At Gamescom Opening Night Live, Glowmode and Amazon Games introduced King of Meat, an interesting co-op action game set within a survival game show.
Remember these hilarious Japanese survival shows like Takeshi’s Castle in which people had to complete complex obstacle courses, or else? You can think of these, but fantasy, in a dystopian universe in which becoming the champion of the show is the ultimate achievement.
If we look at it superficially, the goal of each round is pretty simple. You and three other players have to work together to reach the end of an obstacle course, killing enemies on the way, and gathering as much treasure as possible, which will in turn determine your score and rewards.
Of course, surviving is also a relevant goal, and while your teammates may revive you, the possibility of getting eliminated and having to watch the rest of the round from the sidelines is real.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this all, and what sets King of Meat apart, is the fact that players can create and share their own dungeons. While the gameplay is essentially cooperative, you can still play the “enemy” by creating super-challenging maps that will tear contenders to pieces.
Of course, I suppose the real challenge for future mapmakers will be creating dungeons that are challenging but fair and fun, and this may truly become one of the main selling points of the game.
That being said, as you may imagine, Glowmode will create its own set of maps to kick things off, and these are the maps I got to try at Gamescom.
The experience was certainly quite fun, mixing puzzle platforming with fairly simple combat in which you had both melee attacks and a ranged attack to deal with a bunch of undead and similar enemies infesting the levels. You can also perform glory moves to impress the crowd and improve your ratings.
These were little more than a distraction, as the real challenge was running and and jumping our way to the goal while avoiding obstacles like pits, spikes, giant hammers, and even weirder ones like a massive hoof stomping on our heads.
In the meantime, we also had to open a series of doors blocking the way, which meant taking small detours to find the triggers, at times obvious and at times hidden.
While theoretically the players are all allies in this endeavor, and they have a vested effort in helping each other to finish with the highest rating possible, there is certainly room for trolling, for instance by activating a trap on another unfortunate soul. It’ll be interesting to see whether the game will encourage or discourage this in the long run.
At the end of a level, you receive your rewards and get sent back to the main hub, where you can spend the currency you earned to customize your character with tons of different options that will let you stand out from the rest of the crowd.
There is a lot of freedom in how you can gear up, and earning new cosmetics to become the most fashionable contender in the show (whatever your idea of fashion is) certainly appears to be a big selling point in King of Meat.
Each match lasts just a few minutes, so it’s certainly the kind of game that you can pick up quickly and have a bunch of fun with friends without giving it too much thought.
This is actually interesting because it certainly contributed to me enjoying it plenty during my time at the controls. Usually, at events like Gamescom, you get dropped into extremely time-constricted demos of much wider games.
King of Meat’s relatively brief but intense matches made it a great game to be enjoyed in that kind of environment, meaning that, for once, I was having fun more than simply trying to experience as much as possible of the game to write a preview.
The success (or lack thereof) of King of Meat will entirely depend on whether it manages to click with its target audience and get an active, engaged community of both contenders and dungeon creators.
Whether it’ll succeed in that or not, remains to be seen, but for now, King of Meat certainly looks promising.
King of Meat is coming for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.
If you want to enjoy more of our content from Gamescom, you can watch our interviews about Smite 2, Predecessor, and Planet Coaster 2.
