SuperEpic: The Entertainment War is a lot of things. Mostly it’s a Metroidvania, but that is one part of this amalgamation. SuperEpic is also a tech demo for asynchronous gameplay. There will be times that you’re required to scan a QR code and play a small game on your phone. Lastly, SuperEpic is a strongly worded argument. The story of the game involves our combination of heroes, a raccoon and llama-duck, taking on a company, Regnantcorp, that has monopolized video games. This lone video game developer only makes games with a focus on making money and includes all the negative aspects that come along with that idea. SuperEpic is a hyperbolic look at those negatives.

Developer: Undercoders

Publisher: Numskull Games

8 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $17.99

The story opens up on our heroes playing retro video games – since these are the only games not corrupted by Regnantcorp’s policies – when they get a message from a masked figure about taking the fight to Regnantcorp’s offices. The whole game takes place on the floors of these offices where you’ll face off against Regnantcorp’s employees and management. Each floor is themed around one aspect of how the company’s policies are hurting gaming. The manager who oversees microtransactions is depicted as a vampire with a horror-themed floor. The floor themed around storing their players’ private data is a server farm with an admittedly normal pig person. The point is that SuperEpic has a message.

All of the management and most of the employees are pigs. SuperEpic isn’t worried about being subtle.

That message does get a little muddled occasionally. The phone segments have you play small snippets of Regnantcorp’s games, which are just clones of other games. You’ll have to play a Flappy Bird rip-off to unlock a gate. There are also clones of Frogger and Bubble Shooter. The main character remarks on how these games “suck ass” which isn’t exactly true. Frogger rocks and Flappy Bird isn’t amazing but is fine enough as a time waster. People addicted to Flappy Bird wasn’t really the fault of the game’s designer, Dong Nguyen. There’s a lot to be said for not making a cheap clone of another developer’s game, but I’m not sure the inclusion of these games say what the developers want to say. The game does let you focus on the anti-clone message by choosing certain conversation trees.

The QR codes are all placed around keypads. Scanning the code and beating the game will give you a combination for the keypad.

That covers the where and why to the game, but the highest highs are the how. The combat in SuperEpic is a miniature 2D character action system. There are three different types of attack moves: jab, uppercut, and smash. The goal is to string these moves into each other to increase a combo counter. It’s very satisfying to craft a longer combo. After toying around with the system, I would quick found a few favorite combos.

These preferred combinations could potentially be too effective for some people. If there was one enemy in my way I would go to my tried and true combo: Jab -> Jab -> Uppercut -> Jump -> Jab -> Jab -> Uppercut -> Fall -> Catch with Jab -> Repeat. If an enemy has a larger body size then a plain ol’ Jab -> Uppercut -> Jab -> Uppercut -> Repeat would work. While still fun to pull off they don’t really force the player to experiment. Part of this is the lack of the smash attack’s ability to combo into anything. Spiking an enemy grants them invincibility frames while they get up. This makes the move essentially a combo reset button. Pressing it in the middle of a combo before the enemy is dead feels like a mistake.

The efficacy of the simpler combos also meant that I didn’t spend that much time using the Rage moves. These are special input moves that have greater effects than the melee moves. There are two versions of ranged attacks, pulling an enemy toward you, or this games version of a Hadouken. All of these likely have uses, but I never really needed any of them. The ranged attacks are nice to stun enemies that also have ranged attacks. That’s about it though. I also rarely used the spells in Hollow Knight, so this might be a personal preference.



Throwing a dumbbell isn’t classically thought of as a spell, but here we are.

While feeling cool to pull off a big combo there is the added benefit of higher combos earning more cash. This gives the combat mechanics a nice reward for mastering them. It is still possible to play through the game and find success, but trying to get better at the combo system will make success come sooner by being able to afford upgrades sooner. There are a lot of RPG systems to upgrade in SuperEpic. Your character has three meters: health, stamina, and rage. Health is the same as in every game. Stamina is a gate on movement abilities like super jumps and dashes. Spending rage lets you use the combat abilities. There are numerous equipable items like weapons, armors, and pseudo-amulets. The amulets each have different effects such as enemies drop more money or 10% chance to dodge an attack. Upgrading anything takes cash.



Grandma’s Scarf. Plus one defense.

In between combat encounters, you’ll be exploring Regnantcorp’s headquarters. The office layout is massive, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. SuperEpic makes use of the classic Metroidvania level design of looping back into itself with shortcuts between areas. There are also tons of secrets to find hidden in the nooks and crannys of the map. Most of these being accessible only after acquiring a certain movement ability. Exploring the map is mostly optional except in two cases where you have to backtrack to find an ability or key to progress through the story.

I didn’t mind being required to backtrack except that SuperEpic’s map is missing one function that would have made the backtracking much easier. There isn’t the ability to place icons on the map screen. Generally, the designers did a good job at having the map reflect where certain things are. Shop keepers, save spots, and bank kiosks are all marked on your map. The main issue is that areas locked behind abilities are not marked. These are areas that you need the wall jump to access or bombs to break into. This is especially weird considering that doors locked by a key will appear on your map. What walls need to be opened with a bomb, which is just another kind of key, not being marked made going back to look for new ways forward more of a chore than necessary.



The box with the two diagonally lines is used to mark doors locked by a key. It would have been nice if there was also an icon for other kinds of locks.

Another contributing factor to the exploration feeling more like a chore than necessary is the amount of enemies between you and where you’re going. The game doesn’t allow you to clear out sections of the level permanently. Enemies respawn on re-entry. Fighting through a corridor only to realize that it’s a dead-end means having to fight all the enemies twice. Avoiding them is an option, but that’s also kind of frustrating. Later levels even continually spawn enemies even if you haven’t left the room. There are very few moments of peace in SuperEpic.



This is from one of the earlier levels, but imagine this image with way more enemies.

To be crystal clear, I enjoyed my time with SuperEpic: The Entertainment War. This is a good video game with fun systems. The combo-based combat is something different for the genre too. The QR code scanning to play segments of the game on your phone is novel here. I could see it being annoying if many games were to adopt the idea, but I liked it in SuperEpic. I adore all of the menu designs with their massive lettering. Toward the end of the game, a lot of the small things that could have been done better did start to grate on me though. However, I still have an overall good feeling about SuperEpic, but some aspects of it were wearing my goodwill down. Overall though, I definitely think SuperEpic is a worthwhile purchase that could influence some very fun games in the future, but don’t go in expecting perfection throughout.

Looking for more Metroidvanias? Read our reviews of Eagle Island and Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. Share your thoughts with us by joining our Discord. Or, if you like what we do here at Nindie Nexus, please consider donating to our ko-fi.