The End Is Nigh

My thoughts on The End Is Nigh are quite similar to my thoughts on Celeste, as well as Super Meat Boy, which this seems to be a kind of worse version of. Let me elaborate on that.

The End Is Nigh is a game by Edmund McMillen, famous for The Binding of Isaac, and more relevantly, Super Meat Boy. I was somewhat surprised at the existance of this game, considering he already has a major platformer under his belt, and that this one... doesn't really add much. While I initally thought there was some story here, it really isn't in any focus worth mentioning. It's all just platforming, like Super Meat Boy, except you're less slippery, somewhat slower, can't walljump, but can grab onto ledges and little spikes.
There seems to be less stuff / variety in the world overall, as well as fewer levels and less bonus content to explore. So it's not so much that I'm surprised that he made another platformer - by all means, you should stick to what you're good at - but that this one is significantly more bare-bones than something that came out 7 years ago.

Despite a relative lack of content, the platforming is as tight as ever, the difficulty is quite right for just completing the game, and reasonably more difficult if you're getting collectables. A seemingly not-so-good decision was to make those collectibles lives later on, meaning the difficult spikes at the end if you've tried to go for a more casual playthrough. This seems unnecessarily unwelcoming.
What else... Soundtrack's great, as usual. The atmosphere and feel of the game are in line with Edmund's dark style, with much death everywhere, and you're literally collecting cancer. The gloom makes the game mostly monochrome, which, while appropriate, is sadly visually unappealing.

Overall, an all around lesser experience than Super Meat Boy (play it first if you haven't), but a very solid platformer nontheless. As I'm personally not a big fan of "vanilla platformers", and Super Meat Boy just barely made it on my list, this will not. But if you liked Super Meat Boy or like platformers, by all means play it. Despite my criticism, you must consider Meat Boy is still one of the best platformers out there, so despite not being as good, The End Is Nigh is still a great platformer. So I'd recommend it if you fit the target demographic, even though I do not.