Super Meat Boy Forever Announced, Playable at PAX, but Will It Happen?

Does anyone else feel like Team Meat has had mobile gamers on the longest episode of Punk’d ever? Over the last few years they’ve announced a few mobile games that have never ever ever come to pass: Super Meat Boy: The Game, Mew-Genics and, most recently, A Voyeur For September.

At PAX Prime this past weekend they showed off what’s become of Super Meat Boy: The Game. It’s now an auto-runner called Super Meat Boy Forever (which is an anagram for A Voyeur For September, explaining that game away too).

Announced for smartphones, tablets and Steam, Team Meat are describing Super Meat Boy Forever as a “full length platformer for touch devices” that they’ve designed “from the ground up to avoid tacking bad controls on an existing design.”

[quote]We want to make something that embodies the original Super Meat Boy but is designed around a simple yet intuitive control scheme allowing for pin point accuracy and surprisingly deep controls without the use of multiple buttons/analog sticks.[/quote]

Being an autorunner rather than an endless runner, you might think that the levels would be lovingly hand-crafted (rather than generated on-the-fly). But while they’re promising a full story and 6 chapters, Team Meat’s Edmund McMillen also says the game “will feature a vast randomly generated level structure that ensures a totally new play experience with each death.” That doesn’t mean these won’t be hand-crafted sections that are randomly strung together, but it’s doesn’t sound like it’s a certainty either.

Super Meat Boy’s brilliant level design is really what made it so damned spectacular. Here’s to hoping that whatever “vast randomly generated level structure” means, it doesn’t take away from what we loved about the game in the first place.

McMillen has also detailed some of the production details which… kind of leave me scratching my head. In early 2012 they announced Super Meat Boy: The Game for iOS. In early 2013 they were putting development on hold to finish their other mobile game, Mew-Genics. And now, according to McMillen, they’re putting Mew-Genics on hold to make Super Meat Boy Forever, which, also according to McMillen, is only two months into development.

Can we all just take a moment to remember that the only actual iOS releases from either member of Team Meat were the intentionally terrible Tiger handheld version of Super Meat Boy and Zits and Giggles, a $400 game that was meant to serve as a commentary on how bullshit they believed the App Store to be?

I believe that there’s a PAX, I believe Team Meat was at it, and I believe people played Super Meat Boy Forever there. I just don’t know what I believe beyond these three facts.

There’s a vague 2015 release date, but if we’re being punk’d (as I still believe in my heart of hearts we are), expect it never.

Jim Squires

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Jim Squires is the Editor-in-Chief of Gamezebo. Everything you see passes his eyes first, so we like to think of him as "the gatekeeper of cool stuff." He likes good games, great writing, and just can't say no to a hamburger. Also, he is not a bear.