It was independent games development’s darling of 2010, and all who dared cross it risked the righteous anger of its creators and fans. But badarse platformer Super Meat Boy still is not available on mobile gaming’s #1 platform. And I don’t think it’s because one of its creators got into a pissing contest with Apple.
It’s probably because this kind of game really isn’t fun with multitouch screen control, a conclusion reached after spending some time with CheeseMan, the best port of Super Meat Boy you can put finger quotes around. Frankly, I’m not sure it wasn’t published by proxy for Team Meat. Either way, it’s available now for $0.99 on the App Store.
CheeseMan is, evidently, doing its thing with the blessing of Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, the creators of Super Meat Boy. Dr Foetus, their game’s antagonist, is right there staring CheeseMan in the face on the first level, after all. Other Meat Boy characters will appear later. And the same gameplay style is there throughout — you’re an anthropomorphised cheese cube instead of a meat wad, zipping through a platform level, avoiding spikes, sawblades and other gruesome instant-death traps, clinging to and double jumping from walls and trying to reach the goal in as little time as possible.
Your strategy evolves as it did in the original Super Meat Boy, too. Basically, you haul arse into some uncharted part of the screen, die, remember there’s a hazard there and try not to hit it in your next life. Controls are carried out on a virtual game pad of left and right and a jump button.
These are not ideal controls for this kind of game. So much of Super Meat Boy involved technical, perfectly timed jumps that you really need fixed, physical controls that you can feel with your digits through a long gaming session, rather than virtual squares that feel no different when you reposition your hands after picking your nose.
My parkour jumps between walls never went smoothly, even without hazards forcing me to act quickly. Too many times I simply wall-humped my way to the top rather than try to switch my left thumb while hammering the virtual jump button at the same time. This is on an iPhone, whose playing surface dimensions reasonably approximate a gamepad controller. On an iPad, I’m not sure what it’s like.
CheeseMan is allegedly published by AlphaNoize, a German shop founded in November of this year. It, like Team Meat, is a two-man outfit made up of Hicham Alloui and Arne Worheide. I have no idea if these are pseudonyms, aliases, alter egos or secret identities. They don’t appear to be anagrams. Alloui’s bio lists work for Ubisoft in his credits.
Maybe CheeseMan is totally original; maybe it exists with a licence from Super Meat Boy. Maybe it is the game that allows Team Meat to reach the iOS without compromising the intellectual stance Refenes took way back in March 2010, when he declared iOS devices to be the “Tiger handheld game of this generation.”
None of the intrigue changes the fact that you are still playing an extremely demanding platformer with virtual controls, whether meat, cheese or something else is involved. Good luck.
CheeseMan [iTunes]
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