I feel like I played Super Meat Boy a lifetime ago as a completely different person. I remember the rage platformer well: I hated it. So when I saw Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine — a game that takes place in sort of the same world, I was captivated, wondering if I would fair better now that I’m a decade older and far more skilled.
Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is a Tetris style game in the Super Meat Boy Universe. You see, Dr. Fetus wants to create a Meat Boy clone — apparently you would have known this if you actually finished the game (something I could not do). In this game, you want to connect up different creatures, blobs, etc to make matches of color, which will then pop away.
The world looks so similar to Super Meat Boy, quickly filling with blood or even the characters themselves in a rock form, giving you less and less space. This matching game has a lot of traps and even bosses that you need to doge around, while trying to place your tiles in the perfect spot to move onto the next level. It’s a lot more pressure than previous games in this genre! The whole time I played Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine, it felt intelse, like I was clearly needing to think quickly, more the different blobs perfectly, and keep the number of creatures down.
Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine feels like a hardcore version of a match-3 game — one that will have you killing your characters and dying when that happens; as one group of dead blobs is the end of that level. You will need to keep your piles of creatures down much farther than the top of the screen, as there is fire, blades, and lasers that can be in your way. Movement is so much more powerful in this game, which really made it stand out from the crowd of block puzzle games on the market. It’s an intense one, that’s for sure, and a far cry away from cute and cozy match-3 games that are full of microtransactions!
I played Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine at The Mix Spring Showcase, but you can wishlist the game on Steam!
