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:
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!