The game is presented in a minimalist art style, with enemies in red and weapons in black, in contrast to the otherwise white and grey environment.

The game originated as an entry in the 2013 7 Day FPS Challenge, which Superhot Team expanded into a browser-based demonstration that September.

Widespread attention from the demonstration prompted the team to develop the full game, using Kickstarter to secure funding to complete the title.

A sequel, Superhot: Mind Control Delete, which utilizes roguelike elements such as procedural generation and permadeath, became available through early access in December 2017 and was released officially on 16 July 2020.

In expanding to the full game, Superhot Team created a campaign mode across approximately thirty-one levels, estimated to be as long as Portal.

[3] The final game includes a replay editor to allow users to prepare clips to share on social media websites.

[8][9] The Superhot narrative works in several metanarrative levels: the player plays a fictionalized version of themselves sitting in front of their DOS prompt, getting a message from their friend who offers them a supposedly leaked copy of a new game called superhot.exe, claiming that the only way to access it is with a crack.

[10][11] The team also took inspiration from the music video for the 2013 song "Bad Motherfucker" by the Russian band Biting Elbows, which shows a special agent from a first-person perspective escaping from a hostage situation through parkour and gunplay.

[10] The Challenge prototype only featured three levels across three computers, which to meet the deadline the team strung together in three separate applications and called the game episodic.

[13][14] Iwanicki stated that the positive reaction to the web demonstration was a result of players looking for any variation in the standard formula of first-person shooters, which had not really changed since the development of Doom.

Unlike a puzzle game where there is typically only one solution and the player is rewarded for finding it, Iwanicki considers Superhot to be about having the time to adjust to one's instincts and improvise a strategy for completing a challenge.

[15] In May 2014, the development team launched a Kickstarter campaign to make Superhot a full release, including improvement of the art design, new levels and challenges, and support for the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift.

[16] They had planned on starting a Kickstarter campaign to fund publication after their Steam Greenlight approval, but they first wanted to polish the game more before offering the crowdfunding opportunity.

This gave the team more time to improve the game while locality issues were resolved, and it allowed them to continue building the art assets for the Kickstarter promotion.

[18] Luke Spierewka, a programmer on the team, believed the success of their fundraising was in part due to the availability of the browser-enabled demonstration that allowed potential funders to experience the game's concept hands-on.

Cliff Bleszinski designed a level for the game because he pledged for the Kickstarter tier that allowed a backer to co-design an arena stage.

This choice was made during the creation of the demonstration, primarily to allow the team to focus on the gameplay aspects for the 7-day FPS Challenge.

[20] Surma, who had not been able to participate in the Challenge but was brought on after their decision to expand the game, maintained this style, as it made it clear to the player what they had to focus on, removing the common distractions found in first-person shooters.

[21] Surma also brainstormed the idea of presenting the game in the style of works from MS-DOS and Amiga computer systems in the 1990s; this resulted in the metagame interface that was fashioned after Norton Commander.

[29] An early prototype of the game using Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) support was shown during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014.

[34] The team is working to assure the gameplay is focused on the VR experience, including tighter integration of the game's story.

[41] As released Superhot VR included an in-game toggle that would skip over scenes that involved the player-character committing self-harm, such as shooting themselves in the head or jumping off a tall building.

In July 2021, Superhot Team released a patch that eliminated these scenes completely from the game, stating that on reflection "Considering [the] sensitive time we’re living in, we can do better than that.

[1] Eurogamer's Christian Donlan considered both the gameplay and the narrative around it working well together to form "that rare piece of charmingly curated violence that dares to provoke difficult thought".

[58] Chris Plante of The Verge found that while the narrative was passable, the gameplay and design choices that drive the title away from being a simple first-person shooter, such as the inclusion of a red trail to show the path of bullets that subtly allow the player to identify their source, made Superhot "something wholly original in a genre that has become bereft of originality".

Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences acknowledged Superhot's achievements in independent game design by nominating it for the "D.I.C.E.

At its launch in August 2019, the Superhot Presents fund was already supporting the Frog Detective series by Worm Club, and Knuckle Sandwich by Andrew Brophy.