PLATFORM: PC | RELEASE DATE: 11TH AUGUST
A former butcher (that’s you) takes over a roadside hot dog restaurant in search of a new start. After a mildly unsettling bus journey, you arrive at the store and get to work setting things up. There’s a bit of cleaning to do before your first customers arrive, as well as naming your restaurant, taking a stock delivery and learning how to make hot dogs (grinding the meat, grilling the dogs, slicing buns and putting everything together). At the end of your first shift, your restful slumber is rudely interrupted by a mysterious old gentleman’s command to visit the nearby graveyard, where you exhume your first corpse, take it back to the freezer, butcher the body, and throw the meat into the grinder…
From here, you’ll spend your days serving customers and nights acquiring “ingredients”. The simulation aspect is fairly light and stress-free, so you won’t be getting bogged down with a neverending list of menial tasks – all you really need to do is keep on top of your stock levels, tidy up now and again, and put customers’ meals together. Thankfully they’re a patient bunch and are happy enough to stand in line all day, so you’re never rushed into making careless mistakes and there isn’t really any way that you can fail or lose the game. The promising beginnings of a storyline unfortunately never really come to fruition though, with the narrative taking a back seat while you earn a bit of cash and unlock a couple of additional menu items, after which there’s a small sliver of a story before the end credits appear a lot sooner than expected.
Meat Grinder‘s combination of horror and simulation genre is certainly a fun one, and it’s very enjoyable for the 90 or so minutes that it lasts (you can keep playing after the credits have rolled, but there’s no additional content). The PS1-era visuals make the whole thing look suitably grimy and filthy which, along with some incredibly catchy restaurant muzak, makes for a strangely calming yet unnerving atmosphere. It does a lot of things really well, but it would be great to see if it can be expanded into a longer and more substantial package.
