Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen has another super hard platformer for you
The End is Nigh, as it always is in this genre.
The End is Nigh is a new platformer from Edmund McMillen, one half of the team responsible for Super Meat Boy, and Tyler Glaiel, who previously collaborated with McMillen on The Basement Collection and is best known for his own work for Closure.
As you'll see in the teaser video above, The End is Nigh is another super-tough platformer. According to McMillen, The End is Nigh grew out of a prototype of a "completely stripped down platformer with an adventure game open feel where the levels were all locked into tidy little boxes but attached in a way where they could be explored", which "felt a bit like VVVVVV meets 1001 Spikes with a Spelunky control setup". It is the largest game he's ever worked on, level wise, and ties together elements of his other works to date.
It stars Ash, one of the few "things" to have "survived" the "end of the world". Those are McMillen's scare quotes, by the way, so don't be surprised if The End is Nigh is more than it seems. (Not that McMillen fans would be surprised to find deeper layers in his work.)
The End is Nigh boasts over 600 levels spread across 12 chapters as Ash pursues a quest to make a friend out of the bits and pieces her finds as he travels. Players will collect (playable video game cartridges and (presumably non-playable) tumour collectibles, and unlock a bunch of secrets and hidden endings.
The End is Nigh releases on Steam on July 12, and is coming to Switch, and possibly other consoles, in the future.
McMillen said he kept quiet on The End is Nigh until close to release because he's sick of announcing games that never make it to market. Speaking of which: if you've been following McMillen's career you may be wondering what happened to his last announced project, 0uroboros. While that game may still happen, McMillen said he and Glaiel needed to take a break after the project stymied.
The Super Meat Boy team hasn't delivered much the past few years. Of the projects we know Tommy Refenes was involved with, Super Meat Boy Forever went back into development, but that was almost two years ago and we haven't heard anything since. Mew-Genics was cancelled, much to our despair.
As for McMillen, apart from DLC and re-releases for The Binding of Isaac: The Legend of Bum-Bo was announced well over a year ago, but has been silent since February. Fingered did come out, though; you can find it on Steam.
The good news is that The Legend of Bum-Bo is still in active development; McMillen mentioned it specifically in an FAQ attached to the announce of The End is Nigh. It's coming in December, and McMillen has no other projects in the works bar Binding of Isaac booster packs.