King of Meat is a fun fusion of Fall Guys and Meet Your Maker

Not quite sure where all the meat’s gone, though

Glowmade / Amazon Games

It’s getting to a point where I’m getting a little tired of the “this video game you play is actually an in-universe TV show” shtick, so I admit that I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about marching over to the Amazon Games booth at Gamescom 2024 to play King of Meat, which had been revealed just the other night at Opening Night Live.

Confronted with the sheer silliness and plain fun of Glowmade’s title, though, my sour skepticism didn’t manage to stick around for too long – King of Meat has its charms.

King of Meat is essentially a 3D dungeon crawler with some simplistic combat, platforming, and puzzle-solving mechanics, which allow you and up to three friends to tackle deadly dungeons. Working together, you’ll need to fend off enemies and advance through the map, collecting as much loot as you can to get a good rating – and thus better rewards. 

King of Meat features friendly fire, so behave. / Glowmade / Amazon Games

That’s the core gameplay loop, anyway. Simple, right?

While there are fewer players – especially players out to kill you – than in your typical match of Fall Guys, the energy and chaos that can ensue is comparable. You try to dodge giant morningstars and avoid getting grilled by flamethrowers and get in each other’s way, one of you falls into the lava below, and that’s an absolute riot.

This is thanks to the second aspect of King of Meat: All levels in the game are designed and handcrafted by someone over at Glowmade or from the community. The title is like Meet Your Maker in that everyone can create and submit dungeons for people to tackle, so even if you’re not necessarily great at the whole dodging and fighting thing, you could still make some devious death traps for your friends and watch them despair as they try to solve the level.

With characters having a melee and ranged weapon each as well as movement abilities like a double jump and a bodyslam, there are tons of possible options on how to interact with objects in the dungeon. I obviously didn’t go hands-on with the level editor at the event, but from what I’ve seen of that side of things, Glowmade is providing creatives with a very robust toolset – and that’s crucial. The developers are banking on there being an active community of map makers and one way of increasing the chance of that happening is giving them a fun, capable, and yet simple editor to work with.

King of Meat's editor is supposed to be easy to use and powerful. / Glowmade / Amazon Games

This simplicity extends to the gameplay itself – you can pick up the controller and will pretty much instinctively know what to do in this game. That is not to say that the game isn’t at all challenging: In the midst of being assaulted by enemies, bombs dropping onto the stage in regular periods, and hot lava threatening to swallow anyone making a wrong step, you will generally make mistakes and die – and that’s fine: Your team can revive you and there are several checkpoints in each dungeon that allow the party to bring someone back from the departed as well. But yeah: Things can get hectic and a bit sweaty and there will be some pressure when you’re the last skeleton standing.

Currently, there are two different weapon choices for melee combat: A sword for fast attacks and a hammer for slower attacks. Everyone gets a crossbow to supplement their kit as well – plus, each player can bring an ultimate ability to activate in especially dicey situations. That’s where coordination between party members comes in especially handy, as you’ll likely want to bring a diverse set of these to a dungeon. Be it an ultimate summoning a giant foot to stomp on foes or one that provides healing, these abilities can turn the tide in the heat of battle.

Once you’re done with a dungeon and have claimed your well-deserved rewards, you return to a hub area with lots of NPCs you can talk to. Here you can unlock additional ultimates or buy perks for your next run. This area also contains shops at which you can purchase cosmetics – and that’s another big part of King of Meat: customization. You make yourself super spikey with some horns, recolor your armor, or slap some stickers on yourself. 

Prepare for dicey platforming action while you're under fire. / Glowmade / Amazon Games

Like the level editor, the character customization is pretty simple to use, yet quite powerful – any player who likes finetuning their RPG characters for hours will have a lot of fun with this aspect.

Combining these casual-friendly elements with a light-hearted tone, a vibrant color palette, and the power of friendship simply works: I had my skepticism stripped away while delving in with a group of complete strangers, so I think King of Meat would be a blast with the right group of people.

King of Meat is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch featuring cross-play and cross-progression at an as-yet undisclosed release date.