Coming from the mind of the creator of two of the most beloved indie darlings in the gaming industry, Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, The End is Nigh will be the newest reason you’ll have fun destroying controllers out of frustration. Just like its meaty predecessor, the game is a deliciously challenging platformer featuring extremely responsive controls and precise platforming. This isn’t just a reskin, however, as this new title has more than enough in order to stand out on its own.

A lot of praise must be given to the game’s creator. Like Meat Boy, The End is Nigh excels in both its fantastic design, featuring hundreds upon hundreds of challenges, as well as its sublime controls with fantastic responsiveness. Despite the game’s tremendous difficulty, you’ll never be able to blame your failures on any gameplay issue. The game utilizes the joycon’s analog capabilities to a point I wasn’t even aware those sticks could achieve. Any death will be caused due to a miscalculation of yours, without a doubt, such as a jumping mistake, not paying attention to an incoming enemy, and so on. The best part about this is that you’ll quickly learn from your mistakes and you’ll gradually become better and better in this title. Like Dark Souls before it, The End is Nigh might be frustrating at points, but it also teaches you how to improve in the game with the same intensity as it punishes you for not paying attention.

Beating a level is already one heck of an achievement, but the game also features hundreds of collectibles for you to find. What are those collectibles, you may be asking yourself? Tumors. Yep, you read it right: tumors.

One of The End is Nigh‘s most notable aspects is its deliciously dark humor, as well as its overall theme. The game features a heavy dose of sarcasm and foul language, with its overall plot sounding like something a gaming youtuber like The Angry Video Game Nerd would come up with. The entire “end of the world” aspect is very entertaining, as well as your main character’s voice acting. If there’s just one thing I’d say did bother me, that thing would be the game’s visuals. While indeed unique, its minimalistic art style got tiresome after a while, given how the backgrounds and level color pallettes would only change at every 15 to 20 levels. The same applies to the soundtrack: the background tune would only change alongside the “pallette swap”. Thankfully, the overall soundtrack features some great and memorable tunes.

The End is Nigh is definitely not a game for everyone. Just like Super Meat Boy before it, it will infuriate you, it will frustrate you, it will make you want to split your Switch in half in anger. Then again, it will make you come back for more. Its sense of humor, perfect controls and its superb level design are more than enough to engage you for hours. One of the most interesting indie platformers released in the past few years, The End is Nigh is a true testament to level design and pixel perfect controller precision.

Reviewed on Switch.

Also available on: PC.

Copy of The End is Nigh provided by publisher.