King of Meat is certain to make dungeon crawlers, brawlers, and creators smile

It's a tough time to be a new multiplayer game, whether that be a competitive PvP title or a co-op PvE affair like Amazon's upcoming dungeon crawler, King of Meat. But the most successful tend to do at least one of these two things: deliver experiences that make you smile, or keep you hooked with high ceilings of challenge. After going hands-on with King of Meat at Summer Game Fest in LA, I can say with confidence that it'll do the former, and that it has the tools in its arsenal to achieve the latter, too.

From its reveal trailer last year, King of Meat initially struck me as a Fall Guys-style party game with some light hack-and-slash combat thrown in for a bit of differentiation. As it turns out, that's an extremely reductive assessment. Despite its cartoonish aesthetic, zany cosmetics, and its love of obstacle courses, it forges its own path - one that nudges it closer to some of the multiplayer RPGs you'd see on our best co-op games list.

In King of Meat, the overarching goal is simple: head into a dungeon with up to three other players and try to clear it as quickly, efficiently, and stylishly as possible. Dungeons are full of gold to grab, puzzles to solve, and obstacles to navigate, but you'll have to tear your way through hordes of ravenous beasties in order to succeed. I expected combat to be rudimentary, but it was surprisingly deep and enjoyable. There's an arsenal of swords and shields for melee combat, which mixes light and heavy attacks, combos, and blocks in a satisfying way. As you progress, you get access to some spicier melee weapons such as hammers and knuckle dusters. There's also the option to switch out to a ranged weapon (the rapid-fire crossbow is a personal favorite), letting you pick off enemies from a distance.

The real fun comes with glory moves - special abilities that you unlock as you play. You can select three for your loadout, and each one works on a cooldown after unleashing powerful AoE slam attacks, gusts of wind that blow foes off the map, or a volley of arrows from my trusty crossbow.

There are also some upgrade paths and tonics that modify runs for a roguelite twist, but on the whole, combat is never overly simple without ever reaching for ARPG levels of complexity. It's chaotic fun, but it still pushes you to think strategically. In a chat with Jonny Hopper, co-founder of developer Glowmade, he admits that finding this balance wasn't easy.

"We've got all these different layers, and to make it accessible [and] give that sort of depth and longevity to the system has been a real labor of love," he tells me.

While your goal is to simply reach the end of each dungeon with your squad, there's still a level of healthy competition around being your team's top-scorer, with higher scores earning you better trophies and rewards. Keeping a fast, sustained pace as you slay your way through dungeons is imperative to maximizing your score and earning multipliers, which will pleasingly tot up at the top of your screen. This does, however, produce one of my only gripes with King of Meat, which is the stream of emojis that pour onto your screen when you're on a ruthless streak. While the game mostly nails its tone with murderous dark humor, this just felt like an unnecessary, cringy way to dampen it.

While there will be 100 hand-crafted levels at launch, Hopper explains that this is just the beginning. User-generated content is going to be just as big a component as slaying your way through Glowmade's dungeons, and there's an impressive toolkit that'll let you chef up some mega gauntlets. While some of its tools, such as the one that changes the level of floor squares, weren't exactly easy to pick up, it's still an intuitive map creator.

The star, for me, is the logic system that lets you build your own puzzles in your custom dungeons by linking levers, pressure pads, and other environmental inputs to gates or traps. You can even place enemy spawn points in specific locations, with the freedom to decide what type of enemy and how many of them you want to emerge from a certain spawn. Again, it's not immediately easy to get to grips with it, but it's as simple and as approachable as it could realistically be. While I sadly didn't have the time (nor the talent) to build a super elaborate level, King of Meat has everything you need to create some truly challenging, sprawling, and personalized dungeons. The only criteria is that you must be able to complete it yourself in a test run before it's published and made public for other players to enjoy.

I also want to shout out King of Meat for having a proper in-game social hub. I love a good shared social space as a way for players to access the activities and content they want. It's just way more engaging versus regular old menus, and KoM's Ironlaw Plaza fits the brief. Supporting 32 players at once, you can visit vendors and NPCs for character upgrades, cosmetics, and activities, or even attempt to communicate with other players to matchmake for your next run.

When asked why Glowmade spent energy creating a social space like this, Hopper says that it ticks the three most important boxes for any King of Meat feature: "Is it fun? Is it a little silly? Is it going to make people smile?"

I can safely say that for almost every aspect of King of Meat, the answer to those three questions is 'yes.' I was pleasantly surprised at its depth of combat, which has landed on a sweet spot for a game of this style and tone. The UGC tools are solid and give it a real shot at longevity. The tone, save for a couple of cringy elements, lands well. And, most importantly, it steers clear of my biggest fear and original misconception about the game: it's not trying to be 'Fall Guys with swords.' It's a lot more than that, and while it'll still be tough to break into the co-op space, King of Meat will at least be heading into battle with all the weaponry it needs.