After a whirlwind few years, I thought I’d finally gotten a handle on Amazon Games’ style. The publisher has started finding success with games like New World and Lost Ark, both of which cater to the kinds of hardcore PC players who love dense RPGs. I figured that would be the company’s focus going forward as it settled into a big genre niche and made a play for a more international audience.
And then I played King of Meat.
Amazon’s latest project is unlike anything the studio has put out yet. Developed by Glowmade, King of Meat is a bright and silly co-op dungeon crawler that feels like a mash-up of LittleBigPlanet and Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. It’s a family-friendly game about smashing skeletons, collecting gold, and conquering trap-filled dungeons built with an impressive creative suite. Though it’s certainly a strategic departure from efforts like Throne and Liberty, that might be exactly what Amazon needs. King of Meat already has the makings of a multiplayer charmer. It’ll just have to clear some familiar obstacles if it’s going to survive the precarious world of modern gaming.
Dungeon crawling
King of Meat is set in a fantasy world in which corporations have crafted the perfect reality competition show. Warriors are placed into teams of four and sent into dangerous dungeons full of monsters and traps. The goal is to make it out alive while collecting as much loot as possible, which can then be spent on cosmetics and special moves that will wow the audience. It’s a sleek gameplay loop pumped up with shiny progression and reward loops that make each completion feel worthwhile: clear a dungeon, spend the spoils in a hub, repeat.
The project is a big moment for developer Glowmade, a small studio led by industry veterans from Lionhead, Media Molecule, and other. Studio Head Johnny Hopper previously worked on LittleBigPlanet and that influence is immediately apparent in King of Meat’s art style and playful creation suite. It may sound like a big project for such a sleek studio, so it’s not a surprise to learn that it was originally a smaller idea made larger thanks to a deal with Amazon Games.
“The project started life as a skunkworks side project,” Hopper tells Digital Trends. “We knew we wanted to do user-generated content, but this was going to be a little self-published indie thing. It was a top-down four-player dungeon crawler. And then we had the opportunity to pitch to Amazon and I was like, ‘guys, it’s Amazon. We’ve got to make it a little more expensive! Make it third-person.’ And it kind of worked!”
While the project would scale in ambition, Hopper says that the current version isn’t far off from Glowmade’s original vision. The team wanted to mash together an eclectic list of inspirations including WWE, The Running Man, and Labyrinth. All of those influences come through in the over-the-top reality TV premise full of larger-than-life heroes (even if they’re kind of adorable).
During my demo, I’d clear several dungeons with a full four-person squad. After spending our gold on gear, special abilities, and one-time perks in a small hub area, we dropped into the Koliseum, where we could choose a “league” and vote on which dungeon we’d want to tackle from a list of three options. Once we chose one, we were dropped into a series of rooms that would require teamwork to get through. No two dungeons were the same. One had my team carefully platforming spiky sticks spun around us. Another revolved around bombs, which we could pick up and toss to blow up loot-filled boxes in each room. Each one requires me to use my Yoshi-esque flutter jump and air dive to duck around obstacles, all while fending off enemies and grabbing loot.
Combat is fairly straightforward, with basic light and heavy melee attacks, ranged crossbow shots, and special abilities like a rubber duck grenade. There are a few high-level twists, though. For one, players rack up a combo meter the more they hit things and, in turn, entertain the audience. That creates a score multiplier that can help them nab a gold trophy, granting the team better end rewards. Players can also unlock new weapon licenses and stat boosts through a battle pass-like reward rail. I’d play a few rounds as a quick swordsman before switching over to a heavy hammer that can smash my foes. Each weapon has its own progression tree, so players have some incentive to try every weapon type out.
While nothing is too mechanically deep, King of Meat checks a lot of boxes when it comes to a fun multiplayer game. The best moments of my session just came from my teammates bumping into one another and falling into chaotic mishaps. It’s the same appeal as a physics-based game like Fall Guys, but in a clean package with lots of progression hooks to chase.
Getting creative
What’s impressive is that every dungeon I try can be made with the same exact creative tools that players can use to create their own challenges. While I didn’t try that myself, a video showed off how intuitive and gamelike the tool is. It’s as easy as snapping rooms together, dropping down obstacles like Legos, and erasing blocks to reshape the room. Players can even do some light programming to set up gimmicks like door-opening switches or levers that need to be hit to stop a death trap from spinning. The puzzle platforming potential feels strong here already and I’ve only seen a handful of the 100 levels shipping with the game. The real fun will come from a creative community.
As I play, a lot of games come to mind. LittleBigPlanet is an obvious influence, but Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is the bigger one. Some of the obstacle course-style levels I played feel like they were pulled from that game, with obstacles like giant mallets, bean-like characters, and the entire competition show premise. According to design director Mike Green, those games weren’t the only influences. In speaking about the creation mode, Green mentions Super Mario Maker — an obvious influence considering that players have to clear their own creation before uploading it.
“We looked at all manners of games like Mario Maker,” Green tells Digital Trends. “That’s a really good one from a gameplay object point of view. When you play Mario, you know what the green pipe does, you know what the Koopa is going to do. You know what all these things are in this inherent design language. We’ve tried to build this in a similar fashion to that. If you see this thing, it’s going to consistently always have this behavior.”
After getting a sense of what Glowmade is going for, it’s easy to see why Amazon was interested in the project. It looks like another hit game, has a powerful creation suite that could give it a long tail, and offers plenty of room for cosmetic monetization, as players can stick decorations like horns anywhere on their hero. Surprisingly, though, King of Meat isn’t being positioned as a free-to-play game built on microtransactions. It’ll be a premium game that players buy outright, something that’s bound to be a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it’s always encouraging to see companies move away from microtransactions and focus more on a strong, paid experience. That doesn’t always pan out for family-focused games like King of Meat, though. Multiplayer titles like Foamstars and Knockout City struggled to make a splash with premium launches in recent years and King of Meat does feel like it’s courting a similar audience. There’s a bit of a harsh reality that multiplayer games like this face right now; it’s not always enough to be great. I had plenty of fun with King of Meat in my first sitdown with it, but I’m not sure that it’s outstanding enough to cut through a cluttered market. That will likely hinge on what its community can do with the dungeon creation suite.
Stranger success stories have happened, though. I never would have guessed that Fall Guys or Among Us would become multiplayer megahits. If King of Meat can keep its price point low and leverage services like Prime Gaming to get it in as many hands as possible early, it could take off. It has the stream-friendly silliness down; it’ll just need the right plan of action to get eyes on it.
King of Meat is currently in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
