Swapmeat News

Greetings, Meat Scientists!

Mark your calendars: the Super Size Meat Lab playtest begins on December 16th at 11 AM Pacific Time. It’ll run through the 23rd at 11 AM PST.

But wait – there’s more! We’ve been cooking a mouthwatering new trailer, and the fine folks over at IGN (only the beefiest gaming media outlet this side of the galaxy!) have agreed to debut it exclusively at 7 AM Pacific on December 16th!!

How can you get in? If you already played in a previous Meat Lab, you’re still in. If this is your first Meat Rodeo, then just refer 3 friends and your whole squad gets in (while supplies last*). Otherwise, wishlist the game, fill out the questionnaire, and look for more ways to get access.

*If we exceed our expectations of players invited, we’ll close this deal down, so be sure to get your friends in ASAP!

Be on the lookout for even more news surrounding the playtest soon, including: a slate of killer content creators with only the finest taste in videogames who’ll be joining the action, some meaty contests with we’re cooking up (with even meatier prizes), a big ole update on what’s changed and improved in the game, and more.

In case you missed it, check out our animation director Rocky’s story about how we’ve been pushing meat swapping animations to be even juicier – Reddit and TikTok both liked the taste.

Greetings, Meat Scientists!

We've been hacking away at Meat Science over the past few months, and have some bleeding edge footage of meat swapping from Rocky, our Animation Director, here at One More Game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We wanted to make swapping meat feel iconic, organic, and fun. Rocky was inspired by the slow motion accordion footage you see in fast food commercials. We're still refining the animation, but wanted to show you how it's going so far.

Greetings, Meat Scientists! We've been hard at work and SWAPMEAT's feeling beefier than ever. We can't wait to invite everyone to our next playtest, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, whet your appetite with a little behind-the-scenes story time. You see, the most common question we hear from players we meat at conventions or chat with on Discord is: "how the heck did you come up with this crazy meat swapping mechanic?!"

Well, lucky reader, we've got the History of Meat Swapping for your viewing pleasure:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Our art director, Jason Stokes, was running his own solo indie studio prior to joining forces with the One More Game team. Inspired by classic over-the-top games like arcade cult classic Time Killers, Jason was working on a Contra-like co-op action game called Blood Brothers, and he thought it'd be funny to have a mechanic where your head or legs might get blown off in combat, forcing the player to hop around spurting blood as a set of legs, or roll around as a torso.

Soon, the mechanic evolved into 'meat mixing' -- stealing body parts from your enemies would also imbue you with their weapons and abilities. Boy howdy, that sounds familiar!

Cut to several years later -- OMG is exploring concepts for tour next title, and had zeroed in on roguelites as something the team was passionate about. Jason had an epiphany: meat mixing was a perfect fit for the genre, with the ever-evolving build, where every run is different -- why not make your character dramatically different throughout a run, too?! AND we can make the visuals over-the-top and absurd?!?!? SIGN US UP!

The rest is history: we've gone through a few iterations of the meat swapping system and found the fun and strategic depth, and now we're putting in the reps to make sure the game's got the right amount of content, the right performance, and half-decent balance -- all informed by your wonderful feedback.

Speaking of which, if you haven't signed up for the playtest, go do it now!

Thanks so much to everyone who gave feedback after playing in Meat Lab 2! 93% of you said you'd recommend SWAPMEAT to a friend, which, if they were Steam reviews, would give us a "Very Positive" score! 🥳

We wanted to share one big system change we're considering based on a lot of feedback we heard and observations during the test! We're working on it now to try it out internally, but we'd love to hear what you think about the proposal!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Here's the new system we're gonna test: You’ll no longer have a 15 minute time limit on a planet. Instead, things will get more difficult over time, with more and harder enemies, more aggressive dropships, and other challenges. At the end of the run, your squad will get a star rating from 0-5. The star rating will be a multiplier that will dramatically increase the rewards you got for completing missions and events.

Your star rating will be based on how many events you completed, the health of the Harvester and its nodes after extraction, how many times you died and had to respawn, and how long you stuck it out planetside as the risk level grew. If your squad dies before extracting, you’ll get 0 stars. You’ll still keep the rewards you got for completing events, but no bonus, because you died!

This aims to encourage players to complete as many events as possible, and should offer interesting risk/reward choices as players push their luck chasing a higher star rating on increasingly dangerous runs. It also allows players to enjoy some progression even if they fail a stage because they're new to the genre or bit off more than they could chew.

We'll let you know how it plays from our perspective once we get it implemented and get our mitts on it. But do share your first reaction to this system!

Watch a quick vid covering the proposed change on your short-form content platform of choice:

• TikTok
• Twitter X, the everything app
• Instagram
• YouTube

Whatup Meat Lab Testers? We have a new patch fresh off the grill, ready for you to enjoy. It should include some fixes for bugs you helped us identify, because no one likes buggy beef.
[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• All Grenade abilities will now have their radius scaled with the Explosion Radius modifier instead of Support Ability Radius modifier. This means Grenades should blow up more good and do other things good too.
  
• Gobblegazer no longer knocks folks through the ground. Sorry.
  
• VFX particles added to gobble gazer death. This ain't your daddy's flying turducken.
  
• Invisible equipped meat shouldn't… appear? Be visible? Show up? It's not going to be a problem anymore.
  
• Objects should take longer to be destroyed.
  
• Mines should explode more reliably.
  
• Beatrice (your Army of Bee friendo) will reach her enemies more often now.
  
• The game won't break if the land shark spawns now. Be wary, land lubbing Meat Scientist!
  
• We identified the root cause of a 'tick desync' issue that was causing a multitude of problems for players connecting to a host, including:
  
  • Fixed incorrect event timers sometimes being out of sync
    
  • Fixed client projectiles sometimes not spawning (or spawning poorly?)
    
  • Respawn timer not showing as active on clients
    
  • This may have also solved some other edge cases we noticed, like players getting stuck in the air and other weirdness. Let us know if you're still noticing this!

[h2]Weapons[/h2]
We've increased the difficulty of the game since our last play test and want to make sure folks have the opportunity to try to play the way that they want while they're earning enough currencies to unlock additional things. We've slightly increased the effectiveness of the Pistol to more closely bring it in-line with the Rifle and added the Rifle to the initially unlocked weapons. Try them both out while you earn enough to unlock your next upgrade!
[h3]Pistol[/h3]

• Buff: Increased Min Damage of Pistol 30 -> 35
  
• Buff: Increased Max Damage of Pistol 35 -> 40

[h3]Rifle[/h3]

• Added Rifle to initially unlocked weapons.

[h3]Gameplay Changes[/h3]

• Buff: Increased stacks of Burning on Sizzling Meat Missile from 1 to 3
  
• Buff: Increased stacks of Chilled on Frosty Meat Missile from 3 to 5

[h2]Art[/h2]

• Added rotation to Fire & Ice Grenade ability projectiles
  
• Added rotation to all Meat Missile ability projectiles