• moved Piercing Katana to Recall path
  
• removed killer goomba stomp MOD

Addict

Addict also got lucky and lands with three fresh mods.
We removed previous Start With [enter weapon here] and merged them into StartWithRandom.
So after purchasing this mod you start with a gun picked by your friendly neighborhood game.
Next up is Quickshot which reduces the reload time on all guns.
Less reloading, more shooting. Everyone is happy.
Finally third mod is Ricochet.
From now on you will be able to bounce your bullets of walls. Let’s be honest, this mod is designed so that you can kill red guys with more swag.



New difficulty curve of main RUNs

Again, let us know how it plays after the change. Our goal here is to allow people to finish MCD main RUNs with a slight challenge but nothing insane. The crazy difficulty runs will be spread out in the further corners of The Pyramid.

Challenge RUNs

We finally came back to challenges. They were pretty popular in original SUPERHOT so we just couldn’t make MCD without them. A challenge is a run with slightly changed rules of the game. That might be anything from enemies spawning with shotguns only to...hmmm go explore, why should I spoil the fun of discovery? :) Only thing that I can tell you is that we will add more challenges in upcoming updates. Guys working on them are having too much fun to stop.



New weapon - FishGun



Why is it called fishgun? Cause it looks like catfish? Funny right? No? Uhm. Awkard, let’s keep going.
So a lot of you somehow managed to reach stages in SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE where our studio gnomes hid upcoming secret weapon. Discord and reddit got filled with screenshots and speculations of some weird looking weapon. Well here it is.
FishGun is a long distance rifle with ultra fast, almost unavoidable bullets. It looks almost like a hitscan shot but it’s not. As most things in MIND CONTROL DELETE Fish Gun is still in development phase so everything about it might change.
Play around with it. Let us know how it feels.

Shotgun Tweaks

After this update every time Shotgun runs out of bullets it will change into melee weapon.
We plan to add this feature to every weapon in MCD arsenal.
There are also some slight changes in ammo count and reload time for shotgun.


That is all for today’s update! Give it a go and let us know how you feel about it.

Dogs are awesome.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE


"In the infinite permutation of an ice crystal, everything repeats itself, but, really, from another point of view, nothing repeats itself."
Anthony Doerr

Hey there

We had quite a few discussions in the studio regarding changing and modifying the concept of our exploding mushrooms in SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE. We did experiments with cone of explosion, trigger points and placement within the level. Somewhere along the way though a concept of new enemy type emerged. A red guy (or agent if you prefer) that has caught the mushroom "virus". Our thinking was that if the mushroom implies glitch and error in the system, it should spread. Therefore a mushroom “infected” enemy.



What made us really happy is that a lot of you had a ton of great ideas and really expanded on the concept of mushroom enemies without a single hint from us. All of the suggestions and ideas regarding this concept gave us some serious fuel for work. We really had to step up our prototyping for the mushroom enemy. Apparently there was a need for this guy.




So how is it going to work?
Remember Serious Sam (best running backwards fps ever)?
So think of the headless enemy with bombs. Hmmm maybe less annoying but as dangerous.
Mushroom infected enemy will explode on contact wtih any shots, throwables but also within a given space from the player. While being dangerous for the player it poses similar risks for your enemies.





A situation might happen when a whole level will be cleared without you shooting a single bullet but due to clumsiness of your enemies or your tactical approach to positioning.
As usual due to SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE being in early access everything in the design and mechanics of Mushroom(ed) enemy might change.

Also next Update will drop next week on thursday.
Day before we will do a small dev stream previewing all the new content.

Hug people, spread love.
Szymon from SUPERHOT Team

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE


“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein

So this time let’s not spoil anything from the upcoming update. Let’s stay clear from that and let you have a bit of surprise when it arrives, ok ?
This time let’s talk a bit about one little aspect of SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE that might come unnoticed at first glance. The visual language of SUPERHOT games and how we use it.

Anyone who did any quality and usability tests with their game will tell you that watching someone else play your projects for the first time can be really painful experience. You sit down, watch as the player struggles with your tutorials, forgets basic game mechanics or gets completely lost in your levels. Than you cry a little and redesign everything.
With game immersion everything comes down to communication with the player. Allowing him/her to understand what the heck you are trying to say. Player should understand your game from the get go without you saying a word.

By limiting SUPERHOT to three colors we gave ourselves a clear and easy to read visual language. Red is bad, black is usable, white is the background. Game about shooting red dudes with black guns in white space. Clear enough?



While this set up is easy to understand for the player it poses a bit of design difficulties and limitations. Adding new content can be a bit challenging since it needs to fit into our restricted visuals.

Like for example the recent addition of new enemies to the game. Both concrete and red weapon guy had to be conceived within the limits of our preset visual scheme.
Thanks to that players can immediately guess what is the difference between new enemy types and how to approach them. There was no need for additional explanation since players were familiar with the visual cues used in the design of new opponents.






Another fine example is the updated visual cue of hotswitch. We decided to add more umpf to the way game tells you when the hotswitch is possible. It needed to be obvious and clear for the player so he could hotswitch without any overthinking. Marcin our art director added this sweet shader that makes red guy glitch whenever you hover your crosshair over them and hotswitch is ready.



This small addition does two things:
Let’s you know when you can hotswitch but also lends itself visually to the glitchy aspect of MCD.


Even the way we approach level design in SUPERHOT: MIN CONTROL DELETE follows certain rules imposed by our visual language. I’ll let Marcin The Art Dir do the talking. I stole a few pages from our internal design bible that he wrote and illustrated.








As you can see he is talking about environments that “make sense”, are not “distracting” and using the design of levels to "talk" to player. That’s creating and following a clear vocabulary of visual language. Everything so that the players might enjoy time bending gameplay of SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE without hassle.

You can’t immediately see most of our visual design choices in MCD and honestly, you shouldn’t be able to. Because as cheesy as it might sound , what you feel during gameplay is far more important than what you know.
We don’t want you to think. We want you to react. Your mind is software and it only interferes with your immersion ;)

I could go on about visual and interactive language for hours so let’s stop here.
Hopefully I didn’t bore you to death .



Create your own reality
Szymon from SUPERHOT team

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE


“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

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE


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:


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


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.


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.

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

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE


"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

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE


"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

The following is a weekly devlog for MIND CONTROL DELETE, the Early Access standalone expansion to the original SUPERHOT. Check it out HERE

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:

god 2.0
Zackamon
frostyn

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