Super Meat Boy co-creator announces The End Is Nigh
And in the game
Edmund McMillen, the co-creator of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, has announced a deadly new platformer. The End Is Nigh [official site] is its name, and coming out in July is its game. It's a collaboration with Closure creator Tyler Glaiel and no, it's Øuroboros, another platformer those two had been working on. The End Is Nigh is a "sprawling adventure platformer" past the end of the world about a blobby lad named Ash who certainly will die a lot. Have a peek in the announcement trailer:
Oh you'll die all right. The blurb on Steam explains that Ash is "one of few 'things' that have 'survived' the 'end of the world':
"Follow Ash as he flops his way through a future of pain and suffering. Feel his stress levels rise as you throw him into an endless swarm of decaying, mutant animal-like creatures and help aid his final epic quest... to simply make a friend (out of pieces of people he finds along his journey).
"Oh, also you collect video game cartridges and tumors! if that does anything for ya."
So why this instead of Øuroboros? McMillen explains in a blog post that, after a year of development, Øuroboros felt like it was nowhere near done and risked becoming "another Mewgenics" - that cat building game he was making with Super Meat Boy co-creator Tommy Refenes, which dragged and dragged until they eventually left it. So to spice things up, McMillen and Glaiel took a step back and tried to refocus.
"While working on 0uroboros we would take small breaks to prototype a few other ideas, but it wasn't till December that we actually sat down and decided to do a full game jam and see what would come out. Within a week what we had was 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... it felt a bit like VVVVVV meets 1001 Spikes with a Spelunky control setup and it felt perfect.
"Once again what started as a 2 week mini project sprawled into, by far, the largest game (level wise) I've ever worked on. I'm extremely proud of what we've accomplished with this game, it embodies aspects of basically every game I've ever created and I'm super excited to see what you guys think."
McMillen adds that he's "positive" 0uroboros will still come out, "eventually", but after a break from platforming.
The End Is Night is due on July 12th. McMillen says "I have way too many projects that I’ve announced become vaporware shortly after announcing and I'm sick of it, from now on I'm only going to announce stuff a month or two before release."
As for The Legend of Bum-bo, a mysterious cardboard-crafted RPG spun off from Isaac, he says to expect that in December. And yup, the monthly(ish) Booster Packs for Isaac will continue.