This game hits good. I'm a fan of Biopunk (or Ribofunk, w/e), even if any good work in that genre is hard to find, and still I feel like Meatpunk deserves its own genre title.
Why? Because it bleeds character, all over the place. Surface level: we are all meat machines, and everyone is trans, bi gay straight whogivesafuckjustbewhatyouare. Also: quite fresh to see a set of characters where straights are barely represented. The bright colours, the honest, straight-up talks the characters have, the repeated admittance of fault and imperfection. All good stuff. It's almost a moodboard turned video game.
I did feel it was maybe still a little happy-go-lucky around chapters 3 and 4, when I was expecting some real hard genre introducing/showcasing throughout, of what I was expecting Meatpunk to be all about. I was thinking: Dark, grimy, harsh as all fuck, a sprinkling of visualized, traumatizing body horror. The grand-scale bloodshed a metaphor for the emotional rip-and-tear that the characters are facing.
But maybe I am going in with wrong expectations. Maybe there is actually a lot of room for love and kindness in the meatpunk world. And it's not even that well-hidden. It just has to exist right next to the hate and sweltering bright, no choice for it.
Or maybe I just picked an odd set of conversation topics.
Keep up the good work, I'm going to see if I can get any of my friends to play it, so we can discuss it.