SuperWEIRD: Automation Roguelite News

Store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD/

Friends!

Long time no see. We’re here to tell you how development is going and to ask for your help with the upcoming closed playtest. But first things first.

[h2]How’s development going?
[/h2]
Until recently, we were busy running browser playtests. The playtests are now over, the team has gathered feedback, and based on it we’re fully reworking the game to prepare it for Steam.

[h3]Latest changes: Interfaces
[/h3]
The gameplay is becoming more complex, new features are piling up, and we’re actively redesigning the UI to support them. Take a look at some of our mockups!


[h3]Towers[/h3]
Another thing: we received a lot of feedback saying that our towers look like anything but towers. People called them totems, carrots… pretty much everything except defensive structures.


So yes, we got the message — we’ll be redesigning them. We don’t have a final solution yet, but we can share some sketches. Let us know in the comments which towers you like the most!


[h2]We need your help
[/h2]
Friends, we really need your support. This game has always been closely shaped by your feedback — sometimes through direct comments, sometimes through metrics and playtime data — but either way, this project has always grown based on your input.

Right now, we need to test the new, more complex gameplay with real players. That’s why we’re launching a CLOSED playtest on March 9. If you’d like to participate, please fill out the form using the 👉🏻LINK.

Players who provide detailed feedback — especially if it includes video recordings — are incredibly valuable to the development process. We’d be happy to mention you in the credits and give you some extra in-game goodies when the game launches.

DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH THE OPEN PLAYTEST!
You can sign up for the open playtest on the game’s Steam page.

That’s a different thing — it will happen later, be larger in scale, public, and fun. The closed playtest is specifically meant to test and refine the game’s current direction.

[h2]Most importantly
[/h2]
As you know, our team has always tried to make games about science. Well, we think about science even when we’re not working. Just imagine — our team found sea lions in Cyprus.

Isn’t that a contribution to biology? =)

Hope to hear from you soon. Fill out the form — we’ll be waiting for you on March 9!

[h3]How to get more involved with SuperWEIRD?[/h3]

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!

We are happy to announce that today is full of amazing indie games on the ClemmyGames YouTube channel - the Best Indie Games Winter Showcase 2025 is now LIVE.

Check out our new game trailer, and don't hesitate to leave your comments below - we are happy to chat here or on our Discord.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]And don't forget to add the game to your wishlist![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD/

[h3]How to get more involved with SuperWEIRD?[/h3]

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

• 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!

Hello everyone, it’s Luden.io again — back with some fresh news!

[h2]Great news[/h2]

As we mentioned in the last dev diary, our endless berserk mode is finally over. The result? Impressive average playtime stats on the Poki platform! Just to remind you — hitting those numbers was a requirement for releasing the game on the web. Right now, we’re ironing out the details, but one thing is certain: the web release is happening! Stay tuned for updates, we’ll share more soon. Don’t forget to subscribe in the Discord not to miss it when it happens!

[h2]Game design ideas[/h2]
Now to SuperWEIRD development news. What did we manage to achieve over the past month?

First of all, we finally sat down and drafted a design doc for the big Steam version of the game. For those who don’t remember: our plan is to first release a smaller version on web platforms to test the core gameplay. Once the basics are polished, we’ll expand the experience with more depth so there’s plenty to do in the midgame and endgame for the players.

So, behold our grand plans for the Steam version. And instead of a thousand words — here’s one picture:


Now imagine dozens of islands drifting in the sky, with the player starting out on their hub. The player flies between islands, each guarded by its own boss. Why floating islands, you ask?

Well, there are a few reasons. First of all, we wanted a dynamic map. One of our references — Cult of the Lamb — like many roguelikes, uses procedurally generated maps. In roguelikes, that system keeps runs fresh and varied.


But in our case, progress on the map is permanent. So the islands shifting around serve a different purpose. The idea is to make players analyze how the map moves, plan missions based on that movement, and add a bit of pressure and randomness to keep things interesting. Basically, to mess with the player’s plans. What do you think — will islands moving between rounds stress players out, or add a fun layer of chaos? Let us know in the comments.

At first we thought the map would be a set of rotating rings. But later we scrapped that idea in favor of floating islands. Why islands instead of rings? Honestly — simply because we love floating islands. And hey, it’s our SuperWEIRD game, so we get to have our quirks!

So, the goal is to defeat the boss and liberate the island from the mysterious alien slime — the corruption.


The corruption, of course, won’t just sit idle — it’ll try to get in your way. Our task is to strike the right balance: not too idle-casual, not too stressful. That’ll mostly be a matter of tuning, so we’ll get to it later. For now, take a look at the enemy spawner and the evil robots going to battle our good robots.


And here are our experiments with how the сorruption spreads over areas the player has already freed. We made these animation sketches before finishing the overall world map concept, so what you see here is the old radial version without islands. What do you think? Does it look cool?


On each island, the player builds production chains to quickly craft and arm robots that will take on the boss… But you already know this part from our earlier diaries — nothing new here.

But here’s the most important part.

Remember the pig in shades? Over time he’s become a fan favorite of both the community and the team, and we tried hard to keep him around. In a previous version, we thought the locals would settle at the shop hub. But players ended up just playing shopkeeper instead of automating, so we scrapped the shop system. Along with it, sadly, the locals disappeared too. Our game designer always reminds us: “Don’t fall in love with your ideas.” But sometimes… you just can’t help it!

In the new version, the player still rescues locals on each island and brings them back to the base. But the base is no longer an economic hub with its own gameplay — now it’s a place for progression and upgrades.


The result? A cleaner, more focused loop with the hub being just a metagame. And most importantly: the pig lives on!


Of course, keep in mind these are plans and concepts — things may shift after web release feedback and Steam playtests. But this is the direction we’d like to go.

By the way, we’re planning a closed beta playtest on Steam in the near future and really count on your feedback to make the game even better and more fun. Don’t forget to subscribe to our Newsletter so that you don't miss the playtest!

[h2]Another big step: music experiments
[/h2]
We started sketching out tracks in our usual style — ambient mixed with electronic sounds. Then we realized: the music should also capture the vibe of worn-out old machinery and clunky robots. That led us to revisit the great references — Transformers and WALL-E.


We noticed how the sound designers there often remove high frequencies to make everything feel low, muffled, and weighty. And we thought — what if we do the same, but with music? What if we go with muted strings and handpans instead of bright synths?

Below we’ve put two music options over gameplay footage:

• The familiar ambient style you know from our other game
  
• The dynamic muted strings version we made basing on our low frequencies theory
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Please tell us in the comments — which one fits the game vibe better?

Honestly, we’re really tempted by the “no highs” approach. You know what the biggest pain in game sound design is? Everything sounds amazing on the expensive sound designer’s equipment… but on cheap headphones it instantly turns into a mess. And, let’s be honest, probably 90% of our players use headphones. Cutting out high frequencies might solve that problem — since that’s where low-end gear usually distorts the most.

So we’re still at a crossroads with sound — your feedback is super valuable here.

And finally — smaller things.

We’ve started working on buffs and debuffs. How do you like these aura effects? We borrowed the idea from tabletop games!

We’ve also prepared a big, detailed update for you about how we spent the whole summer reworking automation in the game — and why.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Thanks for reading, sharing your thoughts, and testing the game with us. Your feedback truly helps us shape SuperWEIRD into something special.

See you soon in the next update — and don’t forget to add the game to your Wishlist and recommend it to your friends.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD/

Hey friends!

The 256th day of the year is also known as Programmer's Day! That's today.

A huge kudos to all the knights of ones and zeroes, present-day, former, and wannabes alike! Without you, there would be no video games!

If coding at work is not enough for you (we get it) - did you know that there's a dedicated page on Steam's programming games? Check it out:

[h2]Browse Programming games on Steam[/h2]

As for our own programming games - you know where to find them:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD

https://store.steampowered.com/app/619150/while_True_learn

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101_Programming__Craft

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory/

Last but not least, here's one for those who fuel our programming power by providing an endless amount of internet memes - the cats! The furry muses of Luden.io say hi:















Happy coding, everyone!

Hey everyone, and happy Knowledge Day!

If only a bit unexpected, this summer turned out to be very intense for us. Barely notable changes led to big breakthroughs, while the smallest features sometimes took weeks (9 weeks, actually) to implement and polish. Oh well, that's game development for you.



More cool stories and new SuperWEIRD content await below, but first:

Please help us improve SuperWEIRD's Steam page by answering a few questions in this 5 minute questionnaire. Everyone who fills out the form will get an exclusive, not yet revealed SuperWEIRD wallpaper!

Back to the game now! We spent a good amount of time playtesting the first 20 minutes of the web version of the game. Certain web platforms allow testing your game with a wide audience of random players, which was a great way for us to make sure that SuperWEIRD is fun from the very beginning.

We’ve been running blind playtests, and last week we finally managed to cross the 10-minute average playtime threshold! For comparison, at the beginning of July, we started with 2:30 minutes.



That period is codenamed “berserk mode” in our internal docs. It means releasing a new version daily, while our standard rhythm is one per fortnight. Pretty weird for us, but sometimes even the smallest tweaks led to surprising results.

For example, making the robots spawn and walk slower gave us a few minutes of extra playtime - perhaps due to the game becoming less hectic. Optimizing performance also gave us a significant playtime boost - most likely because web games are frequently played on older and less powerful devices.



Making the prototype playable for more people was a good idea. And a great lesson for us, too, as all our games have an educational angle, and we therefore try to make them as accessible as possible (that includes browsers, too). So this part is now covered, thanks to our “berserk mode”.



Other tricks that proved helpful? Introducing one feature at a time, not being afraid to repeat the same steps, and showing one mechanic (like construction) in different contexts. Also, avoid action chains with more than one step during the first minutes of the game.



Crossing the 10-minute threshold was an important challenge for us - partially because it is mandatory for releasing on certain web platforms. Now that it's out of the way, we have time for some real juicy stuff! But first, here are a couple of videos to illustrate how much the game has changed throughout the summer:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Since the game was re-invented from a store management/tower defense game into a robot management/boss fighting game, we kinda lost the other characters for a while.

But we promised you pigs in shades, so they were not forgotten! The current loop is that you save them from bosses and provide them a lot to build a house upon - in return, they will award you with all kinds of bonuses, such as new commands, new flag types etc.



Another big thing for us is to work out the structure of the game world. At the moment, the idea is that it will consist of a bunch of smaller locations, connected with portals, allowing the player to establish the lines of robots between locations. Think of planets from Dyson Sphere Program or platforms in Shapez 2, if only on a smaller scale.









This relatively quiet time gives us an opportunity to conduct some smaller experiments: for example, making the player to craft items on workbenches instead of automated production. Or introducing a limited stack of items for the player, with an opportunity to upgrade. Or starting off with robots crafting axes before swords and shields, to add more depth to earlier parts of the game. Will it make things better? We'll see when we try it!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The base gameplay is now in place, the game structure is soon to be detailed, and we're heading for the first playtest at full speed! Don't forget to sign up on SuperWEIRD Steam page to ensure you'll get the message when the playable build is out there!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD/

[h3]How to Follow SuperWEIRD?[/h3]

To make sure you don't miss a big event (such as playtesting), you can do a number of things:

• Follow our YouTube channel for the latest news from development
  
• 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 wishlist (push the button on the widget below)
  

Stay awesome, stay SuperWEIRD!