The End Is Nigh

The End Is Nigh follows Ash, one of the few things left after an unspecified apocalypse, flopping through hundreds of brutal levels in search of the simple goal of making a friend out of pieces of people he finds along the way. Released in July 2017 from Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen and programmer Tyler Glaiel, it built a large, devoted following — 93% Very Positive across 1,975 English reviews — anchored in genuine praise for its level design and dark tone. Reading closely through the sample confirms that praise while surfacing a specific, well- documented structural complaint about how the game's difficulty escalates.

Level design reviewers call genuinely excellent

The core praise for the game's craft is detailed and consistent. One reviewer, after 44 hours, calls it "one of the best platformers ever. Beautiful art direction, great music, large variety and progression of gameplay mechanics, with tons of optional challenges, collectibles, and secret areas... Brilliant and highly precise level design." Another, more succinct: "Incredible game. Would recommend to pretty much anyone who likes difficult platformers." A third specifically distinguishes it from its most obvious point of comparison: "don't go in expecting this to be like Super Meat Boy... the level design is hard but still quite different from it." That's real, specific credit for craftsmanship across a genre where hundreds of hand-built levels rarely stay consistently excellent throughout.

A finite-lives twist reviewers say sours the second chapter

The most specific, most recurring structural complaint targets a design choice introduced partway through the game. One reviewer explains directly: "The fact you get limited lives in the second chapter is so [expletive] frustrating to me though, especially since a lot of the design so far is extremely precise and requires you to die to understand the level layouts." A second reviewer independently corroborates the identical frustration: "In the second section of the game (after the first 'ending') you have finite lives to deal with so much [nonsense]. It's not worth at all." Two independent, specific accounts of the same design decision — layering finite lives on top of a system that already depends on repeated death to learn level layouts — is worth treating as a genuine structural misstep rather than simple difficulty complaints from less skilled players.

A reward structure reviewers say doesn't match the effort

A separate, more measured complaint concerns what players actually get for pushing through that difficulty. One detailed, 17-vote reviewer frames it precisely: "In other games, when you pick up all the collectibles, finish secret/bonus levels or finish the game, you get something; new characters, new skins or new abilities. Here you only get more levels. Harder levels. That would be fine, but the gameplay isn't necessarily groundbreaking to keep you playing." That's a distinct critique from the difficulty itself — a specific observation that the game's completion loop offers content rather than meaningful progression, which matters more the longer a player invests.

Movement reviewers compare unfavorably to genre peers

A smaller but specific complaint concerns the feel of Ash's movement relative to the precision the levels demand. One reviewer states it directly: "Highly-precise platformer with imprecise movement. Far too floaty and awkward to control, play Celeste instead." That's a targeted, comparative critique from within the genre rather than a general skill complaint, and it points to a real tension between the game's punishing level design and a movement system some reviewers feel doesn't match that precision.

A performance issue that appears to have gone unaddressed

Beyond design complaints, one reviewer reports a specific, reproducible technical issue: "Anytime a platform starts falling, the fps drops to like 10. Tried limiting the fps, tried playing in low resolution, nothing. Googled and couldn't find a fix that worked." Checked against the developer's own event history, post-launch activity consists of just two events — a Mac port shortly after release and Steam Workshop support two years later — with no dedicated patch addressing performance issues visible in that sparse record.

What the achievement data confirms

Global achievement statistics show a real drop-off consistent with the finite-lives complaint above: the first main chapter is completed by 67.6% of the playerbase, falling to 52.1% for the second. That's a steeper decline than the difficulty curve alone would predict, lining up with reviewer accounts of the second chapter's specific structural change driving a meaningful share of players away.

Presentation choices that divide even fans of the game

A smaller thread in the review sample concerns visual and audio presentation specifically, distinct from the design complaints above. One reviewer explains a genuine tension: "the world feels desolate, depressing, dangerous and stress-inducing. Music and visuals really add to that feeling [but] Color palette is often an issue: levels are either different shades of red or grey or green and it is often hard to see what exactly is" hazardous versus safe to touch. A separate reviewer raises an unusual complaint about the soundtrack specifically, despite it being praised elsewhere in the sample: describing the music as "copyright free, overused, slightly remixed." These are minority views relative to the otherwise strong praise for the game's atmosphere, but they point to a real readability cost that comes with committing so fully to a desaturated, oppressive visual identity.

Verdict

The End Is Nigh delivers genuinely excellent, meticulously crafted precision platforming wrapped in a distinctive, melancholy tone that sets it apart from brighter genre peers. A specific, well-documented complaint about its second chapter's finite-lives twist, combined with a reward structure some reviewers find unsatisfying relative to the effort demanded, keep it from an unqualified recommendation. Worth it for precision-platformer fans prepared for real, specific frustration points beyond the game's baseline difficulty.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; the developers' own partner-events history from 2017 through 2019.