Super Meat Boy returns in a murderous Tetris-like puzzler
Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine releases this year
Everyone’s favourite squishy hero Super Meat Boy is back, but not in the brutally-fast-platforming way you might expect. Team Meat have announced Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine, a match-four tile puzzler that follows Meat Boy’s archnemesis as he attempts to cook up the perfect Meat Boy clone.
It looks just as murderously difficult as you’d expect, but this time the fun is set on a Tetris-like grid, complete with multi-coloured meat clones and spinning grinders that’ll give you flashbacks to 2010. You’ll need to match four of the sloppy meat clones while avoiding Dr. Fetus’ sadistic buzzsaws and missiles that fill up 100 blood-soaked levels - all of which are inspired by locations from Super Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy Forever. After surviving that gauntlet, a particularly gruesome boss will be waiting at the end of each world.
You might notice that some of the meat clones look notably unlike our Meat Boy, hence the deadly Tetris test chambers. Dr. Fetus is trying to weed out the good clones from the crap ones, and the best way to do that is to squash the loveable bundles of DNA while riffing on the most iconic puzzler of all time.
Some of the series’ original artists are handling backgrounds and animations, but the rest of the development is headed up by, well, Headup Development. The head of development for Headup Development Mark Aldrup says, “Working together [with Team Meat] has allowed us to capture the hardcore essence of Meat Boy and bring it to a completely new genre.”
Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is coming to PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch, and the wicked puzzler has a tentative 2023 release date on Steam.
The original Super Meat Boy made it onto our list of the best platformers on PC, despite its age. It’s still just as snappy and satisfying as ever, although I’d still like an official Super Meat Boy Galaxy someday.