Super Meat Boy Forever is an endless platformer, not a little 'throwaway game'

Team Meat's mysterious new project, first revealed as A Voyeur for September, is actually an auto-runner called Super Meat Boy Forever that follows in the steps of its classic Super Meat Boy series, co-founder Tommy Refenes told Polygon today at PAX.

The game features a the titular meat man himself as he dashes through levels. Along the way, players avoid saws and hop over gaps by touching the game's screen. Precision control exists in the game through a new ducking mechanic; when you're in the air and you duck, you also fall more quickly to land on different platforms.

"It's not a little iOS throwaway game," Refenes said. "We want to do a full-fledged game.

"There's a certain flavor to iOS games where it's just enough and there's not a real complete, cohesive experience. [Super Meat Boy Forever is] going to have cutscenes and bosses. It's going to feel like an actual game and not a time-waster. There are tons of iOS games that aren't time wasters. But most of the little platforms and auto-runners are gimicky and strange, whereas we want to give you a challenge."

It's not a little iOS throwaway game

Super Meat Boy Forever is heading to PC and tablets sometime next year. Everything in the game is randomly generated, Refenes said, and "can go forever, basically." As for A Voyeur for September, Refenes explained that it's an anagram of the game's title. When told Team Meat would have to show a trailer for PAX, the developer opted to not spoil its surprise. The teaser video — a strange collection of fuzzy images — is actually "crap [filmed] around my house and put [to] static," Refenes explained.

Super Meat Boy Forever is Team Meat's mysterious project hinted at after the developer put aside cat-breeding simulator Mew-Genics, Refenes told Polygon.

"[Mew-Genics] was a huge game," the developer said. "It ballooned into this big thing, and there was no end in sight with what we wanted to do with what we had. During that time, we had been working and prototyping little Meat Boy stuff, and it came to a point where we were like, we should just do this one. It's coming together, it's a lot of fun, let's devote the time to this one.

"Mew-Genics isn't dead. It's just, we're doing this one right now, and then we'll come back to [it]."

Update: Team Meat co-founder Edmund McMillen shared more on game in a blog post. Super Meat Boy Forever will be available for PC via Steam and feature a full story, six chapters and "double the bosses the original game featured." The game is not an endless runner, but does feature an endless mode. Super Meat Boy Forever is currently two months into development.