You may know theMeatly from the popular webcomic that bears his name, which centers around the everyday struggles of an indie game developer. Much like his illustrated avatar, theMeatly (the cartoonist) is also an aspiring gamedev, so he knows of what he draws.
TheMeatly Games, the studio founded by theMeatly himself and the talented Mike Desjardins, already has two other, previously announced, and highly anticipated titles in development (MeatSlayer: Dash or Death and Beasts that Swim), but has made its official debut with the surprise release of MeatlyMakes.
The release was timed to coincide with the launch of Game Jolt’s very own Marketplace, for which it was especially made and to which it is exclusive. So, as pretty much the flagship title for the Game Jolt Marketplace, and the first published game from theMeatly Games, one hopes that it delivers. Well, I’m here to tell you that it surely does. It’s easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master, and infuriatingly addictive. And the art is just stunning.
The control scheme is tailored to PC gamers, consisting as it does of WASD and a mouse. I could see this being translated to touch controls, perhaps for a mobile port, but it would be much less gloriously frantic.
You play as theMeatly himself, as he toils away at his laptop, trying to make games. Each level, your goal is to make a certain number of games. You accomplish this by tapping a key to interact with your onscreen computer enough times to fill a gamedev progress meter and birth a new game into existence. With your mouse, you click each game to claim it. As you complete more games, you unlock more wacky game titles which are added to the rotation, each of which elicted a grin—and often a chuckle—from me. Likewise, I could not keep myself from being far too amused at the sound that accompanies the claiming of each game: a fart noise.
So that’s the basic goal: to create games. Of course, the process of game development is riddled with distractions, so you must contend with these as you try to churn out your masterpieces. As each embodied distraction appears, you must tap a corresponding key to get rid of it and then continue your work.
It actually plays a lot like a rhythm game, but it’s not music-based. Rather, you’re finding the patterns created by each particular grouping of ghoulies. There are 4 different “deadly distractions”, each of which was originally given life in the pages of theMeatly webcomic.
The Idea Fairy circles your head and beams new ideas into your brain, making it harder to finish your game and steadily draining your gamedev meter. You can banish the meddling sprite with a well-timed blow from your handy flyswatter.
The Downfish sneaks up behind you and sucks the joy right out of you, hindering and reversing your progress. Whip out an aerosol can of whoop-ass and send the squiddy beast back to oblivion.
El Glitch is made from all the bugs in your code. He lunges out at you from your laptop and chomps away at your progress. What’s worse is that you’re unable to make new progress until you’ve punched it right in its fangy maw.
The Feature Creep is a hulking monster that appears every few levels. The thing lumbers slowly towards you as you scramble to complete a sequence of keystrokes before it reaches you. These boss-type encounters are some of the tensest moments in the game.
MeatlyMakes (for Windows & Mac) is $7.99, only on Game Jolt!
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