Meat Lab 6 is OPEN! Playtest SWAPMEAT through July 23

When we iterate on games at One More Game, we solve for the hard things first — like figuring out "What even is Meat Swapping?" You’ve helped us crack this puzzle through our first five Meat Labs. Now we’re laser-focused on finishing the game and bringing everything else up to the quality bar you deserve.

For Meat Lab 6, we’ve been listening hard to your feedback from Meat Lab 5. We’re committed to delivering a complete Solar System with a boss encounter that meets or exceeds expectations.

Here’s what we’re hearing: you’ve told us we’ve found something unique, fun, and special. That means we’re succeeding with those risky creative bets. Now it’s time to polish the supporting systems that make the whole experience shine. Case in point: you’ll see a completely revamped in-game HUD that’s both functional and beautiful.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Sign up for the playtest HERE

[h2]What’s New in Meat Lab 6[/h2]

Revamped First-Time User Experience
New Meat Scientists get a proper tutorial covering the core mechanics, plus a prologue that introduces the wonderfully weird world of SWAPMEAT and its key players — Hunters, Smart Meat, and the legendary Carl Rangus himself.

Updated Elemental Condition and Damage System
Each enemy now has damage thresholds for every Elemental Damage type. Hit that threshold and you’ll trigger the base Condition for that element. Mutations and Items can amplify these effects or chain them into devastating combos:

• Fire → Burning – A heavy damage over time. Attacking a burning target has a chance to Combust it dealing even more damage
  
• Electric → Electrified – A moderate damage over time with a 10% chance to Stagger on tick
  
• Slime → Slimed – Increase all incoming damage by +30%
  
• Kinetic → Staggered – Temporarily stun an enemy for a short period of time
  
• Ice → Chilled – Slow enemy movement, attack speed, and projectile speed
  

Reimagined Mutations
You’ll now choose just three Mutations per run, making each of your 15 total choices truly build-defining. Each Mutation unlocks specific items for that run while adding new elemental conditions and triggers to your arsenal.

Streamlined Boss Encounters
The Solar System 1 boss fight with Franken Beans has been completely reworked. We’ve removed the restrictive mechanics and added new attacks to give you more freedom in how you approach the fight. Meanwhile, the Solar System 2 boss now has an official name — "Monday Night Midterms" — and sports fresh gameplay mechanics plus a visual upgrade to the arena.

Refreshed HUD
The entire HUD has received a major polish pass. Beyond looking better, the UX improvements include a new compass, objective tracker, and streamlined character/terminal interaction menus.

New Equipment Type — Flair
These passive bonus items can be unlocked in your ship and equipped from the loadout screen. Think of them as fancy doodads that give you an edge on your next run.

Significant Balancing and Quality-of-Life Updates
Over 20 new items have joined the upgrade pool, and many existing items have been reworked to align with our updated Elemental Damage & Condition System and Mutation changes. We’ve also rebalanced weapon damage values to account for the increased power of Elemental Damage & Conditions.

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• Observer camera is still in a very rough prototype form
  
• No optimization effort has been made towards more constrained platforms like SteamDeck
  
• Native builds on Linux are still not battle tested. You'll probably need to run under Proton for best results
  

Thanks for sticking with us and staying excited about our game, Meat Scientists. Now get in there and start swappin’.