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.
]]>At the end of this year, most Flash games will be unplayable in their original form. Adobe are going to stop distributing Flash, and so most browsers plan on dropping Flash support. While this may be an internet security victory - Flash has a history of being vulnerable to certain kinds of malware - it does make it harder to experience the thousands of online Flash games. There are ways to download and run Flash games offline, but many of those games have processes that are meant to lock the game to its original site.
Thankfully there are preservation projects working to keep Flash games playable in their original form. The only question remaining is which you should play. We'll answer that question, and explain the best ways to play them, below.
]]>The biggest names in platforming used to live only on console, but it's on PC now that the genre is thriving. Indies have taken the simple ingredients and spun them off in umpteen directions (but still normally from left to right). Below you'll find a collection of the very best platform games on PC - including puzzle platformers, physics platformers, platformers with roguelike elements, and platformers about absolutely nothing but pixel-perfect jumping.
]]>When Tommy Refenes first sat down to prototype a new, auto-running one-button Super Meat Boy game in his GDC hotel room back in 2011, it was meant to be a tiny spin-off for mobiles that stopped after nine levels. “The scope of it was going to be very small,” the programmer of Team Meat told me at PAX East 2019 last weekend. “The idea was just to be like a palette cleanser in between our bigger projects because we were working on Mew-Genics. It was supposed to be, ‘Let’s just do this, put it out and charge like a dollar for it and then move on’.”
Fast forward to today and Super Meat Boy Forever will shortly be out on every platform with somewhere in the region of 7200 levels (or “chunks” as Refenes calls them). It’s still an auto-runner, but if you’re worried about Forever being dumbed down after beginning life on mobile, rest assured that it looks and feels just like the 2010 mega hit – right down to the speed of Meat Boy’s stubby red legs.
]]>Splendidly deadly platformer Super Meat Boy is free to keep on the Epic Games Store if you grab it now. This is the second of the freebies luring people onto Epic's new store since its launch in December 2018, following Subnautica (and if the carrot doesn't work, there's always the stick of exclusive games). For now, hey, if you install Epic's client and register an account, you can get Team Meat's ace platformer free.
]]>Super Meat Boy Forever [official site], the auto-running sequel to 2010's super-rad deadly platformer, has reappeared after several years in that Team Meat 'missing-presumed-cancelled' limbo state. Team Meat last night announced it'll hit in 2018. Forever is an auto-runner, sure, but just as deadly and tricky as ever. This time, Meat Boy and Bandage Girl do have the ability to fight back, biffing enemies as they dash around. Forever also brings the twist of procedurally-generated levels which regenerate into a more difficult variant each time you beat them. Peep the re-announcement trailer:
]]>Edmund McMillen, the co-creator of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, has announced a deadly new platformer. The End Is Nigh [official site] is its name, and coming out in July is its game. It's a collaboration with Closure creator Tyler Glaiel and no, it's Øuroboros, another platformer those two had been working on. The End Is Nigh is a "sprawling adventure platformer" past the end of the world about a blobby lad named Ash who certainly will die a lot. Have a peek in the announcement trailer:
]]>Screened is a fiendish little free platformer in the vein of Super Meat Boy with a scratchy, itchy post-punk soundtrack that's a perfect match: both are like fingernails run down a blackboard, yet both unavoidably draw you in.
The game was built for the Ludum Dare 31 game jam, the theme of which was "the entire game on one screen". Screened spins its single screen out into multiple levels by moving around obstacles and barriers every time you reach the exit, with each new spin on the screen throwing new challenges into your face whilst laughing at your incompetence and displeasure.
]]>Team Meat, makers of Super Meat Boy, have announced their intent to become an indie game developer. What does that mean? That's my cruel way of saying that the two-person team have put their previously announced new game Mew-Genics on hold, and released a fuzzy, live-action trailer for a new game called A Voyeur For September, about which there are no details other than that it's a "live action stealth game". That video is embedded below.
]]>Mew-Genics, the cat-breeding-based follow-up to Super Meat Boy, has been in development for almost a year and half - that's almost a decade in cat years. Too long, too long! We'll all be crawling under the nearest chest-of-drawers to die soon. At least we finally have some in-game footage to look at, even if it does take the form of an animated GIF. But given cats and GIFs are the bedrock of the internet, it is only appropriate.
Warning: cartoon cats shagging below. No feline winkies on show, though.
]]>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!
]]>The entire gaming world and its robo-dog is currently going from door-to-door and begging for cash, so a shaft of philanthrophic light amidst the Kickstarted darkness is a welcome one. We posted about Mario/McMillen & Refenes mash-up Super Meat Boy Galaxy last week, but it was unclear whether Aubrey Hesselgren would ever share more of his half-gag, half-tribute project with the world. Turns out, he will. BUT ON ONE CONDITION. That condition is cash. Of course it's cash! This cash will not, however, go to the developer - it will go to The Samaritans. If SMBG is successfully 'ransomed' for £10,000, its prototype will be freed and released to the public.
Blood money, I call it! Blood money! And also a very smart idea.
]]>Over-talented game dev Aubrey Hesselgren crafted an unofficial 3D mashup of Super Meat Boy and Super Mario Galaxy, apparently "for Tommy Refenes' 30th Birthday". You can see a video of it in action below. Hesselgren says on a Reddit thread devoted to the idea: "It's just an experiment in adaptation. I kept hearing people write off 3D games with all the arguments about spatial perception, limited information etc, and wanted to try to tackle a few of their points, just for my own edification. I didn't want to dismiss what they were saying, but I felt like I had to see for myself. I learnt a lot!"
]]>Four words all but guaranteed to win my attention: "a game about cats." When said four words are twinned with the knowledge that the game in question comes from the creators of Super Meat Boy and one half of The Binding Of Isaac team, my attention becomes unwavering.
We know precious little about Team Meat's Mew-Genics other than that it'll be "randomly generated, strange and involve cats" so even a tiny, kitten-size scrap of detail is enough to cause a flurry of fluffy speculation. Today, that's two new shots showing in-game characters.
]]>The long-awaited documentary about the creators of Super Meat Boy, Braid and Fez is out now and available for download from its own site, iTunes or Steam. Here's Mr Brendy C to tell you a few things about it before you spend your digi-groats on this much-feted film. Warning: could be said to include spoilers, if a documentary about some guys making videogames can be said to be spoilable.
Indie Game: The Movie is in the unusual position of being able to say it was using Kickstarter “before it was cool, man.” So it’s already vulnerable to the kind of folk who shout ‘hipster!’ at every twenty-something in a pair of milk-bottle glasses. Of course, our readers know better than that. As children, most of you will have undoubtedly been told the tale of The Boy Who Cried Hipster, the moral of the story being ‘don’t lie about there being a dickhead around, in case a real dickhead should actually show up one day to subtly insult your decor, or eat you.’ Being so well brought-up, I believe we can look at Indie Game: The Movie somewhat more fairly and see it for what it actually is: a good documentary which occasionally lapses into artificiality.
]]>Grumpypants time: I worry slightly that focusing on Super Meat Boy, Fez and Braid risks painting an extremely narrow picture of indie gaming, and as such Indie Game The Movie might be suffering from some of the same echo chamber issues that some felt this year's IGF did. But hell, let's celebrate that it has successfully brought an image of videogaming that isn't guns/boobs/guns/boobs/guns/boobs/guns/boobs into another medium and be happy about it.
]]>It's arguable that the current Humble Indie Bundle is the best one yet. I'd argue it. I'm arguing it right now. But incredibly, it just got better. Added to Bastion, Superbrothers, Limbo, Psychonauts and Amnesia are Super Meat Boy, Braid, and bundle first-timer, Lone Survivor. Oh my goodness.
When speaking to Humble's Richard Esguerra earlier today, I took the chance to ask him about what difference these extras can make. You can see that below.
]]>I've got a mighty fine idea. Why not point a camera at a bunch of creative sorts and let them speak their minds? That's how Indie Game: The Movie was made, although I suspect editing the hundreds of hours of footage into something watchable, fascinating and entertaining was the hard part. Perhaps that's why Swirsky and Pajot's film won World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at Sundance 2012. Everyone will be able to watch it soon, or at least anyone near an internet connection, as it will be available as a downloadable purchase on June 12th. What's most intriguing about this is that one of the download services carrying the film will be Steam. This leads to the obvious questions: will every film in the world soon be available on Steam and will Episode Three be a cinemovie?
]]>Who wants a long look into the mind behind The Binding of Isaac? Edmund McMillen recently spoke with design3, a web portal offering education and advice for game developers, and the resulting conversation is wide-ranging, fascinating and what I believe must be referred to as 'refreshingly' honest. That's as honest as the country pub with the shaded garden serving up the first beer of a summertime Friday evening after a day of fielding calls in a thimble-sized office cubicle. The interview runs for an hour and a half but is certainly worth sticking with if you have an interest in Ed and his games, the indie scene, making games of your own or the wider industry. They cover it all.
]]>Good news and less good news from the Humble Bundle camp today. The happier end of the bargain is that purchasers of the current Humble Bundle 4 now get the base contents of Humble Bundle 3 (i.e. VVVVVV, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, And Yet It Moves, and Hammerfight) added to their pack. That's if they've bought HB4 already. If they haven't, they'll have to beat the average price to get the bonus goodies. The average price is currently $5.17 million.
]]>Details of the next Humble Indie Bundle have once more leaked, because Steam's Content Description Record Viewer Thingamie is so ludicrously easy for people to spy. And it looks like it's going to be a bit of a corker, as spotted by DIY Gamer. In the pay-what-you-want collection it seems there will be Super Meat Boy, BIT.TRIP.RUNNER, Jamestown, Nightsky and Shank. That's the first wave, and then there's even better to get added in.
]]>Here's an indie bundle with a difference - it doesn't contain any games. Instead, the Indie Music Bundle it's a collection of soundtracks from some of your favourite (assumption #1) indie games and some you have probably never heard of (assumption #2). As is swiftly becoming obligatory, the ten albums are available at a price of your choosing, although this is for one day only, being a Black Friday sale. The minimum price is $1 and if you pay at least $10 you'll receive seven bonus items.
]]>The Binding of Isaac is a roguelike-or-is-it/shooter/body-horror/religion-bating curio from Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. It's... different. It's nasty. It's funny. It's lightning fast. It's cruel. It's a lot of things, in one small and very cheap package. But is it any good? In the name of finding out, Alec and Adam gathered to discuss mutant babies, shooting human waste products, dicing with the devil and laser eyeballs.
]]>And we <3 Team Meat right back. Over the weekend, they've been chatting to the cool cats over at IndieGames.com, and Ed dropped this hefty knowledge bomb:
]]>What will the next game from Super Meat Boy creators Team Meat be? Well, it probably won't be a Super Meat Boy sequel, going on their earlier comments. But it does, apparently, have something to do with one, some or all of these things: stabbing, cardboard, cats, trolls, teabagging, ninja sais, Benny Hill.
]]>Update: Team Meat are now claiming this was only a misinterpreted joke and there's no truth to the reported number.
Holy... We've been pointed in the direction of DarkZero's pretty fascinating chat with Super Meat Boy creators Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen, and amongst all manner of rumination on stuff like the importance of Steam sales and why they're not worried about piracy, they let slip a little but apparently made-up number.
]]>There are now over 500 levels in bastard-hard platform gem Super Meat Boy. Over 500. This absurd milestone has been reached as a result of a dramatic new update, known in continually Nintendo-prodding fashion as Super Meat World. It's free, it was added to the game on Saturday, and it consists of a slew of new official levels and even more of a slew of approved third-party levels for the blood-smearing jumpy-runny game.
]]>What are you doing right now? Working? Smiling? Breathing? Well, stop with that nonsense and go straight over to the Steam page for The Potato Sack, a new bundle of indie games offering £108's worth of great indie games, including Amnesia, Super Meat Boy, Toki Tori (which you can read Kieron shouting about here), The Ball (which Jim and John talk about here) and Defense Grid: The Awakening, for a paltry £27. I'd eagerly pay £30 for those five games alone, and there are another eight in the pack.
]]>Last night at GDC, Team Meat took the stage to let out some of the frustrations that accompanied releasing Super Meat Boy. And those frustrations were Microsoft. Seemingly screwed over on a number of occasions, the independent dev team did not receive the promotion they were promised in return for the month-long XBLA exclusivity. Eurogamer have all the details about this screwery here. But there's another aspect to this story. During the talk they also revealed that the game had the majority of its sales on the PC, despite the 360's month-long head start.
]]>RPS reader (not making this up) Fuggles the Lightfuggly One sends word that PETA, aka People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has published a parody of Super Meat Boy. You can play Super Tofu Boy here. Is it still a parody if it's just kind of... Super Meat Boy, again? There's not much ridicule going on here, except for Bandage Girl two-timing Meat Boy. But you know, I always suspected she was bad news.
]]>EDIT: The following is based on extensive time spent with the 360 version of SMB, and we're hearing reports that the PC version currently has memory leak and gamepad support issues. We'll be posting a full review of the PC version very soon.
EDIT 2: We've spoken to Team Meat, and they tell us they're working hard on an update to fix issues right now, which will be out today.
EDIT 3: Pow! Team Meat slurp into action.
Super Meat Boy is OUT, you know. You could be buying it over at Steam right the hell now with £11.99 of your (let's face it) ill-gotten money. The only problem is, there's no demo. This is me letting out a sigh like a shot from an air rifle.
Super Meat Boy is a steaming steak of brilliance, served with a rich, leathery wine with a label that reads Chateau Just One More Go. A demo will unquestionably result in Team Meat selling more copies, and the sooner it arrives the better. Until then, I suppose I'll have to sell you this game with my trademark hyperbole. You got a minute? If so, let's do this. You need Super Meat Boy in your life because...
]]>We have a date! Super Meat Boy will be squelching onto the PC in exactly two weeks, boasting six (SIX!) exclusive characters. We already knew two of them- MineCraft guy and Captain Viridian from VVVVVV - and two more have been announced this morning. Ooh, and Team Meat has also mentioned that from November 23rd, anyone pre-ordering the game on Steam will get SMB for the price of $10, as opposed to the game's full price of $15. Now, those characters.
]]>It's been sad, watching consoleland getting so excited/frustrated about Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refene's breakout indie hit Super Meat Boy these past few weeks. It should be ouuuuuuuurs. [Stamps feet petulantly]. Fortunately, the PC version is still planned for sometime this month (the target is the last week of Nov) - complete with some bonus famous faces. Well, they're more or less faces, if you squint a bit.
Two of the PC version's six exclusive playable characters will be Mr Minecraft, as publicly arranged on Twitter with Notch (as shown above), and VVVVVV's Captain Viridian (as shown below). There are four more mystery chaps yet to come. Perhaps you'd like to take a guess.
]]>I remember in the late 90s thinking to myself, "I wonder how people will spoof/retro this decade?" It was a ten year spread that seemed to be of such variation, and mostly made up of retroing various previous decades, that it seemed like it wouldn't have a distinct flavour of its own. Of course, time passes and that all changes, as the splendid new pseudo-commercial for Super Meat Boy demonstrates. It's an excellent production designed to capture the style of early 90s gaming advertising, as recorded on VHS. Despite the ad's failure to mention the PC release, it's coming out on the machine that made McMillen's name a month later, on the 20th November.
]]>Super Meat Boy is due to reach the PC on the 20th November. (A month after the XBLA release, sadly.) Team Meat have gathered together (that's Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes) (and not even together, it's by robo-Skype) to present what must be the least professional commentary of the first twenty minutes of a game I've ever enjoyed. Not being able to see the same screen makes it especially fun. It's below.
]]>The below three minutes of mingled in-game action, animation and blippy-bloppy music show off Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes' upcoming Super Meat Boy perfectly. It looks clever, funny, twisted and packed with juicy giblets of visual invention. It also looks like I'll almost certainly be unable to play it past the first few levels.
]]>He's a boy! He's made of meat! He's super! He's Super Meat Boy! He's up for the Audio and Grand Prize at this year's IGF! He's made by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes (aka Team Meat)! We're talking to them! Like, right now! MEAT! MEAT!
]]>Edmund McMillen is a very special person. RPS has been following his forays into gaming disturbia for the last year, so it's with positive expectations that we great the gradual release of information about Super Meat Boy. The sequel to last year's Meat Boy is planned for release on PC and Wiiware at the end of 2009, and today the first teaser has appeared. And it's... it's of the McMillan oeuvre. No game footage yet, but certainly something worth a watch. It's below.
]]>
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