Preview: Super Meat Boy

You control Meat Boy, a small animated cube of meat, in his quest to rescue his girlfriend Band-Aid Girl from the evil Dr. Fetus. Are you sold yet?

The Facts

Super Meat Boy is hands down the most anticipated downloadable game of this year, and the foreseeable future.  Planned for a summer 2010 release on Steam (for both PC and Mac), Xbox Live Arcade, and WiiWare, this game will be seeing some wide distribution.  Created by indie developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, SMB is a follow-up to the wildly successful flash game Meat Boy, which you can play here for free at Newgrounds.

It’s also worth noting that the music for SMB is being written by Danny Baranowsky, the same man behind last year’s big hit indie game, Canabalt. If you’ve played Canabalt and not had the game’s main tune stuck in your head at least once, you are not human!  The tunes for SMB promise to showcase Danny’s style, as they will have as much epic feel as you can pull from 16-bit era inspired tracks.

The Premise

This game strives to avoid the complications and tangled webs of  modern games by taking things back to the basics of gaming, and that goal applies to the plot as well.  In other words, this game does not take itself too seriously.  The premise really is as simple as it sounds: you are a block of meat, now go get the girl.  McMillen says it best though, when speaking about his game: “”The basis of Meat Boy‘s story is set around nostalgic videogame clichés.  The story is basically a mash-up of every videogame story from the early 90s, except you’re a little boy made of meat who’s saving a girl made of Band-Aids from a fetus in a jar with a PhD. The goal with Super Meat Boy is to take this design and push it as far as it will go. SMB will be extremely over-the-top in every way.”

The Gameplay

Super Meat Boy is a game that consists around 300 short levels that strive to bring back the difficulty and required learning-through-repetition that NES classics brought to the table, while staying rewarding enough to keep you playing.  I believe the game combines style, humor, and repetition-requiring difficulty in a similar fashion to Portal, and therefore this game could be poised for some big success.

In each level, your delicious cube of meat runs through the stage, leaving a trail of goo behind it, and you are required to traverse a series of obstacles in order to reach Bandage Girl, thereby completing the stage.  The first thing that jumps out at you though, is the control.  Meat Boy moves FAST, and your control over him is very granular.  With only a bit of momentum, you can jump across the screen.  You also have quite a bit of freedom to move back and forth while mid-jump, and in fact, the art of wall-jumping is the primary mechanic of this game.  With the tight control, you are able to wall-jump your way up and over just about any surface, as long as you avoid the spikes, lasers, spinning blades, and crumbling surfaces, of course.

The levels look beautiful, with a wide variety of scenery and a deep well of potential obstacles that will keep levels feeling fresh well into the 100s.  One of my favorite features, though, is the inclusion of special “retro zones”, where characters from other popular indie games such as Braid, Alien Hominid, and the Bit.Trip series can be unlocked.  The levels in these zones are all designed in a specific 4-bit, 8-bit, or Game Boy themed style.  They also switch over from unlimited lives to a 3-life limit, establishing that true retro level of difficulty for the gamer who must unlock everything.  Here is a screen shot from a Game Boy themed level:

Super Meat Boy will also include co-op, versus, and four-player party modes, all of which have been kept under wraps so far [NOTE: As per a tweet from @SuperMeatBoy today, the 4-player modes have been scrapped because they just weren't very fun].  The PC version is also very likely to receive it’s own level editor, as a level editor pack for the original Meat Boy has a strong community built around it.

In any case, be sure to follow along with the development at the Super Meat Boy blog.  This game is not even out but it’s already garnering a cult following, complete with comic books, plush versions of characters, and more available at their merch store.