The key point of the game is that you are playing as a toy in a child's diorama: the trailer does a tongue-in-cheek comparison between multiple square-kilometer maps of games like Grand Theft Auto V or Skyrim and its toy world of 9 square meters. The actual gameplay is mostly puzzle and exploration-oriented, however, with only a limited focus on fighting.
On July 3rd, 2020, a new Campaign DLC called Supraland Crash was released on Steam, that features a new storyline and in the product page's own words: ".. and way less combat."
On January of 2022, a new DLC called Six Inches Under was released.
Supraland provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The entrance to some puzzles are manned by an NPC, who helpfully lets the player know whether or not they have all the equipment needed to solve it.
- Doors usually have a button that opens them from the other side in case you manage to Sequence Break into the area early.
- Beehive Barrier: The yellow barriers have this look to them. They block Supraballs, but not you.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
- All the wooden boards you can easily destroy with your sword or gun are colored in bright red.
- Ceiling boards that can be broken with the Stomp Shoes are colored blue.
- Supraballs and anything related to them are colored yellow.
- Many puzzles have purple-colored platforms that hint you are supposed to place a force cube there.
- Several puzzles revolve around coloring an object to match the color of a receptacle.
- Degraded Boss: The lava titans you fight as a Mini-Boss before the Final Boss can appear as normal volcano spawns in the post-game.
- Dem Bones: Tiny toy skeletons with comically large skulls are a persistent enemy. Two swings from your sword are enough to put the basic ones down, but stronger ones appear later on as well.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Reds and blues each claim Mr. Miracle was their own color. This is reminiscent of the controversy over whitewashing Jesus in religious art.
- Double Jump: An upgrade you'll get pretty early in the game. You can even get a Triple Jump soon after.
- Escort Mission: A late-game quest involves rescuing the Blue Pirate from the volcano. Fortunately they can't be harmed, but they are pretty incompetent and won't do much other than stand around and wait for you to open doors for them.
- Evil Is Petty: The Blue King manufactured Fantastic Racism against red people just because the Red Queen dumped him.
- Fantastic Racism: There are two communities of toy people, red and blue. Each of them hate the other. This is revealed to be a completely manufactured hate campaign by the Blue King, who turns out to be the Red Queen's jilted ex. He taught Blue Ville to hate reds out of spite for her rejecting him.
- Each of the communities insist that Mr. Miracle must have been their color. When you finally meet Mr. Miracle yourself, he's purple, and he chastises his children for their racism.
- Flame Spewer Obstacle: In Six Inches Under there are a few flame jets. The first one must first be temporarily turned off to bypass and then used as a puzzle element.
- Grappling-Hook Gun: The Force Beam can act as a Tractor Beam, pulling you towards anchor points if you attach it to yourself. This proves to be only one of its many abilities, though; it can also be used to connect two stationary objects, and the beam generated creates a solid platform.
- Ground Pound: The Stomp Shoes provide this ability. In combat, it can quickly bring down even the armored enemies; in exploration, it's useful for hitting switches and breaking barriers.
- Heart Container: Health upgrades can be found scattered all over the world. You can also find upgrades that increase the proportion of your max health that can automatically regenerate.
- Holy Halo: "Believers" who preach the religion of HIM have one, though if you look closely, it's held on by a wire. This includes Mr. Miracle, who does not have the wire — this is pointed out by characters in the ending cutscene, to which he says it's held on by ultrathin wire. Spoofed in one quest, which requires you to color an ordinary metal ring gold in order to fool the believers into thinking it's a halo.
- Heavily Armored Mook: The more advanced skeletons wear black metal armor, and carry either swords and shields, or spears with energy tips that also allow them to blast you at range.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Your first weapon is a wooden sword.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Plenty of nooks and crannies have chests tucked away in them. Of course, they are hardly inexplicable when the entire thing is a toy diorama.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: When you finally reach Blue Ville, it's revealed that the Blue King is in fact your uncle, and your mother the Red Queen used to date him but rejected him for his brother. This makes the Blue Pirate, the main antagonist up to that point, your cousin!
- MacGuffin: As a bit of Lampshade Hanging, each of your major tools are called such by the quest markers. Every tool after the first also has an actual name, however.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Lampshaded by some of the NPCs in Redtown, who explicitly say that since they're NPCs they just wait around for you to do everything.
- Messianic Archetype: The toy peoples' religion features a Jesus analogue called Mr. Miracle, who has the face of the famous botched "Monkey Jesus" painting
. He was supposedly brought to the people by HIM, the human child who owns the sandbox. You meet him at the end of the game, and he eventually returns to the people in the ending. - Mook Maker: Graves spawn skeletons, and volcanoes spawn lava demons. You can destroy graves with the "holy" upgrades for your sword and gun, but the Volcano Sealer upgrade is locked behind 166 Awesomeness, which likely won't happen until the postgame.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Suprafield locker room features a thinly-veiled caricature of Donald Trump; though you can, in fact, harm him by shooting off his toupee.
- Puzzle Boss: The final boss, the Farting Meatbag, is immune to all your weapons. The only way to defeat it is to complete a series of puzzles to trick some glow-flies into eating it. Can also be considered a Final-Exam Boss, as it utilizes many of the puzzle mechanics you've used throughout the game.
- Red Is Heroic: You and your fellow stick figures are red, whereas the opposing ones are blue. In a larger sense, however, both sides are shown to be equally wrong, as they battle over whether Mr. Miracle belonged to their side. When he comes back in the end, however, he turns out to be purple, and calls both leaders a bunch of idiots for going to war over this in the first place.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something:
- You are the prince of Redtown and, as the player character, are the one who does everything. To a lesser extent there's your mother the Red Queen, who accompanies you on your journey and ultimately resolves the conflict by talking with the Blue King.
- It's also revealed late in the game that the Blue Pirate, the main antagonist for most of the game, is the prince of Blue Ville.
- Sequence Breaking: Although you can't climb in the traditional sense, the cliffs that separate the areas are fully solid. By abusing several abilities you can get fairly early on you can 'mountain goat' up onto the cliffs you're normally not supposed to be at and get to areas way before you're supposed to. You can also skip several puzzles this way to get their treasure without completing them.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: The strongest skeletons are armored, and fight with swords and shields.
- Shout-Out:
- The Suprafield locker room has a pile of Portal guns in one corner.
- The dead adventurers you can find in secret areas are often references to other media and video games. Shout-outs include The Legend of Zelda, Indiana Jones, Dragon Ball, and more.
- Take That!:
- The locker room of the Suprafield features an obvious caricature of Donald Trump. Hitting him with a weapon will knock off his toupee and net you the achievement "Well-deserved".
- There's another jab at Donald Trump later in the game, during the Escort Mission for your cousin. You must color him orange to pass one puzzle, after which he says, "Can I run for president now?"
- Tractor Beam: One of the abilities of the Force Beam. Its alt fire causes the beam to contract, which can either pull you towards it like a Grappling-Hook Gun or pull objects together.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: It's possible to Sequence Break the game to get to areas well before you're supposed to. While the devs did a good job of including buttons that open doors if you somehow get behind them and including steps that can get you easily back onto the mountains, there's a few select areas where the auto-save will kick in with areas you can't get out of, effectively hard locking the save file.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: In the most literal sense of the word. The entire game takes place in a kid's sandbox diorama, which, given the size of the protagonist, makes it fairly large. In practice, however, it's more akin to a first-person Metroidvania in the style of Metroid Prime.
- Woman Scorned: A male version: The Blue King was so jilted by the Red Queen rejecting him for his brother that he single-handedly manufactured Blue Ville's Fantastic Racism against red people.
