By Alec Meer on December 17th, 2012 at 2:00 pm.
Miaow miaow miaow Team Meat miaow Super Meat Boy miaow The Binding of Isaac? Miaow miaow miaow Mew-Genics, miaow miaw miaow. Miaow miaow don’t know miaow, miaow miaow miaow miaow 12,207,031,250,000,000,000,000 cats miaow miaow. Miaow!
(Restarting cat-human speech translation engine…)
(3…
(Miaow…
(1…)
Miaow.
While Team Meat are still stubbornly refusing to share quite what manner of game this is, they have been sharing tiny kibbles of tease and hint over the past few weeks. The most obvious, and delightful, place to start is with the theme music, as written and composed by Matthias Bossi and Jon Evans. (The former also voiced the narrator in The Binding Of Isaac).
I could probably leave that playing for a disturbingly long time. It’s very Danny Elfman, BUT WITH CATS and a bit of skiffle.
The other thing is that Mew-Genics appears to be doing with with cats what Borderlands does for guns. As in, a number of different potential variations of them so high as to be in appearance infinite. 12,207,031,250,000,000,000,000 is the estimate, and with a claim that “you’ll never get the same cat twice, unless you clone them, and even then depending on their childhood they still wont act the same.” The impossi-number even only applies to the cats’ appearance – apparent it’ll shoot ever-more skywards if you factor in “personality variables… ability variables, personal stats and a ton more secret stuff.”
With all this talk of cloning and personalities, the big question for me is whether players can strive to recreate an appoxrimation of their own household miniature murderer. In other words, I want to create/clone a black cat with a small head, a bit of a belly, a very squeaky voice, a peculiar fixation with foil and a fondness for cake.
Also newly-revealed are collectible ‘trinkets’, which appear to have some mysterious in-game effect. “Food, poop, barf, kittens, mail… etc” apparently crops up naturally during the course of the game, but “sometimes these things appear imbued with magic properties that change space and time.” Hmm. Well, given how ludicrous Doctor Who’s plots have been lately, the revelation that the TARDIS’s time-travel powers were fuelled by magic cat poo wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
17/12/2012 at 14:06 gibb3h says:
sold.
17/12/2012 at 14:07 Zeno says:
This is my next huge time sink, I can already tell. Edmund McMillen + Randomly Generated Content is a surefire recipe for success.
17/12/2012 at 15:29 Fenix says:
I still don’t know how I spent 212 hours playing The Binding of Isaac.
17/12/2012 at 22:57 Tukuturi says:
Before the first major patch, there was a bug that caused the game’s process to continue running after you closed it. This caused Steam to think you were still playing it when you weren’t. Or maybe you actually did play over 200 hours of Binding of Isaac, in which case I’m not sure what to say to you.
18/12/2012 at 08:37 Fenix says:
Nah, I did play it that much. I swear I decided to quit but then Wrath of the Lamb came out and I was sucked in again. D-don’t judge me :(!
17/12/2012 at 14:09 The First Door says:
That theme tune is pretty brilliant, I must say! Plus I much prefer the style of this game, but perhaps that might just be because I prefer most things with cats in to things without cats in. Well, within reason.
Anyway, as for that number of cats, it just goes to show how quickly numbers grow when you add more degrees of freedom! It makes me wonder how many different cat… er… building blocks they have.
17/12/2012 at 14:15 Inigo says:
cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet cat planet
17/12/2012 at 16:50 x3m157 says:
CATFACE
And then I read down farther and saw someone already posted that. Oh well…
17/12/2012 at 17:26 Rawrian says:
This is cat planet!
17/12/2012 at 23:36 Inglourious Badger says:
We can’t stop here, this is cat country
17/12/2012 at 14:15 Hugehead says:
Does this seem like it could be a Edmund Mcmillen version of the Creatures games to anyone else? I think a darker spin on them would be amazing.
17/12/2012 at 14:55 Lysaara says:
My heart is going to break if this isn’t what it turns out to be.
18/12/2012 at 01:25 particlese says:
Definitely getting that sort of vibe from this article. I’m not sure what I’d think if they learned to converse via text bubbles, though…
Maybe they’ll form their own language as the game goes on and we’ll assimilate it for no other reason than their cuddliness. Could be a pretty cool experiment, as long as Team Meat doesn’t also create a manditory tickle/slap dongle controlled by the game-cats. ಠ_ಠ
17/12/2012 at 14:22 Tom De Roeck says:
you broke the “after the break” thing, alec.
17/12/2012 at 14:23 Atrocious says:
Read the rest of this entry »
18/12/2012 at 01:38 The Random One says:
Meow meow meow meoooow »
17/12/2012 at 14:23 lordcooper says:
“Well, given how ludicrous Doctor Who’s plots have been lately”
I respected you…
17/12/2012 at 15:41 frightlever says:
I assume you lost respect for him because he still watches the alien Jesus show.
17/12/2012 at 17:04 Nevard says:
Dinosaurs on a spaceship! Let’s have the Doctor just straight up kill someone at the end of an episode and show no remorse for the rest of the series!
17/12/2012 at 17:32 phuzz says:
He’s killed loads of people before, back in the old serieses.
17/12/2012 at 19:52 lordcooper says:
The doctor has committed murder and even genocide on numerous occasions. Although yes, that particular episode was more than a little off. Then again, there’s at least one episode of every show (except maybe GoT) that I’ve disliked.
17/12/2012 at 23:14 jhng says:
I can’t watch the recent stuff — it seems to have totally lost its societal science fiction roots and become entirely driven by psychological horror. Pertwee era was the high water mark.
17/12/2012 at 14:27 Dowr says:
CATFACE and what not.
17/12/2012 at 14:46 Sarigs says:
Cat Face, he’s got the big cat face
He’s got the body of a cat, and the face of a cat,
And he flies through the air cause’ he’s got a cat face,
CAT FACE!
17/12/2012 at 16:42 Kinth says:
This needs to be at least a cameo.
17/12/2012 at 14:29 tobecooper says:
It sounds like a cat gurgling a melody while being strangled in a Looney Tunes manner. Very catchy.
Can’t wait for the game.
17/12/2012 at 14:35 Splynter says:
More kitty music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMRaSXh9-n4
18/12/2012 at 01:56 The Random One says:
did anyone say KITTY SONG
http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/chorale-for-jaspers-2
http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/hardchorale
17/12/2012 at 15:19 caddyB says:
CATS
http://youtu.be/-1EPegIzD2M
from the OFF OST!
17/12/2012 at 15:41 SuperNashwanPower says:
Will there be bunnies?
Bunnies or no sale.
17/12/2012 at 15:53 Noodlemonk says:
These lovely tunes reminds of Terry Scott Taylor and his work on the brilliant The Neverhood and Skullmonkeys – oh, sweet nostalgia!
17/12/2012 at 16:37 Hilden2000 says:
This guy knows what’s up, Neverhood music and the game itself were great!
17/12/2012 at 21:19 The Army of None says:
Yes! I didn’t read the comments before posting the same thing myself, but this is exactly what it reminded me of as well :)
17/12/2012 at 15:53 larskinn says:
Oh wow, Matthias Bossi. If you like the theme song here, you should check out Rabbit Rabbit Radio — http://rabbitrabbitradio.com — which is the project he has with his wife and ace violinist/singer Carla Kihlstedt. Really great stuff.
17/12/2012 at 16:31 noodlecake says:
Yeah. I’m a big fan of them both. Carla especially.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7GlyUBb6Lw
17/12/2012 at 18:35 larskinn says:
Excellent, most excellent… another Sleepytime Gorilla Museum fan. I’m assuming that Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit is a bit more digestible to the masses, though :)
17/12/2012 at 16:54 westyfield says:
“Am I saying meow? Do I look like a cat to you boy? Am I jumping around all nimbly-bimbly from tree to tree?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXPeLctgvQI
17/12/2012 at 16:59 GameCat says:
Ca’t wait.
I do’t have key betwee ‘b’ ad ‘m’.
17/12/2012 at 18:48 jikavak says:
Then use l33t sp33k,dummy.Be haxor.
17/12/2012 at 17:35 sub-program 32 says:
Actually, according to a podcat done by someone called Twinfinate in youtube, Edmund said he had got that massive number of cats wrong. It turned out it was far too low.
17/12/2012 at 19:22 Baines says:
It won’t really matter until we see what it looks like, though. You can get extremely large “unique” combinations with not an extreme amount of work.
20 heads and 20 bodies would be 400. 20 heads, 20 bodies, and 20 hats would be 8000. 20, head, 20 bodies, and 20 hats, each part coming in any of 20 colors would be 64,000,000. Instead of having each item be one color, you go for two color patterns, and you end up at 512,000,000,000. Just from drawing 20 heads, 20 bodies, and 20 hats, each with a two-color scheme. Add in more types (held items, tails, collars, etc) and combinations skyrocket even higher.
I’m not trying to belittle the count, but it could still either turn out to be an amazing world of variation or an underwhelming world of minor differences.
17/12/2012 at 21:18 The Army of None says:
The title theme reminds me of the Neverhood soundtrack!
17/12/2012 at 22:10 DonJefe says:
Am I the only one who instantly thought of Primus upon hearing the theme music?
17/12/2012 at 22:43 Snakejuice says:
Detective Mittens: The Crime Solving Cat
meow meow MEOW!
19/12/2012 at 06:40 DHP says:
That mew-sic has me feline great.