Hello, I’m Tommy Refenes. You might remember me from games like Super Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy Forever. I’m thrilled to announce that the Meat Boy universe is returning to PlayStation later this year as an all-new title called Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine!
Meat Boy has had enough games (for now). Now is the 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 end, before the post-credits scene, to be exact). Dr. Fetus wants to create Meat Boy clones and he has to weed out all the shitty clones from the gene pool to get pure, perfect, killable Meat Boys. I wonder what Dr. Fetus would do with an endless supply of Meat Boys…hmmm…probably a question for another time.
Jigsaws, Lasers, Missiles and Other Hazards
What that means in practice is a Puyo Puyo-style match-four puzzler with a unique hardcore twist, thanks to the devious contraptions of the infamous Dr. Fetus. As you try to get your color-coded clones to the bottom of the screen and create combos, you’ll face jigsaws, missiles, and a host of other dangers ready 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 do with Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine Machine brings the hardcore challenge Meat Boy is known for to create a unique blend of puzzle and action gameplay.
The genesis of this game lies in a long-standing relationship between Team Meat and our friends at Headup. We have worked together for almost 12 years in various capacities and we love them. So when they pitched this match-four puzzle game idea to us, we were pretty busy launching Super Meat Boy Forever, but after that, we watched their pitch and prototype and fell in love all over again. We’ve merged their design and programming skills – primarily Niko Panagiotopoulos and Mark Aldrup – with our art and design skills and now we have this incredibly fun and beautiful puzzle game that we never would have even considered making without their amazing prototype and their desire to do something new and awesome.
It’s time to enjoy dying again
The game has over 100 handcrafted levels filled with dangers and traps that will test your puzzle wits as well as your finger reflexes. It’s a game set in the Meat Boy universe, so expect to die – again and again. When you’re finally dead enough, your skills will become second nature and you’ll start beating levels with no more effort than taking a single, simple breath. You will feel accomplished. You will feel… whole. At this point you will then have to fight a boss that will kill you again and again. You will know death. It’s a lot of fun and pretty cute too!
If you’re already a Meat Boy fan, first, thank you, and second, there’s going to be plenty in Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine for you to enjoy. We’ve got a whole bunch of familiar locations from Super Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy Forever like the scenic forest, the hospital and the salt factory, all with dazzling backgrounds, animations and cutscenes created by the artists Super Meat Boy Forever originals. We also have an amazing soundtrack created by the talented Ridiculon.
It was fun to see Meat Boy take a new direction working with a team that showed us a possibility for the series that had never crossed our minds. What emerges is a game that exists in a familiar genre, but at the same time is unlike any other game in this genre. I think few of you would have expected the decision to inject Super Meat Boy’s hardcore meaty DNA into a match-four puzzler (hell, we didn’t expect that when Headup bought us the idea for the first time!). But trust me it was a pretty crazy idea to work and I can’t wait for you all to try and survive Dr Fetus’ twisted test chambers yourself when the game releases on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 later this year.
