The player can choose from up to ten superhero archetypes ranging from high-speed Speedsters, close-combat Brutalists, powerful Psychics, and healing Plantmancers; each offering unique abilities.

The show's composer Jamie Dunlap worked on the game's soundtrack alongside Ubisoft San Francisco, creating music that was heavily inspired by the scores of several superhero films.

Instead of taking place on a static plane, battles are fought on a variable-size grid on which the player and enemies can move freely to create strategic advantages.

[16] The player is encouraged to explore the wider game world to defecate in toilets in a mini-game,[5] find yaoi art depicting intimate moments between the characters Tweek and Craig, or take self-portraits with town residents to increase their followers on Coonstagram, an Instagram-like social media feed.

[20] Unable to agree on who will get a film or Netflix series, the characters split into two rival factions, Coon and Friends and the Freedom Pals, and vie to create their own franchise first.

[38] Locations from the show featured include the City Wok restaurant,[20] the Peppermint Hippo strip club,[17] Kenny's House in the abandoned, gentrified district SoDoSoPa, the classier Shi Tpa Town containing Skeeter's Bar and Jimbo's Guns.

The New Kid and Chaos are sent to infiltrate the Freedom Pals to gain more information, culminating in the two groups co-operating to take down the police department, who are helping Mitch become the new mayor so they can have fewer restrictions on fighting crime.

The Freedom Pals capture Cartman, who insists he has no control over Mitch and reveals that the New Kid's parents are being held at Dr. Mephesto's genetic engineering lab.

The New Kid investigates missing counsellors at Lake Tardicaca summer camp alongside Fastpass, Professor Chaos, and fellow superhero Mint-Berry Crunch (Bradley Biggle).

The New Kid's party defeats Nathan and Mimsy, rescuing the sole surviving counselor, who is in turn kidnapped by the alien Zarganor, who seeks revenge against Mint-Berry Crunch.

Ubisoft game developers, including senior producer Jason Schroeder, visited South Park studios twice monthly for a few days or conducted teleconferencing meetings.

[45] Ubisoft adapted Snowdrop, its proprietary game engine, to allow the importing of the Autodesk Maya art assets used in the show rather than emulating them as in The Stick of Truth.

[43] Unlike more typical videogame prototyping, in which designers experiment with simple gameplay demos, USF relied more heavily on interactive storyboards of the script to gain a sense of the location and the narrative.

[55] Parker and Stone wrote the script in Movie Magic Screenwriter, complete with stage directions that were edited or translated into gameplay by narrative designer Jolie Menzel and her team.

[47] Parker and Stone considered it important to prevent the superhero setting from overwhelming the main focus of the story, which is fourth-grade children playing together and dressing up as heroes to enhance that experience.

[57] Schroder said the USF team had to adapt to prioritizing comedy and comedic timing over gameplay, meaning it was more important to convey humor than to improve systems.

[43] They sometimes needed to step back from the less comfortable aspects of Parker's and Stone's design, at one point contemplating an autoplay option that would complete segments for the player, such as a sequence in which the 9–10-year-old protagonists give a lap dance in a strip club in a minigame.

They developed the Artifact system, which could be used to enhance statistics, as an alternative[6] A rejected option for The Stick of Truth was the choice to play as a girl, which could not be included without altering the entire narrative.

[41] The Fractured but Whole offers twelve allies compared to The Stick of Truth's six; USF wanted them, their powers, and their associated dialogue to be a more frequent presence, involving them in both battles and exploration.

The game's sound design was inspired by several superhero film scores; The Coon's and Mysterion's themes are based on Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy.

In a September 2017 interview, USF associate producer Kimberly Weigend said the game's content was not tamer than that of The Stick of Truth, and the uncensored release was possibly a sign of censors becoming more open to ideas and that interactive media was a relatively new medium and the ratings system was evolving alongside it.

[61] Design director Paul Cross said to prevent the difficulties The Stick of Truth experienced, USF tried to avoid content they knew would be censored, but that Parker and Stone would tell the story they wanted regardless of censorship concerns.

The Gold Edition included a set of in-game costumes, a bonus perk, and a Season Pass granting access to post-launch downloadable content (DLC).

In it, the player teams up with Mint-Berry Crunch, an alien wielding the tremendous power of mint and berries, to uncover the mysterious disappearances of camp counsellors at Lake Tardicaca.

[7] PC Gamer called it "streamlined, imaginative, and enormously entertaining";[13] and Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) said it would be difficult to find a more complete South Park experience that is as funny.

[13] Reviewers said that it offered a positive change from its predecessor, prioritizing strategic thinking over reflexes, and a variety of teams possible from the wide cast of available characters.

[3] The various Ultimate moves were considered to be hilarious and impressive, with Polygon saying they were as epic as a summon in Final Fantasy,[1][3] but they were also criticized for being unskippable, making them feel too long and repetitive later into the game.

[86] GamesRadar+ said the game starts slowly but the pace escalates quickly into an intriguing mystery with one of the television series' best villains,[7] and Shacknews called it an "absurd, but enthralling tale, but not so long as to overstay its welcome or get stale".

[37] Some reviewers said the story found moments of sweetness or innocence in its characters;[15] Slant Magazine called it poignant for its mission involving the New Kid resolving the dispute between gay couple Tweek and Craig.

Alongside other single-player games, Assassin's Creed Origins and Middle-earth: Shadow of War, South Park: The Fractured but Whole contributed over $160 million in digital sales for the month.