Introduction

Memes — love them or hate them, you can’t deny that one or two have managed to transcend their moment and stay genuinely relevant. Case in point: the This Is Fine meme, where an adorable dog sits surrounded by roaring flames, casually sipping coffee, entirely at peace with his impending doom. Have you ever wondered what’s actually going through that dog’s mind? Whether his internal struggles might mirror your own? Well, developer Hero Concept decided to take that question seriously — and made a game out of it. This Is Fine: Maximum Cope, published by Numskull Games, drops the player into a meme world and asks the question: is this really fine? We find out in our This Is Fine: Maximum Cope review for PC! Big thanks to developer Hero Concept for the review copy!

Gameplay

What kind of gameplay would you expect from a meme-based game? Did you say something like Metroid or Castlevania? If so — either you peeked ahead or your mind works in wonderfully strange ways. This Is Fine: Maximum Cope is a full Metroidvania, starring our meme hero Question Dog. For reasons the game leaves delightfully unexplained, Question Dog has entered the one place scarier than any monster — his own mind. Now forced to confront his past and his anxieties made manifest, Question Dog must survive what lurks inside — and that won’t be easy.

Your weapon of choice? Your hat — the only gentlemanly way to handle a crisis. Like any Metroidvania, This Is Fine: Maximum Cope starts you off with just the basics — jumping and swinging at enemies — but as you progress, you unlock new abilities that open up the various mental hellscapes and reveal items to power Question Dog up. It’s a simple system, but it works well and gives players real incentive to revisit earlier levels once new skills are in hand.

Surviving those levels is the real test. Everything in This Is Fine: Maximum Cope — and I genuinely mean everything — wants Question Dog dead. Cockroaches, toilets, cameras with legs, and an ever-growing list of threats as you push deeper. You do have a life bar, replenished at checkpoints — which are, naturally, the meme image itself — or by drinking Question Dog’s beverage of choice: coffee. Coffee doesn’t restore at checkpoints, however, and must be purchased using the in-game currency of coffee beans. Those same beans also unlock upgrades from eccentric vendors throughout the game, so spending them carelessly on health can leave you under-powered when it matters most.

Survive long enough and you’ll eventually reach a boss — and these fights are where This Is Fine: Maximum Cope really elevates itself. They feel like they were pulled straight out of Cuphead, demanding real attention and pattern recognition. I’ve watched speed run videos of these encounters online and I’ll say plainly — there’s a reason I am not a speed runner. Still, the boss fights are consistently exciting and among the best the game has to offer.

Graphics

If you’ve ever looked at the This Is Fine meme and thought “I want more of this on a bigger scale” — congratulations, this game was made for you. This Is Fine: Maximum Cope is exactly that, and it works surprisingly well. The cartoonish character and boss designs are strange, off-putting, and oddly relatable all at once, and the variety of unique visual ideas on display is apparent from the very first level. Individual stages can occasionally feel like little more than color palette swaps, but where This Is Fine: Maximum Cope genuinely shines is in how each level is designed to reflect a specific type of emotion — doing so in a way that’s visually appealing and playfully absurd. This won’t push your graphics card to its limits or demand a high-end PC rig, but what it offers is — and yes, I’m aware how this sounds — fine. I promise that wasn’t intentional.

Sound

This Is Fine: Maximum Cope‘s OST is a genuinely mixed bag. Each level shifts tone and sound to match its emotional theme, which is a nice touch in concept. In execution, some tracks land well and others wear on you fairly quickly. The first level — the high school stage — has music that genuinely began to chip away at my spirit the longer I played. Then the boss theme hit and the music went hard, and I was fully on board again. The OST isn’t bad, but it’s inconsistent — and I’ve heard better from similar games in the genre.

Story

This Is Fine: Maximum Cope isn’t chasing a powerful narrative — but it does carry a surprisingly relatable story beneath its meme-drenched surface. Moving through various internal struggles and facing enemies that can easily be read as real fears and phobias makes the whole experience feel unexpectedly personal. You won’t finish it feeling like you’ve just watched your own life flash before your eyes, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t at least one level or theme in This Is Fine: Maximum Cope that makes you pause and think about something in your own world. That’s more than most meme-adjacent games ever try for.

Overall Impression

As I sit here writing this review, I find myself thinking — yeah, this is fine. Actually, better than fine. I had a genuinely great time with This Is Fine: Maximum Cope, and that’s simply because it’s a good game. The gameplay works well, the visuals are charming, and the OST absolutely slaps during the boss fights at minimum. It’s not without its rough edges, and a few quality-of-life improvements could have elevated it further — but the game itself is considerably better than I ever expected it to be going in.

Conclusion

This Is Fine: Maximum Cope genuinely caught me off guard. When this review landed on our desk, I fully expected a game that was just winking at a classic meme and calling it a day. Instead, Hero Concept actually made a great little game. Yes, it’s fairly formulaic in structure — but it’s fun, it’s charming, and it stuck with me longer than I anticipated. I’m half-serious when I say I’d love to see them tackle other memes next. The internet has no shortage of candidates, and if This Is Fine: Maximum Cope is any indication, there might be some genuinely great games hiding in those image macros. Never thought I’d say that — and yet, here we are.