How much meat is there in the meat? – impressions of the alpha version “MEAT”

Elk, beavers, great stretches of forests, lots of lakes and ubiquitous maples are the attributes that come to mind first when we hear the slogan “Canada”. Trippin Bears studio decided to add horror and sci-fi to it, dipping everything in the sauce of the 90s of the 19th century, i.e. the popular time of the American gold rush, creating a dish called an RPG game. The idea for such an unusual dish was received quite enthusiastically, as evidenced by the great success of the fundraising event on pomocam.to. How does the prepared piece of meat look like now, in the still preliminary cooking process, in the formation of which the rapper Elephant himself has his fingers?

And what am I doing here …

The main character, named Sir Culligan, wakes up in an unknown cave, lying among the remains of his caravan and many mutilated bodies. He remembers that he was attacked by thugs, but the course of events was lost in his memories. Now the only thing that matters is to get out of the underground and … Well, what next?

From the very first seconds, the game disorientates us. The lack of any introduction, fictional outline and purpose of our existence means that we simply do not know what to do with ourselves. What I have presented, we learn from the words of the protagonist, who speaks to himself like Geralt of Rivia conducting the investigation in the latest installment of his adventures. The corridor starting location allows you to go in only one direction, but after freeing the natural dungeon, you can only get confused. We are standing in the middle of an endless forest with no clues as to where to go. BA! It’s hard to know where to go at all! The minimap, which is terribly unreadable and therefore simply unnecessary, does not help either. Deprived of any purpose even a minimal hint of what to do next, or the hero’s motivation, we are left to ourselves. It is true that we immediately meet a gentleman with whom we can talk, but he only tells us about a pack of wolves in the north. It is always a task, but after its completion we are left without even a minor goal. There is absolutely nothing that motivates us to look for anything interesting in the dark. Although, according to the description on the collection page, there is a story somewhere here, telling about a cut off town, a mysterious substance that mutates living organisms and greedy bandits, the fatal, coarse boredom at the beginning does not tempt us to look for any of these attractions. but he only tells us about a pack of wolves in the north. It is always a task, but after its completion we are left without even a small goal. There is absolutely nothing that motivates us to look for anything interesting in the dark. Although, according to the description on the collection page, there is a story somewhere here, telling about a cut off town, a mysterious substance that mutates living organisms and greedy bandits, the fatal, coarse boredom at the beginning does not tempt us to look for any of these attractions. but he only tells us about a pack of wolves in the north. It is always a task, but after its completion we are left without even a small goal. There is absolutely nothing motivating us to look for anything interesting in the dark. Although, according to the description on the collection page, there is a story somewhere here, telling about a cut off town, a mysterious substance that mutates living organisms and greedy bandits, the fatal, coarse boredom at the beginning does not tempt us to look for any of these attractions.

… Uuu, what are you doing here?

If I were to describe my experience of playing MEAT in three words, it would be – illegibility, clunky and boredom. More than once I have dealt with pixelart, I even praised it here, reviewing the very successful Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark, but what the Trippin Bears creation presents is definitely not attractive. Of course, this is not about the prevailing darkness, after all, we are dealing with a horror movie, but graphically it’s just very bad. Ugly, sloppy visuals make it difficult to understand the construction of the location. Which trees can you walk between and which trees can’t? Is this cluster of stones a road or a wall? Why does the hallway look wider than the hitboxes indicate? Terrain orientation is extremely difficult, the minimap is a cluster of meaningless, blending into a shapeless mass of pixels, and side characters and enemies like to blend in with their surroundings, being visible only thanks to the clear signatures hovering above their heads. If I were to give an example of how not to make a pixelart setting, this production would be a perfect model.

Controls and technical solutions also leave a lot to be desired. Apart from the errors, of course, which are nothing strange at such an early stage of production, the solutions used in MEAT seem to be created as a so-called “reporter”. Moving the protagonist is extremely clunky and inconvenient when we use a mouse and keyboard mix, and even impossible when we use the option of a rodent alone. The top, however, is the combat system, which consists in literally a single click on the opponent, completely incompatible with the assurances from the description of the collection about “properly developed combat system”. This makes the skirmishes neither spectacular nor exciting, but simply primitive and boring.

What touches me the most, however, are the dialogues. From a technical point of view, we have a rather irritating pain here, because the text appears very sluggishly, artificially prolonging the fun, and clicking causes it to be skipped immediately. While it can be irritating, it’s not the biggest problem. Personally, I pay a lot of attention to the way of making conversations, both in books and games, I also know how difficult it is sometimes to create a properly working conversation (mission editor from Neverwinter Onlineforever in memory), but the quality of the speech simply cries out to heaven for vengeance. This is not about how they work, but the characters’ speeches look as if they were created by a stereotypical “gimbus” convinced that mindless sexual references make the arguments more mature. Naming the makeshift shield “BARREL XD” only made me embarrassed.

Games in the alpha version still have a long way to go to be finished and many times become a completely different product, which makes it impossible to conclude what we are dealing with. Hopefully, there will be many changes, improvements and transformations to MEAT .