Super
Meat Boy

Super Meat Boy (2010) is a running and jumping game where you complete tough platforming challenges to rescue your girlfriend. You play a small pixilated cube of meat and use your momentum to jump over sawblades, traverse deadly pits, and reach the goal. It's intentionally extremely hard, but it's precisely this difficulty that makes success so rewarding and made it one of the most talked-about platforming games for over a decade.

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You play a small red cube of meat as you make your way through over 300 levels in an attempt to save your girlfriend from the clutches of the evil Dr. Fetus. There are 310 levels available, split into different worlds, and in each one, you must use jumps and wall jumps to reach the goal safely.

You move extremely quickly and slide along the ground, and must use your momentum to make seemingly impossible manoeuvres. It's very difficult, with your momentum hurting you as often as helping you, and levels often require almost perfect memorisation and execution to beat. While this can (and often does) get frustrating, experimenting with different routes and jump timings until you finally succeed at a level makes it all worth it and makes the reward that much more exhilarating.

The result is a game that derives its fun from overcoming the immense challenge posed in each level. Looking back at the start of the game after you've got to grips with the controls and beaten many levels, you can see just how far you've come, adding to the sense of accomplishment.

A sequel, Super Meat Boy Forever, was released for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and mobile devices in 2020. It features the same difficulty, but sports randomly generated levels and a simplified control scheme, where you automatically move and only control jumping.

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Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Super Meat Boy 4 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.