Hello, I’m Tommy Refenes. You may remember me from such games as Super Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy Forever. I’m delighted to be able to tell you that the Meat Boy universe is returning to PlayStation later this year in the form of a brand new title called Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine!
Meat Boy has had enough games (for now). Now it’s time for Dr. Fetus to be a star. Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine takes place right after the events of Super Meat Boy Forever (right after the ending, before the post credits scene, to be exact). Dr. Fetus wants to make clones of Meat Boy and he needs to weed out all of the crappy clones from the gene pool to get pure, perfect, killable Meat Boys. I wonder what Dr. Fetus would do with a never ending supply of Meat Boys…hmmm…probably a question for another time.
Buzzsaws, lasers, missiles, and other hazards
What this means in practice is a Puyo Puyo-style match-four puzzler with a unique hardcore twist, courtesy of the nefarious Dr. Fetus’ devious contraptions. As you’re trying to get your color-coded clones to the bottom of the screen and build combos, you’ll have to deal with buzzsaws, missiles and a host of other hazards primed to destroy your clones if you don’t play with the precision that the Super Meat Boy series has always demanded. In other words, what we are doing with Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine Machine is bringing the hardcore challenge Meat Boy is known for to create a one-of-a-kind blend of puzzle and action gameplay.
The genesis of this game lies in a long lasting relationship between Team Meat and our friends at Headup. We’ve worked together for almost 12 years in various capacities and we love them. So when they approached us with this idea for a match-four puzzle game, we were pretty busy with launching Super Meat Boy Forever but after that was out we looked at their pitch and prototype and fell in love all over again. We merged their design and programming skills – mainly Niko Panagiotopoulos and Mark Aldrup – with our art and design skills and now we have this wickedly fun and beautiful puzzle game that we never would have even considered making if not for their amazing prototype and desire to make something new and awesome.
It’s time to enjoy dying again
The game has over 100 hand-crafted levels filled with hazards and traps that will test your puzzle mind along with your finger reflexes. It’s a game in the Meat Boy Universe, so expect to die – over and over again. When you have finally died enough your skills will be second nature and you will start beating levels with no more effort than taking a single, simple breath. You will feel accomplished. You will feel…whole. At that point you will then have to fight a boss which will kill you over and over. You will know death. It’s a lot of fun and pretty cute too!
If you’re already a fan of Meat Boy, first, thank you and, second, there’s going to be a lot in Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine to please you. We’ve got a whole bunch of familiar Super Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy Forever locations like the picturesque Forest, the Hospital, and Salt Factory, all with dazzling backgrounds, animations and cutscenes created by the original Super Meat Boy Forever artists. We’ve also got an incredible soundtrack created by the talented Ridiculon.
It’s been fun to see Meat Boy heading in a new direction in collaboration with a team who showed us a possibility for the series that had never crossed our minds. What’s come out of it is a game that exists in a familiar genre, but at the same time is like no other game in that genre. The move to inject the hardcore meaty DNA of Super Meat Boy into a match-four puzzler is one that I think few of you would have expected (heck, we didn’t expect it when Headup first bought us the idea!). But trust me, it was a crazy enough idea to work and I can’t wait for you all to be able to try and survive Dr. Fetus’ twisted test chambers yourself when the game hits PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 later this year.
