Royale, No Cheese: King of Meat

Royale, No Cheese: King of Meat

To get a picture of this absolute riot of a co-op, think Running Man meets The Muppets and don’t stop there. Glowmade Games’ King of Meat drops players into a bonkers gameshow where you battle through fun and fiendish dungeon set-ups just to stay alive. Jonny Hopper, studio head at UK-based Glowmade, gave Intel Gaming Access the lowdown on their new game, including crazy contenders, Create Mode, and the concept of “co-opetition”.  

Party Platformer

If Glowmade Games isn’t a familiar name to you, they have plenty of names to draw on that are. “While we started as a three,” Jonny explains, “we’ve grown to a studio of around 90 people, with a diverse, experienced development team whose credits include LitteBigPlanet, Fable, Assassins Creed, Fall Guys, Tomb Raider, and more.” Impressive pedigree established, we had to ask where the idea for King of Meat came from. “You know when you go to the pub with your mates and have a freewheeling, mad conversation?” Jonny asks. “Myself and the other Glowmade co-founders, Mike [Green] and Adam [Sibbick], were chatting about the kind of game we’d love to make. Adam is a huge fan of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, and Mike was just really into WWE at the time, and so I said ‘what if we made a game that is both of those things?’. That’s how King of Meat was born.” We’re on the [meat] hook already.

You know the inspiration, here’s what ensued: “King of Meat is set in the mystical world of Loregok,” Jonny says. “A joyfully unhinged fantasy world pitting you as a contender in a fictional TV show against challenging co-op dungeons. You and up to three other players battle through devious dungeons filled with puzzles to solve, challenges to traverse, and ridiculous monsters to fight. You will compete in leagues containing official dungeons made by Glowmade and the best of the community, and as your rank rises you will unlock more elaborate weaponry and skills to help you take on increasingly tougher leagues, events and challenges.”

If You Can Play It, You Can Build It

So, let’s talk dungeons—because we’ve heard about a Create Mode and we’re itching to design our own. “In King of Meat you work with your friends to beat dungeons together,” Jonny explains. “There’s a healthy amount of ‘co-opetition’ since you still want to be the best on the team (and belching players off cliffs is super fun). Ultimately, it’s about working as a team to solve puzzles, kill enemies and be crowned winners together. Create Mode is a place for players to craft their own dungeons to test fellow contenders. Every official dungeon in the game has been built using Create Mode in the game, so if you can play it then you can build it too. Within minutes you can have a working dungeon that you can start iterating on to create something unique for other players to take on.”

It’s no easy thing to be both idiosyncratic and crowd-pleasing, but King of Meat walks that line beautifully, and keeps the focus on creativity—Glowmade’s and the player’s. “The team here at Glowmade are really passionate about creative self-expression,” Jonny affirms. “We loved building out the many customization options players will have to express themselves in the world. The character creator is a gem, there’s so much freeform creativity available in an easy-to-use package. There are millions of costume combinations and each one can be customized almost infinitely more with decals and a whole ton of crazy, beautiful decorations. My personal favourite customization option is googly eyes. You can never have too many googly eyes in my opinion.” We just can’t argue with that.

Users Are Engines

The relationship between developer and gamer is essential, and at the core of what Glowmade are up to. “King of Meat is, at its heart, a UGC game,” Jonny tells us. “Every level you’ll ever play in the game has been made directly in the game itself. We want to give creators as much freedom as possible to make whatever’s in their heads. Performance optimization is a collaborative, cross-discipline effort. King of Meat is a multiplayer party action platformer and so responsiveness and fluidity are key. The game needs to run at 60fps as a baseline so players can get the best experience. And we want the broadest possible playerbase to be able to reach that target—so we need to optimize, optimize, optimize.”

And we are here for that, and for you. In the meantime, PC players, fire up your grills for King of Meat. The playtest is now open and remains open until the game’s launch, but participation is limited. Sign up for some meaty mayhem using the link below. See you in the dungeon!

Available on October 7th!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1926980/King_of_Meat/

Wishlist King of Meat on Steam.