King of Meat hands-on preview — Building the future before we begin

I hadn’t heard much about King of Meat before walking up to the booth at Summer Game Fest, but the team was able to get me an appointment and I was able to preview King of Meat as well as the Create Mode. This game is all about community, from the Create Mode community to the competitive community, there seems to be a lot of love coming from this group to make this a game for everyone to enjoy their own way.

This game takes place in a fictional world where this TV show showcases the most talented teams making their way through dungeons full of different obstacles. Imagine the final scene in the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves but with Ninja Warrior and a little bit of Fall Guys. Sounds like fun? It was fun with people who were also at the appointment during our demo. 

We jumped straight into a competition where me and the guest next to me were working together to make our way through the dungeon, taking on puzzles and enemies alike. You create your little character then enter the dungeons, you have a sword and shield and then a crossbow. We fought our way through hoards of skeletons and figured out how to open doors and walls by stepping on buttons or blowing holes in the walls. It was a lot of fun, with me and my partner winning no problem. 

We then were introduced to Create Mode, which allows you to make your own dungeons. The biggest plus for me is that you have to be able to beat the dungeon you make for it to be accepted into the system for others to play. Granted, that doesn’t mean someone can’t pull a “Ross from Game Grumps”, where you have a secret way to get past the hard parts, but it seems that the community is working hard to avoid situations like that. 

Speaking of, let’s break down how the community is helping to shape the future of the game itself before it’s even begun. The Komstructor Collective team is full of members from their discord community coming together to make maps during the alpha and beta stages to make sure there are plenty ready for launch. This allows those creators to have special nameplates as well as their name on the level itself. This seemingly allows for double the work to be done in getting levels out at the beginning of launch, but sets the expectations for new creators that this is the level of polish expected from featured levels.

Creating maps was pretty fun. You can add different rooms, enemies, traps, elevations, and more. I made a little dungeon with a lot of enemies and just played “can I survive” – which I did. You’ll unlock more things to add as you go with a small amount of items available at the beginning. 

We ended up having time to spare, and so we did another dungeon run on the hardest difficulty. Me and my partner for this killed it and were one of the only groups to do both a normal and hard dungeon and win both at the event. It was a lot of fun, and will probably be even more fun with your group of friends who all know each other and everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. I can see my friend Nick making us a map where jumping puzzles are required just for chaos in our group. 

King of Meat will be available in 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Steam (PC).