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If you’re invested in the platformer genre at all, you already know that one of the most beloved, deceptively difficult entries in recent memory is the Super Meat Boy series. Behind a cutesy yet gross presentation, this is a franchise that pushes players to the absolute limit in a borderline rage-inducing experience at times.
Though Super Meat Boy and Super Mario Bros. share the same SMB acronym, the two actually couldn’t be further apart in design and required skill overall. Meat Boy is a game where you are absolutely going to die hundreds, if not thousands of times. But that’s the point. Levels are short, and the idea is figuring out how to perfect your Point A to Point B journey safely and quickly, though it’s so much easier said than done here.
I personally love all styles of platformer, and I’ve always respected Meat Boy for being so hardcore. The «Try this room for as many attempts as it takes» approach works great, as it also does in fellow challenging platformers like Celeste or Bionic Bay. I dig the vibe, even if Meat Boy itself has never been in my Top 5 platforming series overall.
Seeing that Super Meat Boy was going 3D, however, still absolutely caught my eye. What would that на самом деле mean for this particular franchise? Were we going to get a Mario 64-like moment for our squishy little hero, or would the approach be something else entirely?
I recently got to go hands-on with eight levels of Super Meat Boy 3D, and I’m walking away ready for more stages, failed attempts, and deaths as soon as the full game releases. No, this isn’t going to be a game for anyone that hasn’t liked the series before despite the perspective change, but it still seems like it has the chops to be another awesome entry into the tough-as-nails platformer catalog.
Adding A New Dimension
Super Meat Boy coming to the 3D space felt like a huge change upon announcement, and I immediately began to wonder just what this would actually look like for the series. In my mind, I was imaging a full, controllable camera in a 3D space with a world populated with collectibles and semi-open-ish worlds to explore.
In practice, that’s actually not how SMB 3D functions at all. There’s no camera control, and you’re basically controlling Meat Boy from an isometric-ish perspective that now allows you to move in all directions. I think this might be a bummer for some people that saw the game reveal and expected more of a free-exploration type, traditional 3D platformer experience.
But if you’re a longtime fan of the series and know what it’s about, I don’t think this type of «3D» is a bad thing at all for this game. It works great, and controlling Meat Boy from a top-down POV with more movement options besides just left to right serves the game style well. Just know you aren’t actually getting the full Mario Odyssey-ization of Meat Boy here.
While there are more exploration options than ever before in 3D, typically in this demo, going off the path to successfully platform to a floating island in the distance would just earn me the right to be snapped in half by a collection of bear traps before starting the level over again.
What 3D does open up is simply new directions and avenues to direct the platforming challenges. I think this is a great choice. I love a good, challenging platformer as much as the next person, but I do also think you can only do so much from a 2D side-scrolling perspective for Meat Boy specifically. We’ve already wall climbed and maneuvered around tons of sawblades in the 2D space as is.
Now, the freedom of more movement directions does seem to be making things much more interesting, and it brings a freshness to the series that we haven’t had in a minute. Some sections do still go the side-scrolling direction occasionally, but you’re still not locked to direct left to right movement. Even when the goal is moving on a single plane, Meat Boy can still move up and down on the floor’s surface to navigate obstacles, jump onto a wall, and so on.
Ultimately, it’ll be interesting to see what people think about this isometric-like approach in action, and if it’s really what they were expecting when they heard their favorite cube of meat was hitting a new dimension. It works extremely well in the eight levels I’ve demoed, but just know what you’re going to be getting into here, too.
Meat With A Sheen
Of course, the presentation that goes hand-in-hand with bringing Meat Boy to the 3D space also changes up the overall vibe pretty substantially. The Meat Boys of old have all been limited to the flat, 2D side-scrolling perspective. While the art style of former titles has still been solid, I don’t think I’d ever really describe it as being particularly beautiful, either.
It’s really interesting now, in 3D, to see the differences in design. Meat Boy looks like a shiny, little Dreamworks character as he hops around much more visually diverse biomes and worlds full of forests, garbage, toxic waste, squirrels with guns, and more varieties of sawblades and pointy, deadly objects than ever.
In its current, early state, it’s not a title that’s blowing me away in the graphical fidelity department, and there are some performance things to be ironed out, like some frequent texture and object pop-in. The pre-rendered cutscenes, on the other hand, look incredible, so I’m excited to keep seeing more of those as the game continues on.
Regardless of any current minor visual hiccups, I do truly enjoy the overall look here. It gets the job done, and it’s fun to see Meat Boy in such a vibrant and 3D space for a change that’s pretty alive with little animations going on in the background, like robo-lumberjacks chopping trees, and squirrels chasing each other around.
It’s also not Meat Boy without awesome music, and the mix of metal guitar-work and catchy synths that I experienced right from the launch of the game’s main menu set the scene for me to lock into my professional platformer mindset immediately. It’s great stuff.
The Precision Platforming You Crave
Now, let’s get to the actual gameplay experience. Once again, I’ve only gotten to check out eight levels so far, but I must say that I’m having an absolute blast. Meat Boy has always been about hyper-short, challenging rooms to conquer, and that same trend carries over into 3D.
The loop of trying and retrying levels over and over to get a better time, or to register fewer deaths, is still super strong here. I very quickly found myself just trying levels again immediately after completing them, because I knew I could improve, and I felt the desire to prove it to myself.
In total, I ran the entire demo three times in a row in one sitting. I think this is a great sign, because I simply didn’t want to stop playing it. Nothing here is particularly groundbreaking, at least from what I’ve been shown, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun as hell.
The control scheme is just as easy to wrap your head around as always. You move, sprint, jump, and dash, then also have the ability to wall climb and wall run to keep making progress. I will say that something about this 3D space and the controls has me still perfecting getting Meat Boy to keep from executing a simple wall climb when I really want him to wall run, but I’m fine saying that this is just a skill issue until I internalize the controls more efficiently.
It’s still the same premise of starting a level, getting to the end to rescue Bandage Girl, but having her stolen away by Dr. Fetus (in various hilarious fashions) before moving onto the next, more difficult level and trying again. There are collectible bandages to nab in some levels too, but it’s really still the «Get to the end» formula you know and love from Meat Boys of old.
There’s a toggle-able red ring landing space for Meat Boy that you can switch on to make sure you always know where he’s going to land, which is a great quality of life feature as you adapt to this crazy fast, kinetic, floaty style of platforming once again.
В комплексе Super Meat Boy 3D feels perfectly precise, which is paramount for this type of platformer. Yes, levels will get difficult. But with how smooth and dialed in the controls are once you lock-in, you always know that any misstep and resulting death is your own dumb fault, and that’s exactly what this type of game needs in order to be successful.
I’m not a big rage game guy, but as long as I know any failures are skill issues and not just the game handling poorly, you have my attention, as well as my commitment to conquer whatever you throw at me. This is where Super Meat Boy 3D seems like it’s going to thrive. I’m genuinely excited to see more of the game (and the promised boss fights) whenever the team is ready to show off more so I can continue testing my precision platformer skills in even more directions this time around.
Завершение всего
There’s still no concrete release date for Super Meat Boy 3D, but it’s currently slated to be ready sometime in early 2026. Based on my time with the game, it already feels and runs great, so I’m hopeful that this target will be met.
In the meantime, you can always wishlist the game on its Steam page in order to keep up with any future updates as development for the title rolls on.
Super Meat Boy 3D will launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox. This is one to keep an eye on if you’re down for another entry in the series that’s going to push you to your limits, just from more angles.
