Roadmap & Super Elephants!
Super Animal Royale Patch Notes — January 15, 2026
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Hey Super Animals! Thank you for an incredible Super Animal World launch, and for all the feedback so far. It’s been a huge help as we plan what’s next, and it helped guide a lot of what we prioritized in the roadmap below.
We've also got a bit more context on what we’re focusing on first and why. Also: despite their size, we managed to sneak Super Elephants into the Research Lab this week. More on that later, but first let’s jump straight into what’s coming next to the island.
What’s Next for SAR
v2.0 was a massive lift for the team. It reshaped the game loop around the Social Hub, added story quests, and introduced new activities like fishing, bug catching, and hamsterball racing. Shipping all of that at once was a huge effort, but we didn’t want you waiting until 2026 to get your paws on it, so the team pushed hard to ship it by the end of the year.
The goal was to get a strong foundation in place and keep building on it this year. We wouldn’t call it “Early Access 2.0” because SAR is already a very mature game after 8 years of development, but for the Social Hub side of things, it’s the start of a new era of iteration. We’re getting back to regular quarterly seasonal updates, which means a faster feedback loop and more chances to polish and expand what v2.0 kicked off. We’re going to keep building on the Social Hub, but we’re also shifting more attention back to the battle royale and our other game modes, with improvements and polish across the board.
Everything in this roadmap is subject to change as we dig into building it all, but we wanted to give you a sense of our upcoming priorities and how we’re thinking about the next updates to SAR, while still keeping a few surprises up our super sleeves!
Year of the Super Horse
The Year of the Super Horse event kicks off next month with new Super Animals, challenges and cosmetics!
It’ll also include some smaller quality of life improvements, like tagging certain quests as “long-term” so they don’t clutter your HUD, tuning down a handful of quests that were a bit too difficult, and making Louie’s later pearl hunting quests more forgiving. We also spent some time cleaning up smaller stuff, like typos, a few hamsterball race track tweaks, and some behind-the-scenes optimizations that reduce memory usage (especially helpful on Switch).
Major Spring Update
This will be our first big update since Super Animal World, and we’re packing it with improvements based on your feedback. Now that v2.0 is live, we’ll be iterating faster with big seasonal updates throughout the year, starting with one early this spring.
You can look forward to highly requested UI upgrades like a search bar for cosmetics in Customize, faster and easier queuing (and re-queuing), and more polish across our newer screens and features. We’re also improving the Social Hub experience for groups, including making it easier to get onto the same server as your friends.
We’re shifting more focus back to the battle royale and our other core game modes too. We can’t share all the details just yet, but we’re actively working on it now, so keep the feedback coming. We’ve also heard you on match fullness, so we’re designing a Featured Mode system to encourage players to queue into specific modes (including Hamsterball Racing) at certain times, while still keeping your freedom to play what you want.
v2.2 & Beyond
Beyond the Major Spring Update, we’ve also been planning the rest of the year and have a few items we’re particularly excited about to share.
Museum of Super Natural History
You might have noticed the beaver construction site in the northwest of Murre Woods. The beavers are still hard at work, and later this year they’ll be unveiling a museum where you can view all the bugs you’ve caught. And yes, your fish will be getting a proper place to show off too. We’re also planning to keep expanding bug catching and fishing over time as we build out those systems and mechanics.
Surprise Indie Collabs
That’s right, we’ll be doing more collabs, and we already have a few lined up! We’re especially excited to team up with other indie studios and highlight games we love, like our collab with Snoozy Kazoo for the in-game Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion items (which will return once our new collab setup is ready).
If there’s an indie game or character you’d love to see in SAR, let us know. We can’t promise anything, but we’re always happy to reach out and see what we can make happen!
Competitive Support
Despite SAR’s cute combatants and terrible puns, a lot of you have gotten really, really good at this silly animal game over the years, and we love watching it. We’ve always loved seeing your skill on display in things like SAR Tonight’s Superest Kills segment. We want to do a better job supporting competitive play going forward, while still keeping SAR easy to pick up and welcoming.
We won’t try to turn SAR into an esport (unless Donk and Howl force us), and we’re definitely not done adding wacky stuff either. But we do think there’s room to better support competitive play without sanding down the chaos everywhere else, and we’ve got a few ideas we want to test later this year. We also want it to still feel like SAR even when things get intense and competitive: friendly, funny, and not too serious.
More Social Hub Activities
Now that the Social Hub is up and running, it’s time to keep expanding it and adding more things to do. We’ve got new activities and world events planned, along with more quest lines and NPCs to meet.
If there’s anything you’d like to see added, let us know! Except gambling. Gambling gets suggested a lot and we can’t do that.
Reddit AMA
We figured you’d have a lot of questions, so we’re hosting a Reddit AMA on r/animalroyale this Tuesday, January 20th at 5pm PT until 6pm PT!
Come ask us anything about Super Animal Royale, Super Animal World, Pixile Studios, or what’s next! We’ll do our best to answer as many as we can. :)
Pixile Plays Returns
And if you want another opportunity to hang out and ask questions, Pixile Plays is returning to Twitch next Thursday, January 22nd at 3pm PT! Join Kaity, Logan, and Michael as we play some games and chat with the community.
Make sure to follow our Twitch channel so you get a notification for when we’re live.
Super Elephants Arrive
Now that we’ve addressed most of the elephants in the room… let’s address four more. (Sorry.) Super Elephants are available in the Research Lab!
Super Elephant Breeds (Available at Level 60)
- Super Elephant
- Super African Elephant
- Super Pink Elephant
- Super White Elephant
The Lab Labs are always working on new Super Animals, so let us know what you’d like to see next in the comments or on Discord.
SAW Soundtrack Out Now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/997360/Super_Animal_Royale_Soundtrack/
Catbaux’s amazing Super Animal World tracks are out now for your listening pleasure on streaming platforms like Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music! The Steam soundtrack has also been updated with the new tracks if you’d like to support Catbaux further.
Watch the full playlist on YouTube
Last Call: Youtooz Dr. Dogna & Zombie Joe Vinyl Figures
At the time of posting this, our Dr. Dogna and Zombie Joe Youtooz pre-orders end in about 24 hours, closing at 12pm PT on Friday, January 16th!
Pre-order here: https://youtooz.com/collections/super-animal-royale
As a bonus, they both include in-game cosmetics:
- Dr. Dogna includes a code for the new Mini Tiger With Wire pet
- Zombie Joe Monitor Buddiez 2-pack includes two in-game Zombie Joe hats
We hope you enjoy this look into what we’re working on and we can’t wait to answer more of your questions! Your continued support means so much to us.
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See you on the island, Super Animals!
- Michael, Logan, & the Community team