POSTMORTEM: SUPER WORLD WAR

This is the postmortem of Super World War, a turn-based strategy game released on PC and Nintendo Switch, developped and published by Zero Games Studios, with distribution support from Plug In Digital.

INTRODUCTION/ STARTING POINT

Super World War had been released on August 25th 2025.

As for our previous games, we decided to write a short post mortem about this one.
While some publishers labelled us as "racing game studio" since Hot Lap Racing release, Super World War had been in fact a project we wanted to work on since a very long time.

After releasing Extreme Gear in 2015, the team wanted to work on something very different from our usual projects, and we had a bit of experience into strategy games (some of us are former Eugen Systems developers).
So we all agreed to work on Total World War. We wanted to make a game a bit bigger than EGDA, premium, using most of our acquired knowledge from previous projects

RESUME OF THE GAME AND DEV HISTORY

First development steps of the game began in 2016, after releasing last Extreme Gear: Demolition Arena DLCs
Codename at the time was Total World War and a small team of 5 people were working actively on the game at the start.

Game had been inspired by 4 titles : R.U.S.E., Panzer General, Advance Wars and Third World War (an obscure Sega-CD strategy game).

So, how come a game which seen its development begin in 2016 only been released in 2025 ?

From 2016 to 2019, the team focused on first art concepts, building tools and a powerful level editor, writing first version of game design documents and a first clumsy story.

Unfortunately, at start of 2019, despite having an interesting first version of the game and a publishing opportunity (which had to be rejected unfortunately for planning reasons), we had to put the development on a halt to focus on external projects.

Reasons were easy to understand: we were struggling on our budget and we had to divert resources on external projects (such as Battledawn 2 and various porting missions).

More than this, in 2023 and first half of 2024 nearly all our resources were focused in Hot Lap Racing (which was an awesome opportunity for us), so we had to wait until HLR release. But it's been also time we took decision to finally resume development as soon as we can with few new rules :

- Game would be mainly funded by Zero Games
- Focus on working on the game with original team from 2026 and selected developers and designers who will be trained to work on the game's tools

As we resumed development in 2024, the game had big creative direction issues.
It was considered as divisive but fun in 2016.
The game had a mix of dark & stupid tone (think about South Park as major inspiration) with famous leaders caricatures and hidden (but not so…) message about stupidity of some wars and stupidity of those leaders.
All on a background about Russia and North Korea invading their neighbours for
stupid reasons… (You can see problem incoming at this point…)

As Ukrainian war started, it was clear the game has to change its background for obvious sensitivity reasons.
We had to reset game scenario for a fresh restart, while keeping as most graphic assets and core gameplay design as possible for budget reasons.

So, we hired a new narrative designer to work on new story, new campaigns and new characters despite technical and artistic constraints.

From then, game development resumed with the aim to improve what had been done previously, finish it, then publish it before end of 2025.
Name was changed to Super World War (to avoid confusion with Total War series)
And even if everything’s far from perfect, the team was enthusiastic and well-focused on
finishing the game within time and budget constraints

On August 25th 2025: we finally released Super World War on Steam and Nintendo Switch, with help from Plug In Digital to distribute the game on alternative stores.

Player's reviews were very positive (most fans of the genre liked the game) and press critics were also good (with no critics below 7/10).

We provided to players a 50 hours long funny story-driven campaign, +80 maps, online and local multiplayer, crossplay, and good fun.

SO, WHAT WENT RIGHT ?

A/ Overall quality of the game

No, Super World War didn't deserved GOTY award (or any awards), but in the end, our feedbacks from people who played the game are positive.

The game is good, the game is fun (gameplay mechanics are well-balanced and story is often quoted as "funny"), reviews are consistent with our perception of final product and we are quite satisfied with what had been released. It's obviously far from perfect, but with such low budget and troubled production conditions, we think couldn't have done better.

B/ Tools and technical aspects

Our technical director spent lot of time during the first year building an efficient work environment for all the team. This could sounds like a lot of time, but it really helped us to save time later and to be able to stop/relaunch project without much difficulties as everything was easy for designers and artists.
Our homemade level editor, developed very early on, was extremely useful, allowing us to easily create game maps, as well as perform all kinds of tests to adjust game mechanics.
Having great tools definitely helped us to reach an overall good quality.

C/ The Team

Super World War was a very motivating project for the 5 people who began to work on it in 2016.
But even when we came back in 2024 on the project, positive team atmosphere and internal communication were considered good overall. This was facilitated by a reasonable team size and the presence of different members who shared the
same vision for the project.

D/ Self-Publishing

For first time since Extreme Gear: Demolition Arena (2016), we've been back to self-publishing. We must admit that autonomy linked to self-publishing was a lot of work but it had pleasant feeling, as we decided to manage the launch ourselves. We had to feel our way as we had little knowledge in this area, but the team learned a lot of new things.

E/ AI Tasks

The work on ennemies AI carried out by dedicated developer is considered decisive to the project. Working with one person responsible for a such complex subject was beneficial, and this is something that would be worth generalizing for this type of topic.

SO, WHAT WENT WRONG ?

A/ Too much art and story evolution

We suffered from a lack of a unified vision on art and storytelling as the project lasted for a very long time. These subjects evolved too radically during production over the years and we could have done better

B/ Project lenght was way too long

The long duration of the project and the departure of few key team members during the production led to an artistic patchwork on some aspects. Also, It has not always been possible to ensure a smooth transition between older and newest team members:
it was difficult for newcomers to the project to pick up where they left off. Multiple attempts to resume work between 2019 and 2024 were largely unsuccessful because those involved were new to the project and lacked enough guidance from key members.

C/ Unsure about final platforms

The target platforms were not defined immediately, which prevented a clear vision of the desired level of quality during first period of development. Mobile was considered as a main platform at the beginning, then PC became the main platform, then Nintendo Switch. It definitely had an impact on many technical aspects which made us lose valuable time.

D/ Communication around the game

Internal consensus: we definitely waited too long to communicate about the game and we have many regrets about not building a community or launching external playtests earlier.
Also, we would have benefited from reducing the production budget somewhat, scaling back certain ambitions, in order to free up internal marketing budget.

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK ABOUT IT ...

A/ The campaign / story mode

It's not about story quality. Because overall, many players like it and like the humoristic tone of our campaigns. But it also seems that many players don't really play campaign (and focus on battle mode) and also some feedbacks said our campaign was maybe too long (most people finished it between 50 to 70 hours).
Now that the game has been released, we’re no longer so sure it was worth investing so much time and effort

B/ Aesthetics vs. Ergonomics

Now that we’ve had a chance to take a step back and think about our whole design process, we may have had a tendency to prioritize aesthetic at the expense of ergonomics.
We are not sure it had a big impact on final quality as not many people complained about our UX or UI, but we are still not sure it's been the best for the game.

C/ Project Scope

It would have been better to design a modular scope, better suited to the small team that had started working on the project.
The game was not that big, but we maybe featured too many content, and now that game had been released, we are not 100% sure it really changed player's experience by a huge margin.

CONCLUSION

Super World War is a project that underwent a complex, fragmented, and technically demanding production process.
Despite the lack of a stability, constrained storytelling due to late changes, planning
interruptions, and late communication, the team produced a game that was deemed
satisfactory and solid, benefiting from a robust architecture, effective tools, and good internal cohesion.