I was genuinely surprised by how fresh the action felt throughout, and the game was throwing new mechanics at me up to the end. Each new set of levels emphasizes different obstacles, which continually kept me on my toes. I particularly enjoyed the levels featuring pickups that allow Meat Boy to teleport through walls. In another, I used Meat Boy’s dash punch to move blocks across the screen, creating new platforms. In one set of levels, I dashed through storms of falling glass. After I finished one playthrough, I generated a new set of levels and was surprised by how different they felt.Įven without procedural generation, Super Meat Boy Forever’s action evolves as you progress. Each level is composed of fragments taken from a pool of over 7,000 bite-sized platforming sections, which means that every player gets a unique experience. Procedurally generated games often lack that hand-crafted feel, but Super Meat Boy Forever’s levels flow seamlessly together in ways that usually feel natural. This Meat Boy is called “Forever” because its levels are procedurally generated, meaning you can theoretically play the game endlessly. There were a few times I wished I had a little more control over Meat Boy, but, for the most part, I quickly forgot about his limitations once I was sliding under buzzsaws and bounding up walls.
SUPER MEAT BOY FOREVER RELEASE DATE SERIES
Given Super Meat Boy Forever’s streamlined action, Team Meat has put extra focus on precision platforming, setting up a series of harrowing obstacle courses that force you to carefully time your jumps. While this is technically a simple game, it’s far from easy. This might sound like it would simplify the action and neuter Meat Boy's difficulty, but that isn't the case. Naturally, this raises a few questions: can Team Meat distill Meat Boy’s pixel-perfect platforming into a game where players are limited to a single input? And, does Super Meat Boy Forever have any chance of leaving the same kind of cultural mark on the industry as its forerunner? Now that I’ve played the game, the answers are clearly “Surprisingly yes,” and “No chance in hell.”īecause Super Meat Boy Forever is an autorunner, Meat Boy takes off running the second you press start, and you can’t control the direction of his movements or his speed. A few years later, Team Meat announced the follow up, Super Meat Boy Forever, a pseudo-sequel that would take Meat Boy into the world of autorunners.
Team Meat's hardcore platformer was at the forefront of the modern indie renaissance games like Super Meat Boy helped show that even small teams of dedicated developers could make a big mark on the gaming landscape.
A decade ago, the original Super Meat Boy released into what almost feels like a different industry.