Super Meat Boy co-creator and The Binding of Isaac designer Edmund McMillen has announced a new game called The End Is Nigh. It’s an adventure platform game made in collaboration with Tyler Glaiel – who also worked with McMillen on The Basement Collection – due out on Steam on July 25.
We can confirm that this is the game McMillen was previously teasing, which he described as “weird,” “personal,” and also being “one of the largest games [he’s] ever made level wise.”
If you’re still playing The Binding of Isaac make sure to check out the latest news.
As you’d expect from something spawned in McMillen’s mind, The End Is Nigh combines a cartoon art style with the grim and gross, taking part after an apocalyptic event that’s left the world in decay.
You play as a black blobby thing called Ash, one of the few survivors, who must flop his way through a “future of pain and suffering” in order to make a friend. Aww. Oh wait, that’s not as cute as it sounds – turns out making a friend, in this case, means literally making one out of bits of people he finds along the way. Lovely.
The game’s description says you’ll feel Ash’s stress levels rise – presumably as you get stressed yourself trying to hop through each of the 600-plus challenging levels – while fighting against mutant creatures and all the other sick things McMillen has dreamt up in his mind.
As well as meeting weird characters as part of the story, The End Is Nigh will keep you occupied collecting cartridges, of which there are over 20, with each containing a pixel-art mini-game to beat. And, as any Isaac players will be familar, there are plenty of hidden extras and endings to unlock, along with over 80 achievements.
Writing on his blog, McMillen adds that The End Is Night feels a “bit like VVVVVV meets 1001 Spikes with a Spelunky control setup.” He says that as, while it focuses on hardcore platforming, each of its rooms are connected in a single explorable world – unlike, say, Super Meat Boy, which has separate, self-contained levels.
He also says that work on Binding of Isaac spin-off, The Legend of Bum-bo, is still in the works and is what he’s concentrating on once The End Is Nigh is out.