Super Meat Boy Forever is an auto-runner developed and published by Team Meat. Unfortunately, the game has traded the hand-crafted levels and tight controls of Super Meat Boy for randomly-generated stages and single-button controls in a package that just isn't fun to play.
The story of Super Meat Boy Forever is similar to that of the original, with the evil Dr. Fetus kidnapping Meat Boy and Bandage Girl's child. It's up to the player to pursue Dr. Fetus through each stage and save the kid. Super Meat Boy Forever is light on story, but there are some funny cutscenes spread throughout the game, which feature homages to classic titles. The visuals of Super Meat Boy Forever are just as colorful and viscerally gory as the original game, and the whole experience is a treat to behold.
Super Meat Boy Forever is a departure from the previous title in gameplay, however, and this is where the game really struggles to live up to the reputation of its predecessor. Instead of stages that are intricately and deliberately designed, there are now randomly-generated levels that are created from different puzzle chunks that are strung together. The intention is for infinite replayability, which seems like it works, but it's an infinite replayability of poorly-made stages. Super Meat Boy Forever is just a procession of split-timing death puzzles, which aren't any fun to complete, thanks to the shift from platformer to auto-runner.
Super Meat Boy Forever is extremely generous with checkpoints, which means stages are broken into lots of smaller moments of frustration, rather than one long one. There are also lots of instances where the player will complete a difficult puzzle, only to be instantly killed by a poorly-placed beginning of the next puzzle, which is almost impossible to avoid. It feels as if Super Meat Boy Forever took inspiration Celeste, but it removes a lot of the purpose from the game. In practice, the game involves the player bashing their head constantly against a puzzle until they work out exactly how the developer wanted them to solve it, before being instantly killed by the next puzzle within seconds, starting the process over from the beginning.
The other major issue with Super Meat Boy Forever is the shift in control style. The main character now runs endlessly in one direction, and the player can only make them jump, punch, or hasten their speed when rising or dropping. It seems that the intention was to make a game that could be played with as few button presses as possible, in order to fit the mobile gaming market. In practice, all feeling of control is gone, as the player constantly has to fight against the momentum set by the game. It never feels as if the player is truly in control of the main character, which is death for a platforming game. The bad controls, combined with the sloppy level design, makes for an experience that is more frustrating than fun. The lack of control also means that it's a lot harder for the player to experiment with different ways to complete puzzles.
The only true bright spot in Super Meat Boy Forever is the boss stages. These are well-crafted, beautifully animated, and challenging in a way that makes them rewarding to defeat. More of this - the kind of intentional, intelligently designed bursts of gameplay that the original Super Meat Boy was almost entirely made up of - would have gone a long way, and it's clear from the bosses that it was possible with Super Meat Boy Forever.
The original Super Meat Boy was one of the greatest platformers of all time. The same cannot be said of Super Meat Boy Forever, which traded almost everything that made the original game fun for something that could be played endlessly. It was a high-risk decision that could have paid off, but as it turns out, a lot of Super Meat Boy's charm came out of its level design and platforming gameplay elements. It's a shame that Super Meat Boy Forever is not enjoyable enough to even want to play a second time, and fans would do well to pay no heed to the implication of playing "forever" that's made by the game's ambitious title.
Super Meat Boy Forever is available now for Nintendo Switch and PC. The game will be released for PS4 and Xbox One in 2021, with Android, iOS, and Linux versions to follow. Screen Rant was provided with a digital code for the Switch version of the game for the purposes of this review.
