A New Dimension of Suffering
Back in 2010, the original Super Meat Boy essentially wrote the modern playbook for the precision platformer genre. It taught an entire generation of gamers how to embrace failure, perfectly balancing controller-snapping difficulty with instantaneous respawns and buttery-smooth movement.
When it was announced that the franchise was making the leap into the third dimension, the gaming community was understandably skeptical. 3D precision platformers are notoriously difficult to get right. Translating the pinpoint accuracy required to dodge a sea of buzzsaws from a flat 2D plane into a fully navigable 3D space introduces massive hurdles with depth perception and camera angles. Add in the fact that original co-creator Edmund McMillen is no longer steering the ship, and the odds were heavily stacked against this release.
Yet, sitting here with sweaty palms, a soaring heart rate, and an embarrassingly high death counter, I am thrilled to report that developer Sluggerfly has pulled it off. Released on March 31st, Super Meat Boy 3D is a triumphant, pulse-pounding return to form that proves this meaty franchise still has plenty of blood left to spill.
Turn Off the 45-Degree Snap Immediately
At its core, Super Meat Boy 3D captures the same “flow state” that made the original game so intoxicating. You play as the titular animated cube of meat, leaping off walls, soaring over traps, and leaving a persistent trail of blood on every surface you touch as you try to rescue Bandage Girl from Dr. Fetus.
To help alleviate the inherent depth-perception issues of 3D platforming, Sluggerfly implemented a few brilliant mechanical tweaks. Meat Boy is now equipped with a ground-pound maneuver, which allows you to instantly halt your aerial momentum and slam straight down to safety. Additionally, a distinct red shadow constantly tracks your position on the ground beneath you, helping you gauge exactly where you will land.
However, there is a massive caveat to the controls. By default, the game uses a “45-degree snapping” mechanic, effectively locking your movement into an 8-way directional grid. While this was likely implemented to keep players moving in straight lines, it actually makes the game feel incredibly clunky and unintuitive on a modern analog stick.
If you buy this game, go into the settings and turn off 45-degree snapping immediately. While you are in there, turn on auto-sprint.
Making these two simple tweaks completely transforms the experience. The controls go from feeling stiff and rigid to feeling like one of the tightest, most responsive 3D platformers on the market. Once you are fully unleashed from the grid, bounding through the crumbling caves and high-tech forges feels entirely natural.
High-Fidelity Body Horror
The transition to 3D brings a drastic change to the franchise’s iconic art style. The flat, flash-animation aesthetic of the original game has been replaced by heavily detailed, high-fidelity 3D models.
The result is… weird. There is an undeniable “RTX On” energy to the visuals. As a massive fan of horror films, I can certainly appreciate a good, grotesque practical effect, and the hyper-detailed 3D rendering of a grinning, skinless cube of meat definitely borders on body horror. The cutscenes in particular are striking, presenting the cast in a terrifyingly realistic light that is a far cry from their cute 2D origins. It is an art direction that will absolutely not be for everyone, but it possesses a strange, morbid charm that eventually grew on me.
The soundtrack delivers exactly what you would expect: high-energy, distorted junk-rock designed to keep your adrenaline spiking. As the developers hilariously describe it on the Steam page, it sounds like an angry Guitar Center employee yelling at you to buy something or get out. It perfectly scores the chaos, even if the tracks tend to blend together a bit more than Danny Baranowsky’s legendary 2010 score.
Level Design and the Autoscroller Problem
Sluggerfly clearly understood the assignment when it came to level design. The stages are bite-sized, brutal, and meticulously timed. If you are moving at full speed, the cycles of the buzzsaws, laser beams, and collapsing platforms line up perfectly, allowing skilled speedrunners to breeze through levels in a single, unbroken chain of movement.
For masochists, the Dark World levels return in full force, offering soul-crushing alternate versions of the stages that will genuinely make you want to scream. The iconic Warp Zones also make a comeback, hiding clever retro homages and unlockable secrets for players who thoroughly explore their surroundings.
Unfortunately, the game severely fumbles the bag when it comes to its Boss Fights.
In a bizarre design choice, every single boss encounter in Super Meat Boy 3D is an autoscroller. Rather than actively fighting the bosses or utilizing your movement to control the pace of the encounter, you are simply forced to survive a predetermined obstacle course until the boss defeats itself. It strips away player agency and completely kills the fast-paced momentum you spent the entire chapter building. It is a noticeable downgrade from the dynamic encounters of the original game.
The Good, The Bad, & The Meaty
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
| The Controls: Once you disable the default snapping, the 3D movement is incredibly tight, responsive, and satisfying. | Default Settings: The 45-degree control snapping feels awful on a controller and should never have been the default option. | The Art Style: The hyper-realistic 3D rendering of Meat Boy borders on body horror and will not appeal to everyone. |
| Level Design: The stages are meticulously timed to reward fast, unbroken momentum and speedrunning. | Boss Fights: Forcing every major boss encounter into a slow, predetermined autoscroller completely kills the game’s pacing. | |
| The Challenge: The Dark World levels and hidden Warp Zones provide a staggering amount of brutal, rewarding replay value. | Depth Perception: Even with the drop-shadows, judging distance over massive gaps can occasionally feel like guesswork. | |
| Steam Deck Support: The game is fully Verified and runs flawlessly at 60 FPS on handhelds right out of the box. |
Should You Buy It?
Yes, if: You love tough-as-nails precision platformers, you enjoy speedrunning, and you want to experience the thrill of the 2010 classic translated brilliantly into 3D.
No, if: You get easily frustrated by frequent deaths, you hate autoscrolling levels, or you cannot stand looking at grotesque, highly detailed meat monsters.
Recommended for fans of: Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Ghostrunner, Neon White.
Super Meat Boy 3D: Super Meat Boy 3D had a mountain of expectations to climb, and against all odds, it conquered them. While the autoscrolling boss fights are a frustrating misstep and the grotesque 3D art style will undoubtedly divide fans, the moment-to-moment gameplay is spectacular. Sluggerfly has successfully translated the unforgiving, blisteringly fast magic of 2010 into a new dimension. If you have the patience to die a few hundred times and the foresight to tweak the default control settings, this is a spectacular, bloody return to form. – Flare