As some of you know, Repentance will feature a very lush and fun alternate path that runs slightly parallel to the main game. maybe you also know that these alternate chapters will feature a slew of new enemies, bosses and even mechanics that make the game feel super new... and its possible even a few of you remember the initial track we spoiled for the first alternate chapter "Downpour" but ill post it again so you can let it play while you read this post.. i warn you you may feel a bit damp after you do...

now i dunno how many of you played the end is nigh, (probably the best game ive ever made that doesnt feature a crying naked child) but if you havent, FOR SHAME! WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU!? DONT YOU LIKE THINGS THAT ARE GOOD!??! but i digress.. turns out the dev team are fans of said game ( such great taste ) and decided to include some enemies from it.. here is Fissure!



look at em go! flip flopping all around the room looking to dive back into the unknown depths below!



but why bother you with this enemy nonsense... you guys dont care about alt paths and new enemies... you just want some sweet sweet items! well im a people pleaser and prepare to behttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/HZVxNCTYbEgVupMD8PX_0GCJURQ1GJdbSeGb1ZRQw7dxD5mRq2ZxdyrR-B_cvVg9Q_2EBKdkwwKIrUrNT1wiliCkuWNHsZkXe3KFTp3eYKF-Mfwspleased.





it appears to be an item called Neptunus and it does something something.. i dunno i cant read that chicken scratch, and you aren't reading this anyway so i can probably say whatever i want here and it wont matter anyway cornhole beetle wax isnt orange anymore mama, please hug my fun wrinkles.



oh oh! also i designed this fat thing that pukes!







and finally we leave you with a little boss we call Min Min... she starts out in a really snazzy getup that appears to be the husk of something long dead and salted, but once she does her little turn on the runway she drops that baby and shows it all! her future is so bright, you gotta wear shades! am i right?





Anywho, only a few months go to people! sure hope the world doesn't end by then... what do you guys want to see next? more general posts like this? or something totally different. post your suggestions in the comments! like and subscribe!

xoxo - Edmund

To punch up the fact that this is not only the final DLC but the definitive isaac experience, the boys at the Ridiculon HQ have redone the title track Genesis one final time.


for those of you that missed last week, Repentance will be launching March 31st! that means we roughly have 2 months more of dev time then a few weeks of heavy testing before release, that also means its time to lock it down and just finish what we have left of our list.. but... a few days ago we decided we NEEDED to add 34 more unlockable items... dont worry though we are still on for the 31st.

Now on to a little QA section!

Q: how much will Repentance be?
A: $14.99

Q: is it stand alone or will i need isaac to play it?
A: you will need Rebirth, Afterbirth and Afterbirth + to play repentance.

Q: will Repentance fix/change/update X Y Z?
A: Repentance has so many balance changes, visual and gameplay updates and fixes its impossible to keep track anymore.

Q: is the features list on the steam page actually true or are you hiding content from us?
A: of course we are hiding content.. we still go back and forth on spoiling stuff via feature page updates or just leaving stuff for you to find then updating it after launch.

Q: will it come to Mac?
A: No.

Q: will it come to console X Y Z?
A: Yes, the goal is to have it launch on more than one console by the end of the year, probably a lot sooner than the end but lets just say the end so we can beat expiations!

Q: will you do booster packs again?
A: I'm gunna publicly confirm that there will be NO booster packs for repentance because last time we did that it felt terrible when we packed in content to each booster and people complained that we didn't just release smaller boosters every month.. that said im sure there will be bug fix updates and content balance updates post launch.

i leave you with this...



see ya next week!
-Edmund-https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQsv2839VKw80JynB1JNIzizDdPe8wmAfxfuA&usqp=CAU

LETS WATCH!


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That's right, Repentance will finally be in your hands, hearts and souls on march 31st! me and the team are quite excited for this beast to finally rise from the depths and consume your every waking hour for the years to come, we just want all of its features to be perfect and testing to be a bit more in-depth than our last little release that will go unnamed.

that amazing trailer was done by Alex Hicks and is packed to the brim with nods to the past, present and future... it just all depends on how wide your eyes are when watching and if you have an IQ over like 340.

anyway next week we will get back to the usual blog posts, we have 11 or so left so we gotta make em count! what do you want us to talk more about and spoil without spoiling too much?

hold on to your buttholes!

-Edmund

Hey there! My name's Vinh (maybe better known by some of you as _Kilburn ), and I handle most of the programming and game design stuff in Repentance, along with a few artsy bits such as item sprites and visual effects. Today I'd like to talk about one of the upcoming characters in Repentance: Bethany!



Bethany is my attempt at giving Magdalene a more challenging, attack oriented counterpart. At first she was a white mage type character with an entire set of holy themed spells and a mana counter that would fill up with soul hearts, but I quickly realized that was way overcomplicated and she eventually shifted towards a more exorcist-like archetype, catching souls and using their power to defend herself.

When playing as her, soul hearts will drop more often, but instead of granting health, they count towards a new "soul charge" counter, adding 1 charge per half soul heart. Active items will then draw from that counter when used on an empty or partial charge. This allows you to use your active items more aggressively while still saving charges for when you need them the most.



She also starts with a neat active item: the Book of Virtues! When used, this book spawns one wisp familiar that orbits you, blocks shots, and fires low damage tears. This might not seem like much but...



...this wisp will also follow you between rooms and stick around until it dies! Which happens whenever it comes in contact with an enemy or gets hit by too many projectiles. This means if you play carefully enough, you can end up with a whole bunch of wisps lighting up the room while protecting you.



If you've already experienced the Antibirth mod you're probably thinking "wait I know this character, she sucks, no one wants to be stuck with the same active item and no devil deals for the whole game!!!". Well you got me, I lied, the Book of Virtues isn't quite an active item. Check this out:



That's right, when you pick up any active item, the book will open up and the item will combine with it, allowing both to be used at the same time! You can still swap active items as normal but the Book of Virtues will always stay in your active slot and attach to whatever's in there. Losing your active item, for example after activating a single use item, will simply result in the book reverting to its closed state.

On top of it, many active items will grant a unique effect to the wisps they spawn, which either compliments their original purpose or brings them in a completely different direction.
For example here's My Little Unicorn in action:



As a general rule you can expect items with a short cooldown to produce fragile wisps that are easy to lose, and items with a long cooldown to produce sturdy wisps that stick around for longer.
As for single use items or items with no cooldown? Who knows? Anything is possible!

Okay fine, how about this:



Using How to Jump offensively? Nonsense!!!

I'm very happy with how this turned out (thanks for the design input Edmund!) and I hope this will be a good incentive for you to give some of your least favorite active items another chance!

Of course, keep in mind things are still subject to change before release.

Repentance is coming along well and I really appreciate how understanding the community has been. It will be worth the wait. You guys rock.

Until next time!

Uhhh hey, is this thing on? Nevermind, it is. Silly me.

Hi there, I'm Not Your Sagittarius (or Sag, for short). You might know me as the lead sprite artist on Repentance. Or you might not. Either way, I'm in this weird phase of existing and not existing in some peoples' eyes. But let's get right to the point - those monsters and bosses full of mystery and personality, that stinky green floor that disintegrates noses upon entry, returning characters
and other things looking cuter than you last remember them and so much more? I'm the one that makes all the art for them. Or... most of them anyway. My two hands could only do so much before they get occupied for other things.

But enough from me! In this blog post I'd be happy to show you an insight in the process of what I do as a sprite artist.

Before an enemy gets its invitation into the game, we start with a discussion of what kind of enemy to add, and for which floor. Either that or Nik drops his 51st concept art onto the table. Sometimes it's not always him though - I make concept art too, though despite my artistic background it's not Mona Lisa grade at all.

The usual routine for making an enemy or boss is simple - one of us draws a concept laying out what it does, then I take the concept and make the sprites for it, and finally Kil adds it to the game. Of course, more complex monsters takes more time.

Here's some concept art I made for two mucky new additions to the Dank Depths - something I'll go in "depth" later! (please get the joke...)



Fairly simple enemies while you're still in the early game, the Butt Slicker is a devious variant of that one enemy you forgot existed, now stickier and shares a mob mentality with other Butt Slickers!



Messier than their bloodied cousins, the Sticky Leaper hops around spreading their tar and making messes around the battlefield!



Now I'd like to talk about visual changes for Repentance. If you haven't noticed yet, many of the characters and monsters have been getting beauty treatment. That's right - characters like Blue Baby are getting visual upgrades - not only for costumes but for the thing you'll see 70% of the time in your run - their hair. I made sure every character gets a free bottle of shampoo. It seems to be working wonders for the characters with hair. Not sure about the bald ones, though.





As for bosses and monsters - this is an interesting topic I'd like to talk about. You might have noticed Fistula getting a visual upgrade - and it does not end there. I'm retouching as many bosses as I can and bringing back details from the flash version that were lost in translation and a little more.
Say hello to the new Gemini.



With a little guidance from Ed, I'm also upgrading some visuals for the monsters you've known from Antibirth. Here's one you might be familiar with - the Whipper.



As for floors... I've given it some thought to revamp some of the afterbirth alts to enforce their theme a little more. One floor in particular is the Dank Depths - I've completely remade it from the ground-up to tailor to my tweaking. It's more or less the same dank depths you know and love (or hate), but with some much added detail to bring out its mucky theme. By working with Kil we've made the dank depths more danker than it ever was. Check out the difference!



There's still a lot of work I have left to do for bringing new monsters into the world of Isaac as well as making everyone else cuter, but I'm enjoying it all the same. I'm so excited for you guys to get your hands on this! I made sure to puts lots of love and care into every sprite in
the game.





Now if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to drawing girls.

...right after I play Isaac and laugh and die horribly to the _____ ____ for the 7th time.

Hey it's me, Nikola Antibirthdesigner, I made 3 million levels and Baby Plum. And as the guy who makes the rooms for Repentance, I am very fond of enemies and making new levels with them by pressing buttons on my mouse a bunch of times.

Because of this, Edmund has generously threatened me into writing about all this in today's blogpost. Let's not waste any more time and start with the first enemy I wanna talk about.


**Needles**


Originally made for one of the booster packs, the concept of these enemies is simple; they're just mini-pins that try to get ya by jumpin' around the room.



You'd think "This is no big deal! I've beaten Pin a few thousand times before, how is this supposed to be a difficult enemy, huh!" Not a bad assumption actually, but they DO start being a problem when there's like 3 or more of them in one room along with other enemies you gotta deal with.



Keeping up is especially difficult if you're a beginner, but where they truly shine is when you've had thousands of hours in the game and are on auto-pilot 'cus you have approximate knowledge of all the rooms in the game. Unlike most enemies in the game they do not make their presence known as soon as you enter the room, not even a puff of smoke when they spawn.



So if you come across a room that looks pretty generic like you've seen it a hundred times before, it might have one of these suckers dive bombing at you.


**Holy Eyes**


I know I know, everyone reading this is sitting on their seats foaming at the mouth screaming "Come on! Where's a guy gonna get some Four Souls stuff!" Well you're in luck, we got another brand new enemy in repentance based off this fancy Four Souls©™ card!





Wow! What a Great Card probably!
When making rooms, a good enemy dynamic is having monsters that attack you when alive for a while, and monsters or obstacles that distract the player so that the other monsters get a chance to do their thing. The Holy Eye is a Cathedral enemy that's an example of the former. When it does it's attack it'll surely make the player move their ass anywhere they are in the room, which is good 'cus then they might dodge into another enemy's attack.



Thanks for the gif, Vinh. Hope you get some sleep after I make you record these gifs at like 3AM.


**Bishops**


Another returning favorite from the Antibirth mod, this time with a new look! This is a stationary enemy that protects every other enemy in the room, so the player has no choice but to focus on him first and then everyone else. A great example of a "distraction enemy", the only way it could be more distracting is if it came out of your screen and robbed your house.



Vinh also gave them a new self-defense attack that doesn't look too bad, but you'd be surprised by how tricky it can be to dodge in some room layouts.
(Just ignore the fact that they attack in the cardinal directions despite being bishops)


Well it's the end of the blog post, and last week Tyrone shouted-out a random song he found, so this week I'll keep that up and shout-out this <random youtube channel that I like.>


That'll be all from me, enjoy analyzing those gifs fellas, I'm going back to my cave.

I'm back for more, are you ready? This week we have another preview of the gorgeous soundtrack from The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. By the way, did you already add it to your wishlist, you should because *maybe it'll have a pre-release little discount that you'll want to take advantage of.

In last week's episode McEdmund took over this glorious blog to show yo some new stuff for that game you like so much. This week you get to enjoy Juggernaut, the ultimate boss alt song.



Edmund told me it's got a ton of action and has some really good feel. But I also asked Matthias and Jon--you know, the guys who make the soundtrack. According to the east coast due who clearly enjoy each other’s company (as evidenced by the joyful rhythmic underpinning of this entire song), they tell me it's got a bit of sparkle and even an iconic melody laid over the top of this one. Edmund threw Ridic a bone and let them take a drum solo during this boss fight theme. This shows the depths of the Santa Cruz native's humanity and empathy.

In other news, I'm not a musician, but I can play the piano with my right hand. I can tell you right now this might be my favorite boss tune. It has a good beat and the rhythm is just right for the pace of some of these wicked bosses we're putting together. It's the exact accompaniment you need to fight, ___ ______ and ______. (Sorry, Edmundo wants redacted named, but I was gonna give it to you)

Bonus fun, Free Ridiculon discography to anyone who transcribes the rhythmic puzzle at the end of the track!

Before I forget, here's a gif, because I know why you're here...



Lastly, 1000% unrelated to Repentance, 5PM by Chris Kogos autoplayed while I was finishing this new post for you. I thought you'd like to know that because it's the kind of person you are. Give it a click, you can thank me now.

Well hello there strangers, its me Edmundo McChaos and I'm here today to do one of those blog post updates about that new fangled Isaac DLC, Repentance!

some of you may be wondering... what the hell do you do anyway? aren't you that asshole who cuts and runs with all our hard earned cash? well sure, but i still do game dev stuff! when it comes to my work on Repentance not only do i yell at Vinh about how much i hate those rolling meat things from anti-birth BUT i also act as director of this whole project! that means i get to be vague with my designs and then scream at the team when what comes out isn't to my liking!

but i digress, lets stick to the topic and give you guys what you want! and what would a blog post i make be without huge fanfare right? "spoil items!" they type at me on twitter, "no one cares about the people who made this dumb game! we want to see new enemies!".

well you win.


THE SPIRIT SWORD!



those of you who played the anti-birth mod may remember this glowing fan favorite.. well its back! according to google it appears to be a reference to an "American heavy metal band from Austin, Texas. Formed in 2003" or something.. i guess the team are huge fans of this band and wanted to pay homage to it with this amazing item (now with new combos!). lets check it out in action...





wowza wasn't that cool? I've honestly never seen anything like it in a video game, just an example of the originality our amazing team is bringing to the table folks.. but enough about them.. lets talk about ME!


DIVINE INTERVENTION!

this neato new item appears when you double tap one of the fire keys, yep that's right, we are breaking all kinds of rules now! so yeah, when you double tap, out comes this super pretty, angelic shield that not only reflects bullets but can also reflect brimstone attacks! lets watch...



ARE YOU SEEING THIS!!!!!? chew on that for a little while.



done chewing? well swallow it down because i got one more tease for you and its huge and bony!

HOLY BONY





its been said that at some point i may have mentioned wanting to make holy and tainted enemies in repentance in reference to that Binding of Isaac card game that came out a while back.. well i was thinking maybe new champions or something easy, but these guys took my idea and turned it into actual new enemies with their own graphics and attacks!! insanity i say!



what a big boy! you can now find these guys wandering the cathedral along side a few other holy enemies that ill let other people spoil because its dinner time and my daughter sprained her ankle yesterday, meaning i need to carry her around all day like that trash man used to carry around Oscar the grouch back in the 80s... oh i forgot to mention this post is angel themed, so you'll find these items in angel rooms, and you said angel rooms sucked! well you know what, YOU SUCK!

now leave me alone!

toodles
-Mr. Doom (& gloom)

Welcome back back again again!

If you were here last week, you know we were in the middle of interviewing Edmund. If you weren’t here... well, now you know, too.

This week we’ll continue with more questions for Edmund and find out more about his growth as a game developer and a game creator.

What kind of work did you do before you started making games?
Edmund: Tons of jobs since I was 15. My first was at the SPCA, cutting stuff around there and doing manual labor for a summer. Right after that I did cameraman work for a show that was on public access. I enjoyed that a great deal. I worked in a factory with my dad; they made pieces of washing machine parts. I worked at Blockbuster for a year, GameStop on-and-off and the other things it became—different iterations on-and-off for many, many years. I was still working at GameStop if I needed money; after Gish had won IGF, I went to doing that part-time.

How and when did you start designing games?
Edmund: When I was sixteen, I started making comics, then I started making games in the Duke Nukem [engine] with mods. I made a lot of stuff with Duke, Doom and Quake in the later years. Then I was making games with Klik & Play. There was a game I made called Build the Lower Intestine. I don’t remember what it was called, but I used to make pretty in-depth games with this weird ASCII editor.

[NOTE: At this point in the interview Edmund has another negotiation with his daughter Peach. I’m still uncertain who the better negotiator is yet, but given that Peach is 1/10th of Edmund’s age, she has the clear advantage.]

Are your life experiences intrinsic to your game design?
Edmund: The games that I make are pieces of my life reworked. I’ve found a way for people to experience little bits and pieces of who I am by putting them in interesting game design.



What’s your first game that you say is “my first game”?
Edmund: Dead Baby Dressup! was my first game. I didn’t think it was a game. When I was making games in high school, I remember thinking if I could make a game, I could join a studio and that’d be something I want to do. But I also remember thinking that there was no way, because I’d only be happy making games at a studio if they would listen to my ideas... and no one was going to listen to my ideas. There was no way anybody would be down with the stuff I wanted to do. I thought at least I could make cartoons or do animation or something. I was leaning towards 2D and 3D animation at the end of high school. That seemed to be my only real option. Truthfully, I didn’t want to go anywhere; I didn’t want to work for anyone. I wanted to figure out some way that I could do it myself.

In my sophomore year of high school—or maybe even freshman year—there was a guest speaker named Clay Butler. He was a local cartoonist; he had his own comic strip under syndication called Sidewalk Bubblegum. It was a political comic strip. He had multiple animations that played on public access as well as Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation. I felt like no one gave a shit except me. I was like, “Oh my God!” I was in awe. He was like a movie star to me! I was enamored by this, and the idea that it could be his job. He talked about it, that he didn’t make a lot of money but he was really happy and creatively fulfilled and that sounded like the most amazing thing in the world. I just want to do anything and everything to get a little closer to where this guy is at. All I want is this guy’s creative life.

Even now I feel envious of these crazy artists like Tonetta—somebody who can really just make art all day, every day, and never worry about the financial aspects of it. Be himself, unbridled, and let the creative juices flow. I’m not going to complain, because I feel like the compromises I’ve made are very slim.

I didn’t think I’d be doing the Repentance [development], but it’s been one of the more enjoyable experiences I’ve had. Same with Mew-Genics—I didn’t think I’d ever get to work on that again, but I’m pretty proud of where it’s going.



For you, what’s the sweet spot of your game dev and your art?
Edmund: The original Isaac, where it was super simple. It was just me and one other person. No expectations, no real profit is being thought of. The last game I made like that was Fingered. And that’s the reason why I continued to work with James and made Bum-bo; it was such an easy, effortless experience that I enjoyed it.

I would love to do that and get back into just making a bunch of small games that don’t matter but are creatively fulfilling. I feel like in order for me to grow and not stagnate, I need to have fun and be able to make goofy stuff that is “worthless,” because then I can learn. It’s like sketching or drawing—I’m still designing and still kind of innovating.

If Bum-bo had come out a year or two after its conception, it would have blown the minds of a lot of people, because it would have been like Slay the Spire before Slay the Spire. That didn’t happen. Creatively, I need to dive into the black unknown and pull some things out of there and take a leap to be able to get something out of left field like Isaac or Time FCUK.

What's your value in game developer and art?
Edmund: My value is in my theme and game design. That’s my high true value. The only thing I can do differently than other people. Design and theme isn’t something that can be quantified. You can’t put it against someone else and see whose design and theme is better. All designers hit the ceiling. I feel that the level design from Celeste can give me a run for my money in terms of level design, and I feel the same way about Spelunky. There are so many of us at that level and you don’t really go higher than that. Game design goes to a certain point.

But when you talk about theme or the richness of how theme talks to design, how design talks to art, how art talks to story, pulling everything together into one cohesive theme... it’s limitless and can’t be ranked or put against something else. The reason why I’m good at that is because I’m telling bits and pieces of who I am, and I try to stay true to the things I’ve experienced and be as honest as possible. And in the process, I’ll produce a unique experience, because it’s a piece of my unique life. That’s where I feel my talents lie, and my ability to speak through it in an abstract, artistic way.

When it comes to art, I’m to the point that I’m literally hiring the kids that were fans of me 10 years ago. [laughs] Because they’re better than me, they do my art better than I do. I could throw ten of them at you, they all grew up with my work and they can draw just like me, but better. What’s interesting, too, is that I feel more comfortable working with fans of mine, because there’s an understanding of my work that I can’t explain with just words.

Before we get into Isaac dev, do you have some memorable kid stories about games?
Edmund: I didn’t get an NES until I was 10. I was the last kid on my block to get one. I lived next door to my realtor, Alma, for a few years. That block was full of kids who were actively trading and borrowing NES games and trading information about said games. Carlos had an NES; he was my closest friend on the block.

And I remember vividly that when Mario 2 came out, I thought it was the coolest shit ever. I didn’t have an NES yet. I faked being sick, stayed home from school. I broke into their house and went in and started playing for a while. I remember playing the hell out of it. Then his mom woke up and came out yelling at me, “What the fuck are you doing in here?!?” I remember running away screaming. She vividly remembers, too, which is funny to bring up when we bump into each other so many years later.

For my 10th birthday I got an NES, finally. Things were already bubbling for Super Nintendo at that point. The cool thing was that there were already a lot of discounted games at that point. I remember there was a game called Werewolf—it was a piece of shit, but I loved it.

That era of games must have made a real impression on your future game design career, whether you knew it or not at the time.
Edmund: Yeah, Mario, Zelda and Mega Man were significant. But Super Mario Bros. 2 was the most significant for me. It was a game where I really loved the design overall, but it was the character design and the world that I really liked, the multiple characters. It really felt like they were telling little stories with the characters; I thought they all had a uniqueness to them. It felt weirder than “Mario” Mario and it had so much character. If you look back now, a majority of the standout characters came from Mario 2.



You know the origin of Mario 2... that there is a different Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan?
Edmund: Yeah. Doki Doki Panic. Wasn’t their SMB2 just “hard” Mario 1…?

It was pretty clever to “skin” Doki Doki Panic and make a whole new game with these really colorful characters.
Edmund: Don’t forget Luigi, Peach and Toad. All of those characters were made from this game that wasn’t originally a Mario game. The fact that people think that Toad is a strongman little guy that can pick anything up comes from that game. Princess Peach being able to fly, even Luigi being a weird oddball... it comes from that game, where they made him thinner and taller.

Castlevania was another; I loved the gothic and movie monster theme. The furthest I ever got was Death. I could never get further than that. Zelda was the most magical; it felt like a living game. We didn’t have the Internet, so nothing was spoiled. Kids would go around burning trees for days until they found a secret. All the greats. It’s not like I have some niche game that influenced me more than others.

I loved Mega Man, not because of the design. I don’t necessarily think that the controls and general design of Mega Man were very good. It was so fucking hard. I think the appeal is in the robots. It’s a traditional samurai movie game. You’ve got to go kill the samurai, and with each one you kill, you gain a skill. And they just abstracted that into this cool thing. I’m not even into robots, but I could dig Mega Man because it kept it organic and kept it unique.

The NES era was major. Me and Danielle collected NES games for years before it was a thing. We had 452 NES game cartridges. I had to sell them to make Super Meat Boy. I sold all my stuff to do that. It was fun collecting and it was fun playing, but it became a hassle to move; it was insane.

Any random games that were memorable?
Edmund: The most obscure games I actually enjoyed were Shadowgate, Deja Vu and my favorite was Uninvited—it was like a more horror-oriented Shadowgate.



I know you liked Sega CD, did that inspire or influence your decision to prototype Camdrome?
Edmund: Yeah, for sure. That and stuff like Night Trap. I really liked how weird and kind of creepy some of those digitized videos looked; it made them look creepier. That might be why a lot of people thought Night Trap was worse than it really was, because it looked creepy.

The Sega CD was a way for me to play PC-style games, because we couldn’t afford one. We didn’t get a PC forever. I had the 32X, too; the shittiest of the shitty. The only game I ever had was Doom. And did you know that it wasn’t even the full version? It was the shareware version, not even the full version of Doom. I beat it and there’s no cyber demon. Where’s the spider? It just ends after the first chapter! It was so fucked and the most disappointing thing in the world, because it had taken me forever to get all the components to hook up the 32X to my television. When I finally did, it was a week after Christmas and I finally beat it. “Where’s the second chapter?”

And after 32X? Any inspiration there?
Edmund: I missed the PlayStation; I never owned one. I had a PS2. I loved my PS2—it had a lot of great games. I had Nintendo 64. I sold the 32X, Sega CD, Genesis and all my games to buy a used Nintendo 64 and Mario Kart. I eventually started buying other games. I would play Mario 64 on the demo kiosk at Sears. I did play a shitload of video games, but they were not as significant in my life as movies and music. For me, growing up... I liked playing video games, but music was huge for me. Music was more of an artistic influential thing. It was my number one, and movies—especially horror movies—were number two. Then games.

I was alone all the time, so I got into whatever I wanted. I was walking the railroad tracks when I was seven or eight years old for porn. There was an adult bookstore called Frenchy’s, probably 10 blocks from my house growing up. People would buy stuff there and rub one out on the tracks and leave their material there. I remember some of the first boobs I saw were stuck together and had to be pulled apart to be seen.



So what music was an influence?
Edmund: Guns N' Roses and Nirvana. I dabbled a bit with Beach Boys and MC Hammer and a little C&C Music Factory. I remember really getting into R.E.M, Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses. I really like the grunge era. And yes, Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream is probably my favorite album of all time. That album was phenomenal.

Did you ever see any of your favorite bands in person? (Aside from Matthias’ band?)
Edmund: I could have. It’s one of my biggest regrets. My dad was a bouncer at a local club here in Santa Cruz, The Catalyst, which was a really big venue for rock bands in the ’90s. So my dad saw Nirvana, Pearl Jam... he used to get me autographs, but I was always too scared to go because I was only 12 or 13. The whole grunge scene was the opening into everything, and I dove deeper into weirder stuff like Butthole Surfers.

Nine Inch Nails?
Edmund: I appreciated the rich themes in Broken and The Downward Spiral; those are things I always strive for in a video game. That sort of rich theme that flows throughout the game that tells a story.

The one thing that makes me different is that I want the experience to be more like a song. At the surface it feels more open to interpretation, but it’s more about setting a tone. You set this tone, you say a few words, you throw down a few images, you’re painting this abstract picture that doesn’t necessarily tell a story, but it evokes a feeling or experience. That has more value than traditional storytelling to me. I feel like I learn more about that through music than traditional media and the way video games do it.

It’s very clear with the new Repentance music that it’s going to lend a very specific feel for the game.
Edmund: I’m super happy with everything, it’s crazy. When it comes to most tracks, I’m the only person to check it out and I’m very critical. But with this game, I feel a responsibility to check with Vinh. If it’s something for one of the alt areas, I want to make sure it’s to his liking. But we’re very much of the same taste.

How would you describe his understanding of music?
Edmund: It’s always a little surprising to me. Usually, most programmers I’ve worked with don’t care about the other disciplines, but he ventures into each one of these things, so he has an opinion about stuff and he has feedback, which is always helpful. The only way to get better is to have someone I can bounce ideas off of and make sure I’m not being lazy. My laziness and Vinh’s perfectionism balance each other out.

You’ve worked with us for a long time. What are the differences you see in young programmer/designers like Adrian, Tyler and Vinh?
Edmund: Tyler and Vinh are similar. Tyler is obviously a very skilled programmer. He’s making his own engine, he’s also a designer... but he’s not an artist, so he doesn’t have an opinion on that. Those are his allocated stats.



You and Tyler went with a remaking of famous classical songs for The End is Nigh soundtrack.
Edmund: Tyler researched the songs and chose the majority of the music.

My wife loves the soundtrack. That soundtrack is fantastic; we’re going to produce the audio CD and vinyl next year for The End is Nigh. But the whole game is fantastic. The game as an experience stands as one of my favorite games of all time, all these amazing things together. It’s such a great game.
Edmund: Well, thank you. I agree, and I don’t always agree with people’s opinions about my games. Every year around the anniversary of a game I release, I’ll play it again and see how it stands up and what I would have done differently. And The End is Nigh is one that I enjoy every time I play it. It feels like a game I didn’t make, but one I’m enjoying. I get why it’s not for everyone because it’s difficult, but it’s definitely my best work and the most cohesive, even though development was difficult because of where I was mentally and emotionally. It really flowed out, it felt effortless. It was a difficult but rewarding experience. I learned a lot about myself in the process. I’m glad it got made.

Are you able to separate the game and work from the difficulty in your life, then?
Edmund: It does feel like it’s not part of me. Usually it feels like it’s removed from me when something comes out. When I’m playing it, I don’t think about the development and what it means; I’m playing the game and I experience the game from a player’s perspective.

You’ve spoken about messages you’ve received from fans about how your games have helped them get through difficult times in their lives. Are there any games or experiences that did that for you?
Edmund: I remember playing Pokémon Blue when I was having problems. Playing Game Boy games when I was a kid while driving from Santa Cruz all the way up north to the McMillen house. I knew I wasn’t going to have a good time and it was going to be awful, and I was going to escape the awkward conversations and I was going to feel like an outcast. I was able to escape the drive there and back. To have my Game Boy when I was younger, and even older... to have it around when I had terrible stomach pains was a lifesaver for sure.

Isaac is semi-autobiographical and you put some of that into Repentance and other parts of Isaac.
Edmund: I think by far Isaac is closest to an autobiography and most direct. And the more time that passes, the more it feels like that. In a lot of ways, since you get to see all the spoilers and secrets, having had a daughter who is now the same age I was when my parents got divorced, I feel like I’m able to say more, and have a better perspective on situations. It was more appropriate for me to be able to speak to the relationship between Isaac and his mother, and between his mother and Isaac’s father.

Does your family know your relationship with Isaac?
Edmund: I don’t think so. They don’t play video games. But I know my dad knows the game’s theme is religious, and he appreciates that it’s religious. He installed it on some of the computers at his church. I remember telling him it’s kind of critical of religion, though. To him it’s OK, by the book.

Initially, Isaac was definitely me talking about how I struggled with religion growing up: what I believed, what worked for me, what didn’t, and the influence it had over me creatively... and in general, still to this day. As time passed, it became more of a personal thing about how I felt as a kid. Now it’s become more like talking about a poor family, a broken home and what happens to a creative kid who already feels like an outcast in a family that falls apart... in a world that’s falling apart, with nothing to hold on to except religion, with the hope that something good might happen eventually.

We’ve seen people relate to it from a dark place, but other players are able to enjoy and experience Isaac in another way
Edmund: When The Binding of Isaac came out, reading the description, people wondered why anyone would want to play it. And it’s been almost 10 years, so some people don’t see the different references. They don’t see the naked child, the child abuse. It’s just a video game, it’s just Smash T.V., and that’s the magic of video games. Something becomes part of the streaming culture—which is cool, to get to that point—because it’s a fun time-waster, and they don’t even see the story, the theme, the content, the M rating, the stuff that goes off into some other territory.

How does that change with Repentance?
Edmund: It was already serious before, and it’ll strike a chord with players. We’re closing the book on this, and I want to close the book hard. It’s not going to feel like a significant ending to Isaac if we don’t close it hard. I feel like Repentance has closure. It feels neat.

Have you thought about Isaac 10 or 20 years from now, how it will affect players and designers?
Edmund: Maybe we’ll do an ultimate version for the consoles 10 years from now for the 20-year anniversary.

Is Peach a fan of your work?
Edmund: She knows I make games; when we were playing Spelunky, she thought I made it. When my nephew was really young, he thought that everyone’s uncle made games, because I knew everyone who made the games he was playing. He felt like it was a really small world. I was trying to be the cool uncle with my niece, when she was into Minecraft and I was telling her that I know Notch. And I told her, “I could totally have him give you a call or record a message for you.” She asked if I knew DiamondDan—he’s a streamer she likes.

I’m sure it’s like that with Isaac. There are probably kids who play Isaac and their entire life might be Isaac, and the parents might offer to get a hold of me and the kid just wants NorthernLion.

So we’re just about done with Repentance development, then it’s Mew-Genics after that. Does Mew-Genics take place in the Isaac universe?
Edmund: It definitely takes place in The End is Nigh universe. Everything I made takes place in the same universe. All the games I’ve made since Aether take place in the same universe, a cohesive universe.

Isaac has to take place before The End is Nigh. And Time FCUK
Edmund: Of course. Time FCUK doesn’t take place in time. And Time FCUK takes place in some abstract stasis. At the end of The End is Nigh, you see that Steven is time, he’s the man on the world who turns it to make the days pass. Steven is more of an abstract concept.



What are you really happy about in Repentance?
Edmund: As a fan of Isaac, going in to play it, the first thing that a fan will be pleased by will be the attention to detail. There’s a surprising amount of little details in the Flash version that were left out of the later versions. They seemed insignificant at the time, because there was so much you guys added to Rebirth and it seemed great to me. We went back through and spent four months updating the game with tiny little details. I’ll say that all the old stuff is in. Fans will remember these things that haven’t been in the game for a long time. And there will be a shitload of new stuff that’s akin to that.

There’s a ____ _____ ____ that’s in ___ ____ and it’s ______ ____ _. You have a _____ of ____ and it’s _____ across_ and it’s _____ and _________ and doesn’t ____, but it’s one of those _____ things _____ that will _____. It’s one of those little things. That happened a lot in the Flash version. I think with Repentance, superfans will really feel that the world is even more alive. And little things that creep up on people, or really rare stuff that creates this illusion that the game goes infinite.

When I play Repentance, it feels like a new game.
Edmund: Have you played ____ __ _____? It changes the game.

To me, Greed was revolutionary, but now it feels like a bonus mini-game compared to Repentance.
Edmund: Now, yes, I would agree. It feels like a mini-game within the game. People won’t expect what’s coming with Repentance.

I was going over parts of the game with the guys, and they’re going through and adding what you and I like before we even ask. It goes back to your point about working with fans.
Edmund: I know what players expect, but they don’t expect what’s coming. It’s insane. I can guarantee that, and no one expects the amount of story and theme that will go to close. There’s a lot more going on.

Players are expecting the expected, but Repentance is really The Binding of Isaac 1.9. It’s as close to a sequel as we can get.
Edmund: I was going to say, this could be Isaac II. With Repentance, I think players will shit and realize what is going on and realize how much there is to do. There are players who have the three million percent.

There are players who have three million across multiple platforms!
Edmund: The thing is, I want people to know that ______ _____. We don’t not want to ____ ___, but when the time comes soon, when we do a release trailer we’re going to ____ ____.

We can post that when we get closer to release here. Players still send us screen shots and it’s in thousands of hours, and they’re going to double and triple that.
Edmund: [NOTE: Edmund gave a really good answer here and I had to redact the whole thing. I’m sorry. This will go in a dev post later.]

That’s it for now! We’ll be back with more info on 2020’s best game of the year. You’ve been patient with us and it’ll totally be worth it. We’re saving a lot of the best content for you to discover. x0x0

(NOTE: We have not confirmed the year, month, date and hour of the best game of the year. If you didn't already figure, the GOTY 2020 was lighthearted hyperbole. more xoxo)

You know Edmund, you play his games, you’ve read his interviews. Like other members of the Isaac team, we wanted to give you an even deeper insight into who he is and what made him the game designer, husband and father he is today.

There’s a lot to go over with Edmund, and I want you to enjoy every answer, anecdote and story he has to tell, so we’re breaking this one into a multi-part interview, covering a lot of his past, his upbringing and his origin as an artist and game designer.

This is just the entry into the interview. I hope you enjoy it, please be sure to talk about it and discuss. And if you have questions for him, HMU on Twitter or just go directly to Edmund’s Twitter.

Let’s get started...

What’s your name?
Edmund: Edmund McMillen.

How do we know that’s your real name?
Edmund: You don’t; you could be fabricating this whole interview.

I didn’t think of that. But this interview is real. Start the beginning for us.
Edmund: I was born in Santa Clara. Just about 20 minutes from Santa Cruz.



Tell us about your family.
Edmund: My parents were together until I was five. [My dad] is a preacher. I have a relationship with him. It’s gotten better in recent years. We have a respectful relationship where he doesn’t push anything on me and I’m not critical of him. We both live our lives and check in on each other once or twice a year. I send him pictures of my kids and ask him what he’s doing. It’s nice. We had a difficult relationship when I was younger, but it’s become a mutually respectful, adult relationship as of the last seven or eight years.



Is your mom religious, too?
Edmund: My mom grew up Catholic, but I would say she’s not very religious anymore. But my grandma was super religious, very Catholic.

Your Grandma Rodriguez, I love her last name.
Edmund: [Laughs]

To make Isaac you must have had some understanding of the subject matter. Where did that come from?
Edmund: Grandma. I had seven years of catechism. I stopped at confirmation. That was the year that I told my mom in the drive-thru at Burger King that I wasn’t sure that I believed in God and I felt it was disrespectful to continue to go to catechism when I didn’t really believe what they were telling me.

How did she take it?
Edmund: Very badly. She cried before I got to order my Whopper.



Did you stop going to catechism?
Edmund: I think right after that I said I wasn’t going to do it. She had a fit about it for a bit, but then eventually warmed up enough for her to stop bothering me about it and didn’t force me into it. It’s one of the few things I put my foot down about when I was younger and said, “I think I’m old enough to say I don’t want to do this anymore.” I stopped going.

I also did a summer of Catholic school. That was terrible. That was back when the nuns would hit you and stuff...

[Peach enters the room. Edmund and Peach proceed to negotiate. Peach wins.]



You started your art very early.
Edmund: I think by kindergarten people started saying I was good, so I wanted to do it more.

Some of the fans who are reading this, they may not know about “the talk.” It involved a teacher expressing concern to your parents regarding your art. When was “the talk”?
Edmund: Third grade. I just relived it recently because I’ve been taking Peach to that playground. Since school is closed, it’s the safest park. Most of everything is exactly the same. And I walked by the place.

Her name was Miss [Redacted] [not actually her name]. It was her first year of teaching. She had the most hellish boys in the class—there were some rough ones. For whatever reason she really hated me and had it out for me. She had multiple meetings with my parents and tried to convince them that I was completely disturbed and I needed to be mentally evaluated because something was wrong with me. To the point where they gave in; they had me evaluated. They also had me tested, [and it] turned out I did [have something wrong]. I found out I had dyslexia, because some red flags went up for certain questions.

[So the] tests come back. I’m not disturbed, I have dyslexia, but it turns out I’m actually really smart, which angered her. She’s totally convinced something’s wrong with me, that I shouldn’t be in the class. She just hated me; I don’t know what it was, but she had it out for me.

After that happened we’d always play kickball. It was the last part of the class, but for some reason I really wasn’t into it. I remember I was a big fan of red rover. The year before that, we’d get to do that quite often. I was trying to plead my case and get her to alternate between the two games. Something other than kickball. Then she started mocking me in front of a group of girls: “I don’t want to play kickball!” [Note: Edmund does the best whiney shrill voice at this moment.] I was so pissed. I got so pissed and I yelled at her, “YOU SHADDUP!”

Instantly she turned red and looked evil. She grabbed me by my arm and she dug her nails into my arm. She slammed me up against the wall while these girls are watching and yells in my ear, “DON’T YOU EVER DARE TALK TO ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!” And then she pushed me, walked away, then I split—I left school. I just made a beeline to the exit and waited where I knew my mom would come to pick me up. I showed my mom, I was bleeding from where the teacher had ripped me open. They had to call the authorities and the lady was fired.

The first part of your story sounds like a scene from an Adam Sandler or Seth Rogen movie, but then it turned into a Stephen King story.
Edmund: She was a horrible woman; she was totally, totally gone. She was young. When I was little she looked old to me, but my mom always referred to her as young.



That’s an easy way to make a child permanently dislike school…
Edmund: For whatever reason, I had teachers who either hated my guts or really liked me. It was love ’im or hate ’im.

Fifth grade was the first time a teacher was super encouraging, but the bad thing is there’s a chance he may have been a pedophile. Because in hindsight there’s some weird stuff. He would get the kids to run faster by goosing [them]. But he was the nicest guy in the world! He was an artist himself and super encouraging. We’d listen to music together like REM and Queen. He brought an NES and let all the kids play an NES. The more I think about it…

Was this before or after the candy?
Edmund: Looking back it was weird, but the other boys... later in life they would ask if I got invited to sleepovers at his house and laughed. This was like the coolest guy in the world, one of my heroes, but maybe he was just grooming me. But he liked my work and was very encouraging with my art. He was really into Mad Magazine and let me borrow them. Inside was a very graphic R. Crumb comic.

…I had a good teacher in second grade, though, a Japanese dude. I was very hyperactive and couldn’t control myself. I can’t remember what I was doing, but I wasn’t doing the right thing. I was always bored, always doing something in my head. Maybe talking to myself or singing like Peach does.

He was the first person to come up with a weird game plan, but it was so simple and worked so well.

Each quarter of the year, you could go to the principal’s office five times and if you went more than that you’d get suspended. And I always went five times and stopped. I got five times really early when I met this guy. I remember throwing some kid’s backpack down a hill and breaking his glasses, before he and I became friends.

So this teacher put me on this thing where he’d write me a note at the end of the day, “Edmund had a good day” with a stamp on it and I could show that to my mom. That was it. Simple. I wanted to collect as many slips as I could. And I remember my mom and Grandma would try to come up with, “If you get [this many] slips you can get something.” But I remember that didn’t really matter, because I just wanted the stamps on the strips of paper. I still have a bunch of those.

So then you get into middle school?
Edmund: Sixth, seventh, eighth I went to New Brighton Middle School. I had hit puberty. I was only kind of bad my freshman year there, sixth grade. I was in the principal’s office a lot. At the end of that summer of sixth grade, I hit puberty and mellowed out and I wasn’t hyper and insane anymore. I was more depressed and reserved.

By the end of middle school and nearing high school, you must have been getting quite good at drawing. If you were like me, you were probably just drawing as much as you could. Did you find you were drawing more than studying at this point?
Edmund: Oh, of course. I would find any excuse to draw instead of doing reports.

By middle school and high school I really started to feel around and [ask] what do I have to do to draw? Like, what’s the minimum amount of work I have to do? I found out early on you didn’t have to do more than Intro to Algebra to pass. So you can throw the math away. You only have to do two years of art, but if you ask the teacher they can set you up as a miscellaneous elective and you can continue to do art.

A lot of teachers would meet me halfway. I was the kid who was always bargaining: “Can I do this instead of that?” “What are my options?” “Give me some wiggle room with this.” I asked, “What options do I have?” and he asked “What do you want to do?” I asked him if he’d give me credit for making a comic every quarter. Then I’d hand him a complete comic every quarter and he’d give me an A. I did that all the way until the end. I barely had any classes other than art classes my senior year.

What comics were you reading from junior high through high school?
Edmund: The Maxx. I went through a phase of obsessively buying Image Comics like Spawn and The Maxx and a few others. Me and my cousins were into collecting Nirvana B-sides and then Image Comics first editions. I was more into collecting them more than reading them and the only comic that ever really spoke to me was The Maxx.



As an artist, what did you think of artists like Todd McFarlane? What do you think about them now?
Edmund: I still think the same as I did back then: It looks insane. I love the detail, the detailed work he does. I was also really into Lobo. Keith Giffen was the writer and he started drawing and did a series called Trencher which was like Lobo but a different character. I loved his art style a lot. And Simon Bisley was one of the original awesome artists for Lobo. I fuckin’ loved it; the Lobo’s Back series and Lobo: Infanticide, by Giffen. I loved anything I felt maybe I shouldn’t be reading. I was exposed to R. Crumb at way too early an age. So I got a taste for the forbidden fruit, I guess.

Looking back now, do you think being exposed to artists like R. Crumb and other risque art had an influence on some of your design such as your R-rated game?
Edmund: I’d say so. For me to like something, there always has to be impact. There has to be some sort of danger. If you look at a lot of Disney movies, they do a lot of fucked-up shit, [like] killing the mother. There has to be some darkness to pull people in. It’s that kind of darkness that I feel I was obsessed with when I was young—the unknown, dark, weird things, and I wanted to know why. In high school I was really into getting all the Faces of Death I could find.

On VHS, of course.
Edmund: Of course!
[Note: Kids, VHS is like YouTube but inside a black cassette.]

That’s all folks! Well, it’s not all, but in the next part of our interview with Ed we’ll talk about what happened after high school—how he went from making tiny games to becoming the creator of hugely impactful games like Meat Boy, Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, and starring in your favorite Netflix movie.