Indie Crossover: Super Meat Boy 3D & Mouse: P.I. For Hire
It seems like there’s a new slightly-humorous collab between game devs every other week, and the latest team-up pairs Super Meat Boy 3D with Mouse: P.I. For Hire.
The mouse detective has been squished into a cube and forced to navigate a hellish labyrinth full of sawblades, and the screen turns black‑and‑white when you play as him, echoing the feel of the original FPS.
This might all seem downstream of cynical money devourers like Fortnite, but at least these games share something in both being indie(ish) cartoony pastiches with a gore-slick twist. Besides, Meat Boy is an OG when it comes to invasions of strangers’ videogames.
You could play as him in the Bit.Trip games, and in turn CommanderVideo cameoed in Super Meat Boy. If you’re too Gen A to understand a single word I just said about the halcyon days of 2010s indie gaming, that’s okay. I’ll just go lay down and die.
But if you want to jump up and die, spectacularly and repeatedly, that’s what Super Meat Boy 3D is for. PC Gamer Australian Editor Shaun Prescott wasn’t exactly head over heels for it in his impressions—he said it had “no vibe,” lacking the skeezy-yet-tasteful tastelessness of Edmund McMillen’s touch—but still felt pretty good as far its running and jumping and exploding were concerned. Seems like that’s enough for some, as the game currently sits at a Very Positive rating on Steam.
Meanwhile, Phil Iwaniuk praised Mouse: P.I. For Hire as a “bona fide classic,” saying there’s more to it than “just an eye-grabbing art style.” Normally these crossovers go both ways to some extent, but I’m not sure how Super Meat Boy would fit into a noir detective story. Cause of death: giant sawblade? Seems pretty open-and-shut.
