Before we hop on this conveyor belt, Meat Shift is not vegetarian friendly. Instead, it's an oppressive horror set in a slaughterhouse. Its premise is a little more than slicing meat, however, but once you see how the sausage is made, you may never want to eat it again.
The idea of a game set within a 20th century industrial slaughterhouse is already the stuff of nightmares. However, Meat Shift combines the naturally, dark atmosphere of this setting with the uncertainty of your first day at a new job. Where most of us just have to put on a brave face, awkwardly socialize, and learn the ropes through trial and error, this horror game isolates you with sharp tools, terrifying machinery, and plenty of carcass parts.
As you take on your new role as an employee of the Spratt Company Meat Packing and Processing Plant, the grim life of a butcher becomes very apparent. Tasked with slicing pigs' stomachs as they hang overhead, and feeding meat chunks to the grinder is not for the faint-hearted. Even your downtime in the break room has more meat staring at you, but this time they’re perfectly, edible sausages. As if it's an inside joke, eating sausages after seeing how they’re made doesn't sound like the most ideal lunch.
Meat Shift’s visuals are grainy and desaturated, with the only source of color coming from the meat and any red object in your first-person field of vision. As you cautiously follow your guide to the slaughterhouse, the game’s aesthetic and mechanical sounds slowly grind away at your sanity. Sudden noises or areas of shadow set you on edge as disturbing occurrences began to happen around the slaughterhouse. Meat Shift certainly makes you question this as a career, and after playing for ten minutes, you’ll be screaming to see blue skies.
Meat Shift is available to play now. Another horror game in the pipeline is Amanita Design’s Happy Game - which debuted at Nintendo’s Indie World Showcase. The twisted horror was created by the minds from Machinarium, and it’s due to arrive Spring 2021. Its imagery suggests that it shouldn’t be played in the dark, and most certainly not before bed.