The End is Nigh has quite the trailer. Presented as a fourth wall-breaking Let's Play video about a blob named Ash (voiced by Red Letter Media's Rich Evans) playing through a minimalist pixelated platformer called The End is Nigh, all seems well with the affable Ash until tragedy strikes and he gets a game-over. Only it's worse than that. The game crashes, sending Ash into a profanity-laden panic of the highest order. Initially it seems like a cute, clever marketing ploy parodying streamer culture, and it is, but it's also the opening cinematic to the game. Ash, as it turns out, is the last man (or blob. Or whatever) on earth, and his dinky little video games are all he has left.
It's both funny and sad to realise Ash's online handle, Ash_Dies_Alone, is eerily literal, and that he is in fact streaming to absolutely no one. It's a confusing and captivating tonal shift and one that may not come as a surprise seeing as how The End is Nigh is co-created by Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac's creative lead Edmund McMillen. Like other McMillen protagonists, Ash is equal parts grotesque and adorable. His shapeless form and gouged out eye socket balanced by a winning smile and plucky enthusiasm - albeit one that turns into mortified panic at the drop of a hat. It's tragedy played for laughs: just silly enough to avoid clichéd grimdark banality, while melancholy enough to evoke real pathos.
What separates Ash from the bitter lead of that classic Twilight Zone episode where an anti-social bookworm's post-apocalyptic fantasy is thwarted by a broken pair of spectacles, is that Ash isn't simply looking to replace his broken video game (though collecting cartridges offers a wealth of optional mini-games). Instead, his desire is sadder and more human: he's looking for a friend. And if that requires cobbling together the severed limbs of cadavers and a collection of detached tumors, so be it.
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