Super Meat Boy 3D is just as frustrating, just as hair-pulling and soul-destroying, and just as fun as the original—maybe more. Super Meat Boy Forever shifted the focus from freedom and autonomy to auto-running, a move that proved divisive. Super Meat Boy 3D gives you back control and adds more dynamic gameplay, and I had a blast playing it at Gamescom 2025 in an early Super Meat Boy 3D preview.
Everything you play Super Meat Boy for is here: Trap-filled levels, instant restarts, and an embarrassingly high death counter. The foundation of the game remains the same, but Super Meat Boy 3D‘s new perspective is a total shift. The game maintains a constant 45-degree side angle, and Sluggerfly and Team Meat have devised a new way to create chaos, which ironically puts things into perspective.
A Deadly Good Time
My experience of the original Super Meat Boy and other difficult platformers lulled me into a false sense of security early on when I played the demo. I completed the first two or three stages without dying, but I was bracing myself for the inevitable, brutal storm—which arrived very quickly.
More mechanics were introduced, more dangers were thrown at me, and the death count shot up quicker than a person out of bed with a delivery driver at the door. Like I said, it’s still Super Meat Boy. But the 3D element is fascinating and genuinely creates a whole new way to play the game. You can run around obstacles, and you need to be more precise than ever.
There’s also more happening on screen. Where the original would generally throw individual dangers at you, SMB 3D requires you to survey the area, see which traps are hidden, and plan ahead—all at the same time. You can face several dangers in one passage of time. The platforming itself remains as tight and intricate as ever, and levels require multiple playthroughs to beat (let alone master).
I describe the Super Meat Boy games as a constant learning curve. The difficulty is always scaling. The first few levels were an obvious indicator of this, but whenever I died, I wanted to start over straight away. The controls and setup—from what I played—are the same, and it’s largely a one-button game. The same input allows SMB to jump, wall jump, etc, but the Dash from Super Meat Boy Forever returns!
This simple maneuver gives you a buffer to clear long spaces or help you if you mistime a jump, but it’s also a crucial move required to string together sequences of jumps, falls, dashes (and even more deaths).
3D also brings the world to life in new ways. Aside from the on-screen action, I had fun checking out the extended scenery. It adds more character, quality, and polish to an addictive gameplay loop. Super Meat Boy 3D’s original identity is back, but refreshed in a simple yet effective way. It’s going to be an instant buy from me when it comes out, and I can’t wait to see what other traps and terrors the development team adds to the game before launch.
Are you a fan of the Super Meat Boy games? Do you think 3D is a smart move to move the franchise forward? Let me know through the Insider Gaming forum, and let me know what you thought of this cool Super Meat Boy 3D preview.
We have plenty of other special Insider Gaming previews from Gamescom 2025 you need to check out: Hell Let Loose Vietnam, Borderlands 4, Crimson Desert, CrisisX, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, World of Tanks HEAT, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and G’AIM’E.
Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
More from Andrew Highton
