Super Meat Boy Forever has been delayed from its original release date of April 2018. The game was due out on Nintendo Switch later this month, but Team Meat has been quiet about the actual release date so far. Rock, Paper, Shotgun correspondent Katharine Castle caught up with Tommy at PAX East last week to ask him about progress on the game. Refenes confirmed that the April release date wouldn’t be happening.

What Happened


“We were originally going to hit April, but we’re not going to hit April, so now we’re going to say after April, because I don’t want to say May and then have to go ‘Oh, I didn’t hit May.’ The next thing we’ll announce is the day you can actually buy it, rather than ‘around here’ because that’s really a lot of pressure to be like, ‘Oh crap, now I’ve got to tell everybody.’ I’m glad I don’t have Kickstarter backers or have taken money from anyone because oh man, that would be terrible. “
Tommy Refenes, Team Meat

Super Meat Boy Forever switches up the classic hardcore platformer formula introduced by the first game. Instead, the game is an auto-runner with two buttons for jump and attack. The levels are randomly generated, but Refenes says the random generation is done with guidance from the developers. That’s similar to how Spelunky handled level creation for its auto-generated levels. Each level has a pool of 100 smaller levels that can be mashed together in a series of eight to make a full level. Refenes says there are around 7,200 unique levels in the game.

What About The Trailer?

The original trailer for Super Meat Boy Forever espoused the original April 2018 release date, but Refenes admits that was a mistake.


“I wrote a ridiculous story and hired a bunch of animators, so we have like 30 minutes of real high quality animated cutscenes that are being done, so it’s all just like, we’re almost there, yeah. But I’ve very much underestimated when I made that trailer – because I was like, April’s far away. It’s far away but not so far, but it definitely wasn’t far enough away.”
– Tommy Refenes

My excitement has been somewhat limited by the mention of it being an auto-runner, but I’m willing to keep an open mind. Part of what made the original Super Meat Boy so magical was creating impossible jumps. Tommy’s former partner Edmund McMillen is also not involved in the creation of the game in any way. I’m hoping Refenes can find a new way to create magic with Super Meat Boy, but auto-runners have never been one of my favored genres.