Swapmeat News

Hello, Meat Scientists!

To celebrate our Super Size Meat Lab playtest, we’re giving away the most appropriate prizes we could think of: MEAT. That’s right, we’ve got 20 ButcherBox boxes* chock full of quality meat products to give away, and there are a bunch of ways to earn chances to win:

1. Enter our giveaway over on Gleam, where 8 of the boxes are up for grabs. There are tons of ways to earn Meat Points (entries) in the giveaway - including playing in the playtest, wishlisting SWAPMEAT on Steam, and earning Discord roles for being active here in the community.
   
   
2. Contribute to our meaty community! The top 3 most reacted-to submissions to each of these Discord forums over the course of the playtest will receive a box o’ meat:
   
   #game-feedback: we want to hear from you about how we can make SWAPMEAT the best roguelite shooter in the universe, and we’re putting our meat where our mouth is.
   
   #meaty-content: share links to gameplay clips or screenshots you’ve publicly shared on social media – help us spread the good word of meat!
   
   #builds-and-strategy: tell your fellow meat scientists about all the broken tech, craziest builds, and pro-est strats you’ve discovered.
   
   
3. Refer and invite your friends and fans to join the playtest over at playswapmeat.com. The three players with the most referrals and/or invites will get their very own meat shipment.
   

The giveaway begins on December 16, 2024, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time and ends on December 23, 2024, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time. Some entries in the Gleam giveaway redeem Meat Points if you’ve unlocked roles here on the Discord for various actions. Make sure you've linked your Steam account on playswapmeat.com, make sure your Steam privacy settings* are set to "Public," and you've claimed your Discord roles (https://playswapmeat.com/dashboard/discord).

No purchase is necessary to enter or win. Please see additional terms and conditions for the giveaway, linked at the bottom of: https://gleam.io/EDJ69/swapmeat-super-size-meat-lab-community-event

*We’ll be delivering winners a $146 digital gift card for ButcherBox. Winners outside ButcherBox’s service area will receive an alternative digital gift card of equivalent value at the Sponsor's discretion.

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