https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q3zKXS1FYE
When the team at Cancer Cinema first contacted me about their game, Bad Taste, I was equally disgusted and intrigued. The 2D, side scrolling shooter is both an old school experience and yet a totally fresh approach to concepts that some people are uncomfortable talking about – the food that we eat.
In Bad Taste, you get a front seat to the encroaching mutant apocalypse that is set within Victoria, British Columbia, although it’s not quite the zombie apocalypse that so many video games have adopted. Instead, food industry mega-corporations figured out a way to make meat even cheaper and quicker to produce in the form of “Magic Meat.”
After these hybrid creatures were created en masse, they promptly started to mutate and consume each other, creating rabid, zombified versions of their former selves. Once all of the Magic Meat was gone, they started to consume humans, as they were the next best thing. A small group of survivors has decided to attempt to escape from the city of Victoria, otherwise they’ll become zombified magic meat as well.
The name Magic Meat alone sounds disgusting, but the meat itself consists of GMO hybrid creatures like “batboon burgers” and “salcoon” tacos. You can see where the team is going with this. The game is described as a “smart, violent, scathing satire of the fast food industry,” and I’m definitely inclined to agree.
The roster behind the game has quite a lot of talented people, namely Spencer “Spenny” Rice of the Canadian TV show Kenny VS. Spenny, the Finnish band Lodger (known for their work in Californication), artwork and animation by Jeremy Zaczek (a 2013 Newgrounds Tank Award nominee), and more, all under the helm of Celx Requin, who is known for the excellent animated graphic novel, Cooljaw.
If any of this has gotten your attention, you should head on over to the game’s Stream Greenlight page and throw a vote their way, as the developers are trying to get their game onto Steam. In the meantime, make sure you check out Cancer Cinema’s website, as it’s chock full of excellent artwork.
