Super Meat Boy 3D makes suffering fun

The original Super Meat Boy is one of the best-known indie games of all time. Released in 2010, it’s a brutally difficult 2D platformer, but so fun to play: The short levels almost feel like speedrunning puzzles, and even though they’re filled with traps and buzzsaws, dying isn’t so bad because you revive nearly instantly. Super Meat Boy 3D has much of the same spirit; it’s just as infuriating, and just as satisfying.

Moving around as Meat Boy in 3D feels very similar to 2D, particularly his really floaty jump. Wherever you run (and where you die) you leave blood splatters, which are helpful visual reminders of where to go (or where you died) when you retry a level. Levels are riddled with obstacles like saws, lasers, spikes, homing missiles, moving platforms, and tricky walls to climb, and sometimes, you’re dealing with multiple problems at once. But the switch to 3D also means that you have to think about how Meat Boy moves in 3D space, meaning you have to pull off moves like treacherous diagonal jumps and running across multiple walls. The change adds new elements without fundamentally impacting the Super Meat Boy experience.

In Super Meat Boy 3D, multiple times when starting a level, I’d wonder how I would ever overcome it. In my first few attempts, I’d often die within seconds. But since Super Meat Boy 3D brings you back to the beginning of a level almost as soon as you die, I could run at the hurdles in my way until I figured them out. It would usually take a few minutes of trial and error, but when I’d actually complete a level, it would usually only take about 20 or 30 seconds. Then, it would be on to the next.

This process might sound awful, but for me it was invigorating. I could feel myself getting better because of the repetition, and as the levels slowly got more difficult, I knew I was improving enough to where I could meet the challenges, even if they sometimes felt out of reach. I think that’s by design: There aren’t any settings to reduce the game’s difficulty, meaning you have to beat the levels as they are. The only way out is through.

If you want to make the game even harder, though, there are plenty of ways to do that. Levels have an out-of-the-way bandage that you can pick up to unlock more playable characters, as well as a time you can beat to get an A-plus ranking, which unlocks an entirely separate level in the Dark World. If you like chasing achievements, I wish you luck on challenges like beating entire 15-level worlds without dying.

I finished the Light World, the game’s main batch of levels, after about five hours, and my save file says I died 911 times. I’m not planning to tackle the A-plus times or all of the Dark World levels right now — they seem pretty intimidating to me. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I come back to them down the line, even though they seem impossible: Super Meat Boy 3D makes suffering fun.

^{Super Meat Boy 3D is out now on the Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X / S.}