You should already know how I feel about "Super Meat Boy." If you don't, you should read my review. So yeah, I liked it a whole heck of a lot.
It seems the gents at Team Meat, Edmund and Tommy, will be featured in the upcoming documentary, "Indie Game: The Movie." A clip of the pair was released which discusses Tommy's insane attention to detail and how he's a perfectionist. You can watch it below:
I'll freely admit that when someone says that they're a Programmer, I sort of get a vague picture of "Matrix"-style code flashing on their computer. What they do with that code and how that magically turns into a game is, well, a mystery.
But the clip above does a really cool job of giving one example and simplifying it to the point where it makes sense to the common man (read: me). The example involves wall jumping. Wall jumping in "Super Meat Boy" just requires that you hit the jump button when you're sliding on a wall, but the natural inclination is to also push away from the wall on the analog stick. Unfortunately that would disconnect people from the wall before they had a chance to jump.
To fix this, Tommy added a slight delay so that pushing away from the wall won't fully detach the player for a brief moment, giving them enough time to jump. It's a simple fix, but it's the sort of fix that would only occur to someone who plays a ton of games and knows when something's feeling off. Tommy Refenes is one of those people, and without his perfectionist spirit, the game would be total crap. Well, maybe not, but it definitely helped!
Anyway, just a brief example of how programmers make the games you love, even if they're really bad at drawing perfect circles.
If you're interested, here's more on "Indie Game: The Movie."
Oh, and "Super Meat Boy is out on XBLA this Wednesday for $15. You should buy it.