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When Super Meat Boy was released seven years ago, its super-responsive controls and demanding platforming breathed new life into one of gaming’s oldest genres. Just over a decade later, the follow-up, Super Meat Boy Forever is gearing up to apply the same principles to a new well-liked, but seemingly tapped-out form: the endless runner.
Super Meat Boy Forever was originally created as a mobile spin-off, before developer Team Meat fleshed out the concept, turning it into a full-fledged sequel. Though it’s now described as “a console game being released on mobile,” rather than the other way around, the underlying mobile sensibility is still obvious.
Endless runners — side-scrolling platformers in which a character constantly and automatically moves forward — have become a mobile game standard, thanks to games like Canabalt, Temple Run, and Super Mario Run. Even the toughest among them work well on a smartphone, as they demand intense focus, rather than mastery of complex control schemes.
Those same player priorities — focus and attention to detail — are essential in the original Super Meat Boy as well, which may explain why Super Meat Boy Forever feels like a perfect fit for the genre. Meat Boy, a smiling red square slab with arms and legs, runs through each of the game’s levels toward the goal, avoiding saw blades and buzzing enemies that are ready to murder him with a single touch.
Super Meat Boy Forever is incredibly easy to pick up, and ultimately, pretty addictive.
Forever is technically not an endless runner; every level has a clearly defined end goal and specific challenges along the way, but it borrows much of what defines the genre. Most notably, that the game only uses two buttons. On the PlayStation 4, pressing X makes Meat Boy jump, and pressing it again makes him punch. Pushing down on the analog stick makes him slide. That’s it.
Super Meat Boy was known for being hard, requiring precise movements and timing in order to make it through its ridiculously lethal levels. Super Meat Boy Forever is just as difficult, with the same sort of requirements. Hold the jump button down for too short or too long a time, and Meat Boy careens into a buzzsaw, or off a cliff.
Despite the steep learning curve, the game itself is easy to pick up. There are only a few mechanics to master — jumping, sliding, dashing forward by throwing a punch in mid-air, and sliding down or jumping off walls. Everything comes down to timing and reflexes. The accessibility that would have been essential on a phone makes the console version of Super Meat Boy Forever incredibly easy to learn, and ultimately, pretty addictive.
Those streamlined mechanics work because of the game’s extremely smart level design, which provides an intense challenge reminiscent of the original Meat Boy, but tuned for the game’s new mode of play. The levels are procedurally generated, though each one is algorithmically built with an eye toward creating a rhythm. You’ll jump over saws, dive under enemies, and bounce off walls, but the game never feels designed to punish you or take cheap shots by piling on the obstacles.
Yes, you’ll die a lot along the way, getting thrashed by deviously placed saw blades and dangers you didn’t see coming. But Super Meat Boy Forever always has a handy checkpoint immediately (or almost immediately) before the obstacle you couldn’t beat. And the game resets at a breakneck speed, letting you try, and die, over and over and over again.
The result is an eminently playable game, challenging but not frustrating, throwing obstacles at players and then giving them just enough time to breathe before challenging them again. Super Meat Boy Forever constantly pushes your skills, but your success always feels actively rewarding. When you get through a tough portion or level, you’re always ready to move on to the next thing.
If all of Super Meat Boy Forever is as well-built as the first 10 or 15 levels we tried at PlayStation Experience 2017, it’ll be a worthy successor to the original.
Super Meat Boy Forever is currently set hit PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC, iOS, and Android in summer 2018.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.