Metanet brings N Plus Infinity Times Two to co-op

More than a decade after Metanet’s N++ finally landed, the Toronto-to-Montreal duo is returning to the N concept with a multiplayer sequel—N Plus Infinity Times Two—built for competitive and cooperative play. It launches on PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, and PC at some

When Raigan Burns remembers why Metanet took so long to make a second N game, he doesn’t reach for a development milestone. He goes back to his own warning from the first one—his “famous last words” from 2015: “We hope it’s not another 10 years before we come up with a game.”

Now, more than a decade later, that hope and that fear have collided with something new: multiplayer.

The studio’s next entry is called N Plus Infinity Times Two. It’s a direct evolution of the N idea—something Burns and cofounder Mare Sheppard described as a “virtual couch party game” with “a low skill floor and no skill ceiling.” Where N++ was designed as the ultimate single-player version of the N concept. this one is built for playing together (or against each other) across multiple modes—either competitively or cooperatively.

The promise remains familiar for fans: the same slick, acrobatic 2D platforming action and the same graphic-design-inspired visuals that defined N++.

But the platform has changed, and so has the way people are expected to play. N Plus Infinity Times Two is launching on PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, and PC at some point in 2027.

Metanet isn’t a typical story of studio expansion. The duo behind the N games never scaled up, even after two hits—N+ and N++. They’ve been up to prototyping and bigger project ideas while also making a major physical move: uprooting from Toronto to Montreal.

Even the path to N Plus Infinity Times Two wasn’t a straight line. Burns says the push to revisit the concept returned after a long pause. “We started getting the ‘let’s take another crack at it’ bug in 2022,” he told the interviewer.

That “bug” matters because of how Metanet runs its pipeline. Burns describes resisting anything that would compromise their ability to keep iterating and prototyping until something feels worth pursuing commercially. Sheppard frames it less like strategy and more like instinct: it has to feel like “magic. ” and that’s what makes the work compelling.

Burns even offers an analogy that sounds almost stubbornly simple: “We like being in a band. That’s fun. Being in a lot of meetings and doing a lot of managing: not fun.” In other words, the work has to stay creative before it becomes corporate.

This approach lands with extra weight in a games industry that Burns points to as unsustainable—where even major hits operate in ways that don’t leave much room for the kind of patience Metanet says it needs.

For N Plus Infinity Times Two, the spark came from watching how players—especially younger ones—interact with games now. Burns and Sheppard say kids often chat with friends on their phones even when they’re playing solo. turning nearly anything into a multiplayer moment. They wanted to marry that social, always-on behavior with the couch co-op experiences they grew up on.

That meant revisiting the N concept with a multiplayer spin. And the studio’s own memories of building N++ are clear-eyed: playtesting the game, Burns says, was grueling. If the levels are hard, the repetition of testing them over and over was even harder.

So when Burns talks about the new game, the tone changes. “This one really feels like we’re having fun,” he says. Metanet compares the development experience to becoming fluent in an instrument: the challenge now isn’t learning the basics—it’s trying new “styles of music” while working from something they already know extremely well.

In a wider creative world that’s been criticized for becoming increasingly homogenous. Burns also sees a case for making something distinct. even if it means returning to earlier ideas through multiple versions of N. He compares that approach to indie-developed sequels like Hades II and Silksong—projects that keep iterating a core concept but bring a fresh angle instead of drifting into a by-the-numbers follow-up.

Burns argues that staying yourself isn’t just artistically satisfying; it can be commercially safer too: “But I honestly think it’s more commercially viable to do something only you can do, because then you have no competition.”

Metanet isn’t saying what comes after N Plus Infinity Times Two. Burns and Sheppard indicate that they have some bigger 3D game ideas in the mix, but pursuing them would require scaling up—something their current process has avoided so far.

They also won’t close the door on more N games. Sheppard says they’ve abandoned the idea that the next installment must be the last: “If we can do something that expresses something new. or lets us see things in a different way. or we get a different perspective on what this game is or how to play it. that’s exciting.”.

Then she adds the line that feels like the clearest answer to that 2015 worry: “I think we no longer think this is definitively going to be the last one. We’ve abandoned that idea. It doesn’t have to be.”

The decades-long N cycle has already proved one thing—Metanet won’t rush just to be first. With N Plus Infinity Times Two. it also signals something else: even after the hard platforming. the waiting. and the repeated rewrites of the same core idea. the duo still believe the N concept has room to evolve—this time. with friends on the couch.

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