At the end of July, I had the luxury to travel to London to check out an unannounced game being published by Amazon. Aside from knowing that it was coming from the indie team at Glowmade, a developer made up of former Lionhead and Media Molecule veterans, I was completely unaware of what the project in question was. Although that soon changed when studio head Jonny Hopper took to the stage and presented King of Meat.
In a nutshell, King of Meat is the lovechild of Total Wipeout and Little Big Planet. It's a cooperative action-brawler that tasks a team of players with reaching the end of a level packed with enemies, environmental hazards, puzzles, and platforming sections that has either been created by Glowmade themselves or a member of the community who has access to the same level building tools. The main difference with King of Meat and say Dreams or Meet Your Maker is that it's all set on a fictional and chaotic TV game show, hence the Total Wipeout or even Takeshi's Castle comparisons.
Needless to say, this is a game that is all about teaming up with friends and just embracing the chaos. It's not particularly challenging, it's very easy to pick-up and play, and it lacks the stress of timed encounters and the likes. King of Meat is all about simply loading up a level and seeing how you can get to the end in the most stylish way, maintaining a multiplier that dictates how the crowd is reacting to your performance all to generate the most score as possible by picking up the treasure and valuables that are scattered around the map in obvious or hidden destructible crates, barrels, and chests. There's no serious penalty to dying or falling to your death, meaning you can have a bit of fun and troll your friends by activating traps to launch them to their doom or instead using your Glory Moves abilities to belch them into the stratosphere. Effectively, if you ever wondered what Fall Guys would be like without the panic and thrill of chasing victory Crowns then King of Meat is a pretty good example.
While the gameplay itself is straightforward, there are a lot of interesting elements and mechanics baked in that keep things fresh. Between leaping and doing a little hover motion to extend your leap distance, to belly flopping, being able to grab and throw objects (even exploding barrels), and hunting for very well-hidden secrets, there's more to King of Meat beyond simply loading into a level, smashing crates, slicing through enemies, and reaching the end with the best score possible. And this is where the hub area of Ironlaw Plaza comes into the equation.
If you've played Splatoon, you'll be very familiar with this hub, as alongside serving as a social hub, it's also the home of the various corporate vendors that allow you to develop your character by acquiring new weapons, powerful Glory Moves, cosmetics, temporary perks to help you during a level, and serving as the place to turn in your various challenges to earn in-game currency to be spent on many of these areas. During this early preview session, I only got to see how a few of the various vendors and player customisation elements work, but this did pave the way to testing two very different weapon options (each fit with their own attack chains), and getting to alter the appearance of my character by fiddling with the cosmetics suite.
The customisation is without a doubt one of King of Meat's strongest elements as it allows you to really express yourself without being locked into the more rigid limits of some other multiplayer titles. Again, it's like Little Big Planet as you can change headgear, tops, trousers, shoes, weapon skins, add decorations wherever you see fit using a placement tool, apply stickers, and so forth. The fact that you can unlock a broad slate of cosmetic gear by simply playing the game and completing challenges and bounties makes the thrill of personalising a character even more compelling in a way that simply spending money on premium gear is never able to.
Ironlaw Plaza: home of the King of Meat corporations.
One of the other more interesting elements of King of Meat is also how it challenges the player. Yes, the core aim is to simply make it to the end of the level, but if you do so by amassing a score that is better than what other members of the community manage to achieve, you'll also receive additional rewards that enable even more customisation options. There's a great sense of coming together as a team and earning an elusive gold medal because you kept the crowd hype meter high, found every secret and nook and cranny, and defeated every enemy along the way. King of Meat really doesn't miss a beat in this regard.
But here's the catch - and you can call me a pessimist for even going in this direction but it seems to be a very common trend in this current era of the games sector - there have been plenty of other multiplayer games as of late that debut with great and compelling ideas and then simply fail to maintain a player base and in time fade away. Whether it's Rocket Arena, Knockout City, Hyper Scape, Roller Champions, Dreams, the list goes on. I really, really hope that King of Meat ends up following the trajectory of Fall Guys and not some of these other frankly brilliant ideas, but the truth of the matter is that only the community can define whether a game like this is or isn't a success and the community has been a difficult beast to predict over the past few years.
Some examples of the level building system that I didn't get to test during this preview session.
More user-generated level building examples.
Either way, I hope Glowmade's project thrives and succeeds, because there is something so effortlessly fun and simple about this game that just works. It's fun for all ages, playable for all ages, and thanks to its user-generated design with its level construction suite (that I didn't get to put through the ringer) has a near-endless potential for content. Hopefully that will be enough to see King of Meat remain a favourite for many in a few years' time.
