The Meat is aliveeeeeeeee...
Iron Meat is an upcoming 2024 Run-and-Gun action game developed by Screenwave Media, and a loving homage to old-school arcade shooters.
Citing the Contra series as an inspiration, the game is set in a Post-Apocalyptic future in the aftermath of a mutation outbreak. The Meat, an iron-ravenous mass of flesh developed in a laboratory, has spread out of control, consuming everything in its path and spawning mutated abominations from both organic and mechanical beings it consumed.
You are Vadim, a member of the Special Forces and among the last survivors of the Meat outbreak; and it's up to you to stop the spread by investigating the bio-lab from whence the mutation started from, while battling through hordes and hordes of mutated abominations.
Compare Super Cyborg and Blazing Chrome, two other retraux games based on Contra.
Iron Meat contain examples of:
- Acid Attack: Some of the stronger Meat creatures will puke green acid as an attack.
- Always Night: Every single stage is set at dusk, for some reason. Don't expect to see any sunlight at any point in-game.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Compared to Super Cyborg and Blazing Chrome, especially considering all the enemies are all organic. Hence the M rating.
- Brain Monster: The Entrail Blazer MKII boss is a tank coated with Meat after the mutant spread, where besides having flesh-like organs growing on it's sides, also have a gigantic, exposed brain growing out of the cockpit.
- Close-Range Combatant: There are several Meat mutant enemies which have blades grafted in their limbs and extra shoulder-blades, which are fast-moving but doesn't have ranged attacks otherwise.
- Collapsing Ceiling Boss: The Monster House has an attack where it causes the rubble of its assimilated building to drop on you, these have a red crosshair to show where the rubble will land.
- Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: When floor turrets are destroyed, they leave behind sparking, exposed wires with electrical current visibly shown between them. These are actual hazards that aren't just for show, and touching these will kill Vadim.
- Crosshair Aware: A red crosshair with a skull pointing on the ground is an indicator of falling hazards - do not step on them. These shows up a lot during the boss fight against the Meat-infected armoured vehicle with a missile launcher firing rockets vertically into the air before raining all over the place. It also shows up when the Monster House uses its debris rain attack.
- Cyborg: The Meat mutation isn't limited to organic beings, with the outbreak's flesh-like growth infecting machines and various structures, turning them into half-mechanical, half-organic hybrids. Case in point, the bosses includes two tanks coated with assorted flesh-like parts growing around it and a missile-launching armoured vehicle with visible veins and an exposed heart...
- Gorn: Owing to the amount of violent, bloody overkills the game allows you to perform, and the Meat outbreak leaving behind quite the mess...
- Grenade Launcher: The game have one similar to Contra's Crash weapon, but it fires bubble-like projectiles that blows up into a translucent blue forcefield rather than an explosion.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: The game's final stage where Vadim have to make it to the top floor of a laboratory by jumping up multiple platforms stacked upon each other. All of which contains Meat mutants, turrets, assorted monsters, and various obstacles, and some of them collapsible for good measure.
- It Can Think: The Meat growth initially appears to be assimilating life-forms to reproduce. But then it starts infecting machines like turrets, computers, and even tanks and armoured vehicles, becoming powerful bosses in the process. There's also the final stage in a heavily-fortified bio-lab where the Meat growing on the surface of control panels starts activating the base's security to be used against Vadim.
- Laser Hallway: One corridor in the bio-lab contains moving laser fences that can damage Vadim on contact, which he needs to jump or crouch over. There's even a grid laser fence ripped from the Resident Evil movies! (though that one is rather slow and can be outrun by reaching the exit)
- Ludicrous Gibs: Meat-infected mooks tends to explode in graphic sprays of red, thanks to their highly-unstable bodies. With their limbs and random bits of flesh flying here and these with each death animation.
- Man on Fire: The burning train and furnace rooms will have occasional humanoid mutants trapped in it, where they'll burst out, entirely set alight, and attempt to attack Vadim via Infernal Retaliation.
- Meat Moss: A common scenery seen in interiors of buildings, growing all over walls and floors thanks to the mutant outbreak. Heck, even the game's poster, logo, and "Game Over" screen is covered in Meat growth!
- Mook Maker: Giant red skinless faces growing from walls can repeatedly spew maggots (presumably a form of Weaponized Offspring from the Meat) as an attack until they're shot to bits.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The player characters take only one hit to die. However, they have several lives to make up for this.
- Sapient House: One of the bosses is the Monster House, which is a building taken over by the Meat. It attacks by firing spreads of shots, making the building rubble fall on you, using two tentacle monstrosities hidden within it to fight, and spawning flying enemies.
- Scenery Gorn: From wrecked vehicles to dead military personnel shredded apart by mutants to partially destroyed buildings, with blood all over the place, let's just say the Meat outbreak's aftermath isn't a pretty sight.
- Spread Shot: Like it's predecessor. It's even animated using the same graphics!... there's even a spread laser, which fires energy bolts in a three-way arc, instead of bullets.
- Taking You with Me: An interesting variation — when floor turret enemies are destroyed, they leave behind their electrified wire wreckage or pulsating organic remains. Touching this will kill a player character.
- Too Many Mouths: The Carrionvoy boss (see below), initially appearing as an ordinary train, is actually a gigantic Meat monster fused with a train, where besides the main head in front, the doors and windows are actually a large number of extra mouths spawned by the growth.
- Traintop Battle: One of the stages is set on a moving train, with mutated humans coming from left and right. It gets even worse at the end of said stage - as the train comes to a stop, it's quickly revealed to be alive with Meat growing all over it's interiors, at which point it assumes a gigantic, snake-like form to battle.
