Destructoid Gamescom Awards 2025: Best Indie Game – Super Meat Boy 3D

I want to start by saying that this was one of the hardest awards we had to give this year, particularly at Gamescom, due to the sheer number of high-quality indie games on offer.

This award is based on all the games that I happened to play at the show, and there might have been others that I didn’t get to see. So I just want people to know that if you felt another game was more deserving, this is based on my own opinion, as well as based on all the games I was able to get my hands on during the week.

And trust me, I’ve played a lot of indie games, but one that always stood out was Super Meat Boy 3D. It’s the one I always saw myself coming back to, and it’s the one that’s stuck with me out of the dozens I’ve tried. And trust me, I came back to try it a few times.

The 3D areas offer a new layer of gameplay to the classic Super Meat Boy experience, and I was surprised to see how well the indie developers had been able to take the 2D style of gameplay, which is completing a level as quickly as possible while trying to find secrets, and make it work in a 3D environment.

I found many areas during my play sessions where I could skip large parts of the map by jumping over the 3D environments or clipping around them, which, for a Super Meat Boy game, is pretty cool. It also has very tight controls that you’d expect, and it was a delight to play.

That’s not to say that it was perfect as some areas have moments where textures blend in and it’s hard to see what is a obstacle and what is part of the level and it feels like sometimes you die due to the weird placement But considering the game is still in the development and these things are being ironing out I don’t expect it to be an issue for much longer.

I’d like to give a shoutout to the other indie games I played at the show, such as Reanimal, PVKK, Power Wash 2, Silksong, and others I managed to squeeze in. On this occasion, I felt like Super Meat Boy 3D couldn’t not win this award. All the indie games I played at Gamescom were pretty cool, though, and it feels like we were in a golden age of indie games once again, and I can’t wait to see what developers work on next.