Mewgenics might be the hottest Edmund McMillen roguelike in town, but stone cold classic The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is no worse off. In fact, more abandoned children are fending off malformed horrors in their mother's basement than ever—the game reached a new all-time concurrent player count peak on Steam today.

The new big number is a whopping 123,429. It's simmered down a bit as I write this, but it's still comfortably in six figures territory. Not bad for a game that first released in 2014, effectively supplanting the Flash original.

Even as the roguelike scene has continued to boom over the last decade, Isaac remains right around the top of the pile with heavy hitters like Slay the Spire, Balatro, and, well, Rogue.

Mods probably have something to do with it, as they helped the game bloom into all sorts of new forms once the Let's Play and Twitch streamer circuits drew countless eyes to it. But the game itself is no slouch, arguably remaining one of the most essential in its genre.

PC Gamer's Chris Thursten gave the 2011 version an 83% in his review, saying it'll "draw you in and spit you out without a second thought." Players simply refuse to be spit out, trapped in an endless cycle of punishment and rebirth not unlike Isaac's relationship to Christianity.

Notably, that new peak The Binding of Isaac just reached is a dash higher than Mewgenics's all-time peak, right around 115,000. Isaac is certainly being helped along by its long-held reputation, as well as the Steam summer sale, which currently has the game going for just $1.49—the steepest discount in the game's history.

That's Rebirth, keep in mind… the original Flash-based game is more expensive by about 5 cents just in case you want to pay more to get less. That's very in these days.

I had a pleasant surprise recently when I noticed that my purchase of the hit song Eatin Rats! came bundled with a massive tactical roguelike named Mewgenics. It's pretty good! A tiny bit like XCOM but instead of an alien mothership you're defending against the sentient contents of Edmund McMillen's litterbox. It's also massive.

According to the wiki, there are over 1000 abilities for your mutant mogs to try out. Even just the few dozen I've seen so far are all joyously grotty or absurd, and each is carefully crafted to play off against a bunch of the others for some neat synergies. That's apparently not nearly enough however. Creators McMillen and Tyler Glaiel are adding 300 more of them, plus four new classes. Also, this is the "small" DLC. The big one's coming later (via PCGN).

Answering a slew of fan questions on X yesterday, McMillen was asked by one player when Mewgenics would get its first major balance patch, and what the planned scope of the first DLC was. The patch is coming "soonish", he says. As for the DLC, it'll be "small but substantial enough to make many happy. Four new classes (300+ new abilities), tons of unlocks and more things to do". Responding to another question, McMillen clarified there will be "at least 2 DLCs, one small first then larger one".

Putting aside my own enjoyment of how subtly distinct the phrase "please many" is from the sort of faux-enthusiastic marketing speak that tends to accompany such announcements: are you getting enough sleep, mates? Considering that every one of these abilities has to be tested in case some rogue synergy ends up breaking things, Glaiel's estimate (via PCGN) that we can expect the DLC by the "end of next year maybe" sounds like the pair are pulling some serious double shifts.

Elsewhere in the impromptu AMA, McMillen says he has "no hard plans outside of fluffing up Mewgenics for the next few years," and "maybe [a Binding of Isaac] update". Sounds like there's still a tonne to come for a game that Robin Valentine already called "an unbelievably dense tapestry for such a silly idea" in his Mewgenics review. "If you've been thinking about forming a deeply unhealthy relationship with a videogame in 2026, Mewgenics is for you."

The End is Nigh is effectively an unofficial sequel to Super Meat Boy: it's a reflex-oriented platformer with quick deaths, quick respawns and very dark humour. Protagonist Ash "flops his way through a future of pain and suffering" in search of a friend whose body parts are spread around a spike-filled hellscape. Collectibles are tumours.

I think The End is Nigh is better than Super Meat Boy, and while that might be controversial for some, I doubt anyone would argue it's not better than Super Meat Boy Forever, an autorunner primarily designed for phones. The cartoon darkness of The End is Nigh is more appealing than Meat Boy's referential, jokey presentation, and I think the level design is more interesting too.

For some reason The End is Nigh got nowhere near as much love as Super Meat Boy, probably because it's not called Super Meat Boy 2 (Edmund McMillen split from Team Meat in 2017 and didn't work on Super Meat Boy Forever). I guess it's true that it doesn't do a whole lot to differentiate itself from its predecessor beyond the darker atmosphere: there are still retro-themed cartridges to collect, and player ghosts still exist to remind you of every aborted attempt at a level. On the other hand it's far less linear, with some light metroidvania trappings.

It's definitely a game made by the creator of The Binding Of Isaac. More specifically, this is the first game McMillen made with Tyler Glaiel, the other half of the duo responsible for Mewgenics. I think it's pretty obvious when you compare the two.

If you haven't tried it, now's definitely the time: The End is Nigh is $3.74 on Steam at the moment. I'd highly recommend you do, because it's one of the best action platformers I've played, and the presentation can be genuinely, oddly moving at times. It also features Steam Workshop support, so if you do 100% it (and few will), there's always new community-made stuff to play.

That sure didn't take long: Just one week after release, the bizarre cat-breeding simulator Mewgenics has surpassed one million copies sold.

Word of the major milestone came from Mewgenics co-creator Tyler Glaiel on X, who posted a simple, to-the-point message that was apparently created by fan artist Whom:

The message was later retweeted by Mewgenics' other co-creator, Edmund McMillen.

"Some fun stats," Glaiel wrote in a follow-up post. "Mew had ~400k wishlists before reviews came out. Shot up to ~600k after reviews / before release. For those saying its success was expected based on pedigree, week 1 sales for games are usually a fraction of wishlists. So we both got a bit blindsided by this haha.

"I am very glad you all enjoy it."

Players do indeed seem to enjoy it. Despite some controversy surrounding some of the Mewgenics voice cast, the game has put up enviable concurrent player numbers on Steam, peaking at more than 115,000 and currently sitting at over 96,500—not bad at all for a Tuesday afternoon.

That audience will presumably continue to expand, as Glaiel said simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian language support are in the works, and more might be on the way. McMillen also said over the weekend that console versions of Mewgenics are in development, and DLC is also coming, although that's going to be a ways out.

Patches are also on the way, although Glaiel advised players to temper their early expectations. "I caught a cold in the wake of the release so I'm taking it a bit easy," he wrote. "First patch will be mostly minor bugfixes + some easy little things that are unlikely to cause other issues. Expected towards the end of the week now.

"First patch will not include any significant balance changes. There are one or two things I have on notice for future patches (enjoy Merciless infinites while you can), but for the most part we aren't super interested in doing any sweeping balance passes outside of DLC."

Mewgenics, the cat-breeding roguelite from Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen and co-creator Tyler Glaiel, has some uncanny meow sounds. That's because they're actually just humans saying "meow," not cats, which is probably for the best given what happens to all the poor kitties in the game. There's a long list of cameo performances from various internet personalities, and some of them have become controversial figures since their inclusion in the game.

As reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Ethan Klein and Hila Klein of h3h3Productions both provide meows, angering some commenters over on ResetEra due to their adamant support of Israel—Hila served in the Israel Defense Force, and Ethan is embroiled in public feuds over the issue. "It's a shame that the game has zionist creators," wrote one person on the forum.

"When we added most of the people on the list it was ages ago, like Ethan was included a good four years back," McMillen tells RPS. Also on the list is The Game Awards stage invader Matan Even, who has appeared on a number of podcasts. "I didn't [realise] Matan was controversial, I mean a lot of these people are characters doing bits."

"I wanted the game to feature a huge array of iconic voices I've been hearing echoing across the internet for most of my time making games," McMillen says. "As some probably noticed I was all over the place when it came to cameos and did my best to include and keep ones that clashed or kinda counterbalanced each other."

McMillen adds that "the inclusion of Ethan and Hila was counterbalanced by iDubbz and Anisa," two creators RPS notes have been supportive of Palestine. Ethan and iDubbz have been publicly feuding, so McMillen "made sure to contact both to make sure they were ok with the others' involvement so it didn't feel like a weird gotcha on release. They were both very adult about it and said they had no issue with the other being added and I really respected that."

McMillen doesn't seem too bothered by the criticism. "I understand we live in a time where a meow from someone who has different beliefs as you is scary and frustrating, confusing and controversial," he says, "but it felt interesting so I decided to explore it. Also, I should probably point out that I don't share the same opinions as, well probably any of the people we included, if I only included people who share the same exact opinions as me, I'd be the only one meowing in the game."

The developer added that he doubts people who would be put off by a "problematic meow" would enjoy Mewgenics in the first place. For those who do want to play the game but find one or more of the inclusions upsetting, McMillen suggests making the most of the cat army's disposability.

"Honestly the thing that bothers me the most about all this is, if a cat appears with the voice of someone you hate... you can literally throw it in the trash… or worse," he says. "People need to get more creative with their hate!"

You can check out the full list of meow cameos over on Moby Games. It contains a wide swathe of recognisable names, so there are bound to be some you have strong feelings about one way or another.

Mr. Resetti is one of gaming's most infamous characters, mostly because he's a bit of a meta jumpscare—if you quit without saving properly in Animal Crossing, he'll pop out of the ground to berate you like the Lorax. Turns out Mewgenics, our most recent roguelike obsession from the Binding of Isaac guys, has its very own version.

As explained here by YouTuber SlayXc2, Steven, who pops up if you quit without saving, has the same temper as the classic angry moleman with a hell of a lot less of that Nintendo-brand, kid-friendly restraint. He's also named after a boss that can appear in the Binding of Isaac with the same design, so—hey, at least he's a cool cameo while he's dishing out threats.

"Oh hey! It's me! Steven! You may know me from such games as Time Fcuk, The End is Nigh or The Binding of Isaac! But from here on out you're probably going to remember me as that Mr. Resetti guy.

"Yeah, I'm here because I can see you are fcuking with the game save. Or maybe you just 'accidentally' exited during combat. Suuuure. Sadly there are consequences to messing with fate… and I'm here to dish them out."

Then he just starts going in on you: "Maybe I'll burn your house down, OR KILL YOUR PARENTS!!! No, seriously, I dish out IRL curses. Like those ones where someone calls you at 3am, then Bloody Mary comes out of the mirror and kills you! It's like that, but worse, because this is REAL real!"

Steven, to be fair, lays out his terms fairly—each run you get one "oopsie do-over", in case there's a power cut or something. But "after that, the gloves are off and I just start coming through the monitor making a brain slushie. Understood?!"

In actuality, as SlayXc2 (who has a remarkably un-slushied brain for someone who tested this) just had their cats cursed with Deja Vu. Steven's punishment has four phases: First, the initial freebie threat mentioned above. Then, Steven will curse one of your cats with the Deja Vu disorder.

Quit without saving again, and he'll do it to everybody while having an understandable crashout: "YOU CAN'T WIN LIKE THIS! YOU'RE SICK, YOU KNOW THAT?" Betray Steven one last time, and he'll tear away control from you entirely. "Aaand you're done! Hand over the controller! You're being cut off! It's Steven's turn!"

This gives all of your cats "Severe Deja Vu", which gives Steven control over your cats in battles, with little regard for their safety. Which, given the alternative of getting Bloody Mary'd at 3 am? I feel like we got off pretty lightly. It's a good thing, too, given Mewgenics is one of the best roguelikes in recent memory—with our own Robin Valentine giving it a whopping 92 in his Mewgenics review.

Mewgenics, the cat-breeding brawler from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, is a big game. Senior editor Robin Valentine wrote in his review (92%, by the way) that "after three weeks and over 100 hours of Mewgenics taking over my personal life, it's still surprising me every run." In case that's not sufficiently convincing, McMillen himself said it will take most players more than 200 hours to "beat the game," and more than 500 hours to see and do it all.

That's a whole lotta playtime, enough to keep most people going for weeks, and probably months. So naturally, McMillen and Glaiel are thinking that what it really needs is more.

"I assume we will start on DLC in a few months after seeing what people like and want to see more of," McMillen wrote about possible new content in today's AMA. "We have a rough idea of something small, like a few more classes and more areas etc., but don't wanna start on it till we fully understand what people really like about the game.

"I assume it will take a year from when we start to release a DLC. .. maybe?"

Comment from r/SteamDeck

That should give Mewgenics players enough time to get through the base content, but it's also worth keeping in mind that this time frame is even less carved-in-stone than these things usually are. As PC Gamer's Shaun Prescott once wrote, McMillen—when he was still a part of Team Meat—"has a habit of announcing cool stuff and taking aaaages to release it." Ironically, Shaun wrote that in 2015, and yeah, it was a reference to Mewgenics, which had been announced three years prior.

McMillen himself said when work on Mewgenics resumed in 2018 that it was probably "a few years" away: For those of you without a calculator handy, that was eight years ago.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. As Shaun wrote (in 2015), the long waits are worth it because the games are always so good. And it's great that Mewgenics is getting DLC, because it really is such a great game. But at this point, I think the smart move is to be happy it's coming, and don't set any reminders for 2027.

The path to Mewgenics was a long one. It was revealed in 2012—yes, that's 14 years ago—and then delayed, and then cancelled outright. In 2018 Edmund McMillen announced that work had resumed, but instead of working with Team Meat partner Tommy Refenes, he was collaborating with Tyler Glaiel. A bit after that he warned that Mewgenics was still "a few years" away, and, well, eight years later, here we are.

Despite that long haul (or, maybe more likely, because of it), McMillen said in a new AMA on Reddit that finally getting Mewgenics out the door after all these years was a real moment of triumph—and one he never doubted.

"When the game was canceled I was crushed, but what could I do?" he wrote. "I can't force someone to enjoy working on a project only I was excited about. Not being able to work on something like that, something I believed in so much was quite depressing and probably one of the bigger reasons I decided to move on from [Team Meat]."

"It feels amazing to not only be able to work on/finish the project with Tyler, but it also feels like a 'SEE I TOLD YOU SO!' I knew this game would eventually see the light of day, and I knew it would be my best work. I just felt that deep for so long."

Mewgenics didn't take 14 years of work to create, to be clear: McMillen just seems to be perhaps a bit easily distracted. Mewgenics was put on hold not long after it was announced so Team Meat could focus on Super Meat Boy Forever instead; numerous other projects of various sizes followed, including Fingered, the Afterbirth DLC for Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, The End is Nigh, and The Legend of Bum-bo.

It wasn't until 2025 that McMillen and Glaiel appeared to really get on the gas, dropping one of the most bizarre live-action promotional trailers I've ever seen—and I've seen a lot of 'em.

Anyway, McMillen's belief and commitment to Mewgenics is validated by the fact that it was an immediate hit: More than 65,000 concurrent players on Steam as I write this, an "overwhelmingly positive" user rating, and more than 250,000 copies sold in less than 12 hours after release. That number will no doubt continue to go up: Mewgenics currently remains in the number one spot on Steam's top sellers list.

Mewgenics is a hit. The cat breeding tactics game from Edmund McMillen, creator of Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac, and Tyler Glaiel released on Steam today and instantly shot up the charts. It's the number one global top seller on Steam, beating out Counter-Strike 2, PUGB, Helldivers 2, and Arc Raiders.

Or put another way: "We have made back our development budget after 3 hours. Thank you all :)" Glaiel wrote on Bluesky today.

Not bad for a $30 indie game that looks like it could've fallen out of Newgrounds' couch cushions. Our own Robin Valentine loved it, calling it a "sprawling, ridiculous, and endlessly surprising roguelike that will drag your body and soul into its chaotic world" in his 92% Mewgenics review.

For as hotly anticipated as Mewgenics was among ball knowers, its warm welcome wasn't always a certainty. First announced an unbelievable 14 years ago, back when McMillen was still flying the Team Meat flag, Mewgenics was once a very different sort of game with Pokémon-like combat. That version was eventually cancelled, Team Meat broke up, and Mewgenics became the stuff of development hell legend. The project was only picked back up by McMillen in 2018, who teamed up with Glaiel and committed to a turn-based combat format in 2020.

and we have made back our development budget after 3 hours. Thank you all :)

— @tylerglaiel.com (@tylerglaiel.com.bsky.social) 2026-02-10T20:05:48.692Z

Even if the final incarnation of Mewgenics only goes back six years, it's the sort of game that's so expansive and surprising that you'd believe someone's been plugging away at it since the first Obama administration. No two runs are the same, which is a thing devs like to say about their roguelikes, but only occasionally holds up to scrutiny. With hundreds of items, abilities, synergies, mutations, and secrets to find, Mewgenics is truly a special one.

McMillen, ever the chill dude he is, is enjoying Mewgenics launch day by watching people play Mewgenics.

"Thanks everyone :) Hope you are enjoying what we made. Gunna watch you guys play it all day."

By the time I came to post my Mewgenics review, I had over 100 hours logged in the game—and I knew I still wasn't completely done. Now, at about 115, I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to finishing off the main questline, but apparently I've still got a long, long way to go before I hit 100%.

According to creator Edmund McMillen, speaking in an AMA on the Steam Deck subreddit, "It will take an average player about 200+ hours to 'beat the game' and 500+ hours to 100%". Hoo boy.

What exactly he means by "beat" here I'm not sure. Based on where I am right now I don't think it'll take me another 85 hours to hit what seems to me to be the end of the final quest. But the game does essentially have a new game+ type feature, where you can replay levels and bosses on a harder difficulty—if he sees clearing all of that as part of beating it, then 200+ hours does start to seem more likely.

Of course it is also possible someone could progress a lot slower than myself. I won't make claims of being an elite gamer or anything, but I did pretty much live and breathe Mewgenics for about three weeks solid—a rather more intense run through than the average person is likely to have. With longer gaps between runs you may not learn the game's quirks as quickly and ultimately have more failed runs to slow you down.

Regardless, 500+ hours to 100% is the more intriguing part to me. For perspective, at 115 hours played, I'm currently at 83% completion, according to the save screen. Is that last 17% really going to take almost another 400 hours?!

Some of what he's referring to is obvious, at least—for example, beating every level on both difficulties with every class to get all of their unlocks, that will take a while. But I suspect there must be some seriously hidden secrets beyond that to account for all that playtime he's predicting, and the fact that I've still got over 100 hidden achievements yet to unlock is certainly intriguing.

One thing that might play a big part is "cryptid cats". These are certain special cats that can appear at your house, like shinies in Pokémon—but they're so ultra-rare that across the whole community of game reviewers and content creators playing Mewgenics in the run up to launch, I'm only aware of one person who found one. If there are achievements or progression elements tied to finding those, that could definitely take a while.

Whatever the truth behind those numbers is, I can certainly believe there are deeper, weirder things buried in Mewgenics that I haven't even scratched the surface of yet. What I know for certain is that it's an absolutely huge and wonderfully layered game, and after 115 hours and my review completed and filed, I'm still just as obsessed as ever. I can't wait to see what the wider community ends up discovering once it's finally set loose on the general public later today.

Never mind the haunting yowl in the distance, that's just the Mewgenics release date looming behind you. The freaky cat turn-based tactics game from Edmund McMillen (The Binding of Isaac) and Tyler Glaiel (The End Is Nigh) is about to launch for you to breed and battle increasingly cursed cats.

When is the Mewgenics release time?

In an AMA on Reddit, co-developer Tyler Glaiel said that Mewgenics will launch around 9 am Pacific on Tuesday, February 10, adding: "but who knows maybe I'll wake up earlier." According to its Steam store page, Mewgenics "plans to unlock" at 8 am PST, which is just an hour earlier than Glaiel's projection. I'll err on the side of the earlier time here just in case. Here's when Mewgenics launches in other time zones, based on the Steam estimate:

• 8 am PST (Los Angeles)
• 11 am EST (New York)
• 4 pm GMT (London)
• 5 pm CEST (Berlin)
• 3 am, February 11 AEDT (Sydney)
• 5 am, February 11 NZDT (Auckland)

If you're curious about Mewgenics but still undecided, our own Robin Valentine scored it a quite complimentary 92 in our Mewgenics review, calling it "a sprawling, ridiculous, and endlessly surprising roguelike that will drag you body and soul into its chaotic world."

"'Obsession' isn't a strong enough word to describe my last three weeks with this bizarre roguelike strategy game/cat breeding simulator," he also said. Sounds like a cat lover's dream.

After more than a decade in development, Mewgenics is almost upon us. It's a game about breeding bizarre cats and then pitting them against one another in turn-based combat, or at least, that's what it seems to be about: Tyler Wilde previewed it late last year and it seems a whole lot more complicated than I expected. I'm a bit worried it might take over my life.

Today co-creator Edmund McMillen provided yet more evidence that Mewgenics will have no mercy. He posted a screenshot on X confirming the game will launch with 280 achievements, which is a lot.

While there are plenty of games on Steam with more than 280 achievements, a lot of them are either a) games with a heap of post-launch updates that have added more achievements over time, or b) terrible achievement-farming shovelware. Some examples of the former include Team Fortress 2, which has 520 achievements, and Payday 2, which has a frankly ridiculous 1328. It's not a phenomenon exclusive to competitive shooters either: the cult traditional roguelike Tales of Maj'Eyal has 1782 achievements.

As GamesRadar points out, McMillen's previous game The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has accrued 641 achievements over 11 years since its launch. That's a game that can suck whole cumulative months from your life, and it was that way even before its three major expansions.

Mewgenics releases February 11 on Steam.

It won't surprise anyone who's followed his career that the next game from Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen contains some likely-to-be-controversial elements. Its title is Mewgenics, a play on "eugenics," so there's one right off the bat.

The idea for Mewgenics, which is about breeding successive generations of cats and sending them on adventures with turn-based battles, came first from the observation that it's kind of messed up that we selectively breed animals until we think they're cute or useful.

But Mewgenics also gets into the much thornier topic of human genetics and actual, non-mew eugenics by including human conditions like autism and dyslexia as things your cats can inherit. I recently spoke to McMillen and collaborator Tyler Glaiel about the game, and asked them what they intended by confronting players with the uncomfortable option to, for instance, not allow a cat with autism to mate.

McMillen says that he wants players to grapple with that question and come to the realization that, although such conditions have downsides, they are not just debuffs. Cats with autism, for instance, have some challenges others don't, but are exceptionally good at casting spells they're born with.

McMillen himself has dyslexia, and in Mewgenics, the condition swaps sixes/nines and fives/threes in damage numbers and ability costs. That could be very powerful, but it'll take some effort to make the most of it.

Primordial dwarfism is a very rare condition in Mewgenics, and cats born with it will be "teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny" and have reduced stats, but a huge amount of luck.

"So you got, like, the luckiest fucking cat imaginable, like off the charts lucky, and you can abuse the fuck out of that," McMillen said. "You can make that work for you in amazing, amazing ways. And we try to do that as much as possible, because I like the idea of somebody viewing something as a downside and just seeing the downside, but then being like, 'Wait a minute, I can make this work.' And then they make it work. And that's what this game is about: It's about making it work, what you're given. You've been given this hand, make it work."

Mewgenics may have started with the thought that cat breeding is pretty weird, but McMillen is now a father, and says the game is about "having kids, and legacy, and passing down genetic traits, and praying that whatever foundation you left there will be used in the future."

He says fans have been pitching him and Glaiel ideas for how to represent their own conditions in Mewgenics, excited by the opportunity to perhaps in some small way be understood through the lens of turn-based tactical cat combat.

If there were any doubt about their intentions, Glaiel told me that Mewgenics is "very much not a pro-eugenics game," laughing and pointing out that The Binding of Isaac is about child abuse, but is definitely not pro-child abuse.

More about Mewgenics' themes will be revealed in its story, Glaiel says, which I was surprised to hear he expects to take 200 hours for a novice player to complete. (He thinks he could speedrun it in about 50.)

Mewgenics is set to release February 10, 2026 on Steam. McMillen thinks it's his best game yet, and after a day talking with him and Glaiel and trying the game, I'm inclined to trust his judgment (although Super Meat Boy is a pretty high bar to vault in my book).

Isn't it a bit messed up that we selectively breed cats and dogs into asthmatic oddballs and then sell them to each other? I love cats, but, yeah, it is a bit messed up. That's basically what inspired Mewgenics, a game about breeding cats and sending them on adventures with turn-based combat. (So they're outdoor cats.)

The idea for Mewgenics has been around for a long time: It was once going to be Team Meat's follow-up to 2010's Super Meat Boy, but was shelved and designer Edmund McMillen went on to make hit roguelike The Binding of Isaac. He never lost interest in the cat game, though, and has now been working on it with frequent collaborator Tyler Glaiel for years.

They've ended up with something huge—200 hours huge, they say—and comically grotesque in all the ways you expect from McMillen, whose provocative games fixate on things like mutilation, disease, and decay. The title alone may raise some eyebrows with its play on "eugenics." McMillen thinks it's his best game yet.

Cat tactics

To pull one of PC Gamer's favorite terms out of the bag, Mewgenics is systems-driven to its core, with so many abilities, traits, items, enemy behaviors, hazards, and other effects at play that when I sat down at McMillen's desk to try it recently, I was rarely certain about what exactly would happen when I clicked something.

If you were helping someone learn to navigate Mewgenics' tactical cat battles, you'd be saying things like, "Well, that ability will blow that enemy over there and then he'll get harpooned on the next round, which'll make him bleed so that shark will attack him, but watch out because you'll also blow that fire onto one of your cats" and "If you use his charge attack he'll end up in the tall grass, which is good, unless there's a bear trap in there that you forgot about."

When I kept summoning a hitman who straight up shoots enemies (because of course I wanted to spam that ability), McMillen pointed out that I was spending money every time I did it, and so might not be able to buy anything when I got to the store.

The adventuring part of Mewgenics sees you navigate chains of battles, events, and boss fights as in games like FTL and Slay the Spire, and so battles involve meta considerations about the whole run, as well as your overall strategy for the whole game, which'll take multiple excursions to complete and also involves renovating your home and managing your cat legion.

Unintended consequences

As I repeatedly sent my cats careening into the deadly consequences of my decisions (they were on fire quite a bit more than cats like to be), I took some comfort in knowing that the designers themselves are frequently undermined by the unintended consequences of their ambition.

As one example, they made a certain enemy spawn frogs to represent pestilence, and flies to represent famine, but forgot that the frogs would use their first turn to eat all the flies, because frogs eat flies. Well, what can you do? Frogs eat flies.

The pair generally doesn't get rid of funny or overpowered interactions, unless they soft lock the game or really screw up a fight. In one instance, a bomb-throwing boss was completely thwarted by rain, which instantly extinguished the fuses on the bombs. They did change the boss' behavior in that instance, but didn't stop rain from extinguishing fuses, because it just should.

The theorycrafting seems primed to get out of hand the moment Mewgenics is released to the public next year. Cat abilities and spells come in multiple class flavors—fighter, necromancer, tank, etc—and the designers are confident they understand how all the abilities within a class work together (each has 50 actives and 25 passives), but players are going to mix-and-match. They're sure to find unexpected ways to stack status effects like poison and exploit environmental hazards.

I kept using a certain basic ability just for the heck of it, because it seemed delightfully useless: "Look At Me!" makes all of the enemies turn to face the cat that used it. But backstabbing is an automatic crit, so I figure there has to be some way to make tactical use of the ability. Mewgenics seems like the kind of game where a hypothesis like that could become a multi-evening fixation.

Difficult terrain

In the time since he had the idea for Mewgenics, McMillen has become a father and has realized that it isn't just about cat breeding, but also "having kids, and legacy, and passing down genetic traits, and praying that whatever foundation you left there will be used in the future."

When you aren't directing cat battles in the field, you'll be caring for your feline adventuring parties at home, decorating and renovating your house to suit their needs.

In a twist on the design of games like XCOM and Darkest Dungeon, cats can only be sent on one excursion before they retire from adventuring for good. That doesn't mean they're no longer needed, though: Your retired cats will defend your house from special bosses that show up as the story progresses, and most importantly, produce future generations of cat heroes. (Adoptable strays will also show up regularly.)

Kittens born to your amorous cats receive attacks, spells, and attributes from their parents, as well as various genetic conditions, including human ones like autism. That pushes Mewgenics into far riskier subjects than cat breeding: the personal decisions of individuals and couples regarding their genetics and children, and the concept of actual—not "mew"—eugenics.

Confronting players with uncomfortable subjects in an irreverent way is McMillen's MO—The Binding of Isaac investigates religion by way of child abuse in a roguelike shooter where your bullets are tears—but he doesn't do it without reason or reflection.

In Mewgenics, hereditary conditions aren't just debuffs. A cat with autism isn't great at everything, but is very good at casting spells it's born with. McMillen himself has dyslexia, and the condition has a clever effect in Mewgenics, swapping sixes/nines and fives/threes in damage numbers and ability costs—powerful in the right hands.

A very rare condition in Mewgenics is primordial dwarfism, which results in a "teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny cat that has very reduced stats"—except for luck, which is through the roof.

"So you got, like, the luckiest fucking cat imaginable, like off the charts lucky, and you can abuse the fuck out of that," McMillen told me. "You can make that work for you in amazing, amazing ways. And we try to do that as much as possible, because I like the idea of somebody viewing something as a downside and just seeing the downside, but then being like, 'Wait a minute, I can make this work.' And then they make it work. And that's what this game is about: It's about making it work, what you're given. You've been given this hand, make it work."

McMillen has been thinking about how to represent ADHD, which is also in his family, and says fans have been excitedly pitching ideas for how to include their own conditions. They like the challenge of representing their minds and bodies with game logic, and the idea that they might in some small way be understood through the context of tactical cat battles.

200 hours

McMillen and Glaiel know that they aren't for everyone. Mewgenics projects a '90s kind of edginess that revels in the world's flaws: grime, disease, decay, senseless violence, and general stupidity. It's the stuff I grew up with as a teenage fan of Newgrounds games and Jhonen Vasquez comics like Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, but McMillen hears the occasional onlooker wondering why his art is so "ugly" and questioning whether it's OK for the title to reference eugenics.

"It's not like the game is saying it's a good thing," he says to that. "It is very much not a pro-eugenics game," adds Glaiel. The pair didn't want to spoil anything, but say that their intentions will become clearer as we get deeper into its story.

I was surprised to hear how long that's expected to take us: Glaiel thinks he could speedrun Mewgenics in 50 hours, but expects a first-time player to put 200 hours into it before rolling credits. They told me about the existence of advanced techniques like intentionally preventing some cats from leveling up in order to over-level other cats, something a casual player might not even notice on their first playthrough.

As for the art, McMillen and Glaiel are still using Flash for its distinctive style of vector animation. The bold lines and bulbous characters McMillen favors can make the battle maps hard to read, but I also saw a cool-ass boss animation at one point that surprised me with its slickness.

The software is actually called Adobe Animate now, since the Flash browser plugin is long gone, and Glaiel is peeved that they have to pay Adobe a monthly fee for the privilege to use it. None have escaped the software-as-a-service era, even Flash game developers.

The world may have changed since McMillen was making Flash games like Clubby the Seal, but Mewgenics' sense of humor fits right into that oeuvre: It's the only game I can recall playing that includes cat sex animations. And yet I came away feeling that he and Glaiel have matured as artists.

After a very small and fun sample of what's apparently a 200-hour game, I'm inclined to trust McMillen's judgment when he says that Mewgenics is his best yet. It'll finally be out February 10, 2026 on Steam.

The "endless cat breeding RPG" Mewgenics showed up at the PC Gaming Show yesterday with another bizarre trailer and a new release date: Instead of arriving in 2025 as planned, it's now set to arrive on February 10, 2026. And there's actually a pretty good reason for the delay.

"Dude, listen. Launching in Nov–Dec is hard," Mewgenics mastermind Edmund McMillen explained on Steam. "We want this game to get the attention it deserves and don’t want to compete with holidays and holiday AAA releases. And honestly, adding a few more months to dev means launching with an even more heavily tested and polished experience!"

That seems entirely reasonable to me. The holiday quarter—sometimes referred to by retailers as "the golden quarter"—can be incredibly lucrative, but it's also absolutely overrun by developers and publishers looking to cash in on the spirit of the season.

That's not so much an issue with videogames, though, which are free from the shackles of in-store inventory and parking lot chaos: The advent of digital distribution, particularly on PC, means games, and especially indie games, can become huge hits at any time. Balatro dropped in February 2024, for instance, and did pretty well for itself, and Dave the Diver made a big splash when it showed up in June 2023. These days, picking your spot is often more important than being part of the usual seasonal rush.

And it may not be just a matter of dodging the festive crowds, because it sounds like there's still a fair chunk of work to do before Mewgenics is ready to roll—although the new release date gives the team a solid eight months to get everything done. McMillen provided a list of the development work remaining:

• The final boss is drawn and half animated—he/she/it will hopefully be implemented by the end of the month!
• We’ve started adding hard path rewards and random gen items for said rewards (this is very cool stuff!).
• Lots of new cutscenes were added! We have 4 large cutscenes and 6 small cutscenes to go!
• We went ahead and had Ridiculon add 3 more tracks to the game for some extra late-game spice!
• Next week we start to implement alt/shiny furniture! (This is also very cool!)
• Big secret late-game system has been fully implemented!

"We know you wanna play, we want you to play!" McMillen wrote. "And starting at some point in Jan we’ll start doing live streams, or something? I dunno the details yet but I'm sure it’ll happen soon! Also more hands-on previews are in the works! And maybe even more trailers?! Who knows?!"

Hopefully McMillen does. I guess we'll wait to see what happens in February.

"An endless Cat Breeding RPG from the creator of The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy!" so reads the Mewgenics Steam page blurb.

And if you somehow think that'll prepare you for the game's latest showing at the PC Gaming Show 2025… well, I think it's easier if you just have a look at the new trailer yourself.

Wonderfully off-the-wall—would be a conservative way of putting it—our latest look at Mewgenics likely leaves us with more questions than answers, as it explores cats with broken necks, irritable bowel syndrome and a number of other ailments no poor feline should ever be forced to face (not least "taking a shotgun to the face a couple of times").

Through this, developers Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel promise over 200 hours of cat-inspired role-playing, wherein you're tasked with levelling up your furry friends as they venture further and further from home. En route, you'll help them collect unique items—of which there are over 800 to scavenge—hoard hundreds of pieces of enchanted furniture, level up a house, fight over 200 enemies and bosses, and cycle through over 50 unique abilities tied to six different classes.

Which is a lot of feline-flavoured content. If any of that's tickled your fancy, you can wishlist Mewgenics right now on Steam, and it's releasing in February.

Check out every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show 2025

2012 was quite a year. Barack Obama was re-elected, PC Gamer selected Mass Effect 3 as Game of the Year, and Binding of Isaac studio teased its next game, an "adorably horrible" kitty-cat mutation simulator called Mew-Genics.

Now it's 2025: Donald Trump is somehow sort of in charge, BioWare seems pretty much cooked, and Mewgenics—now minus the "-"—still isn't out. But after 13 years of waiting we do now finally have an official trailer, and I don't know what I expected but it sure wasn't this.

Words can't really describe what you're about to see, but as a dedicated media professional I'll take a shot anyway. The official Mewgenics trailer is a mostly live action musical number about a husband and wife unable to have children. To fill the void, they bring home a pair of kitties from the local pound, a male and a female as it turns out, and I guess neither Mr nor Mrs Jones were Bob Barker fans because it didn't occur to either of them that spaying or neutering might be a good idea.

It spirals out of control from there into an orgy of sex, violence, recrimination, and regret: The Joneses eventually reach a point where mass murder seems like the only option, but they've already given all the cats names, and despite the crowding, noise, poop, angry neighbors, and general sublimation of their lives into a hellish nightmare from which there is no escape, the little buggers are just so gosh-darn cute!

The final two minutes of the video, which runs for nearly four minutes in total, are dedicated to a recitation of cat names that grows almost painful in length: Well over 100 of them, by my estimate, from Abner to Ziggy, each horrific in its own way but some far, far worse than others—rather like cats in real life, when you think about it.

There are also (very) brief snippets of gameplay here and there, although not enough to piece together into anything coherent: Here, for instance, is a level-up screen for Ichabod, who can choose the ability to summon a squirrel or a caterpillar, gain some bonus magic damage, or turn into an elk. Because sure, that makes sense.

The Mewgenics trailer stands as an experience unto itself, but it's worth noting that the game is seemingly approaching an actual release: The Steam page says Mewgenics will be out in 2025. It also warns that, while kitties are notoriously cute, the game itself is not entirely committed to maintaining that image:

Attacks are highlighted by blood-splatter effects, dismemberment, and decapitation; several areas are littered with blood pools and entrails. Some areas depict large amounts of feces and urine on the floor; certain items allow cats to defecate, urinate, or summon excrement-themed characters. During the course of the game, players' character can consume a variety of pills to gain buffs. Cats will frequently hump one another, but this can be turned off in options. oh also there is a good amount of random swearing and innuendo.

Actually, that sounds rather like cats in real life, too.

The popular Twitch emote BibleThump is going away at the end of September, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. Twitch said in an announcement (via Kotaku) that the emote is being dropped because of expiring licenses, but rightsholder Edmund McMillen says he'd be happy to renew the license, but it's not up to him.

BibleThump was popular enough to earn a place in our 2020 rundown of Twitch emote meanings, a handy guide for anyone baffled by the flood of weird faces floating across their screens. 

"Roguelike fans will recognize this emote from The Binding of Isaac," we helpfully explained. "That is baby Isaac right there, with tears streaming down his face. Stream viewers bust out BibleThump when a profoundly sad, or profoundly precious incident crosses through the stream."

Popular though it may be, it won't be around for much longer. "The end of the BibleThump Era (2013-2024) is nigh!" Twitch wrote on X. "On 9/30, the rights to our beloved emote expire. While this is sad news, we know that all emotes go to heaven. SPEAKING OF SAD - we’re going to need a new emote to spam these feelings…"

Well, that happens—content disappearing because of expiring licences is nothing new in the world of videogames. But as the attached community note indicates, the situation took a weird twist when Edmund McMillen, the creator of The Binding of Isaac, said he was open to extending the deal.

"For those wondering what happened with the Bible thump emote, I'm 100% fine with coming up with a good solution to keep or modify the emote but I'm not in control of the new Twitch policies so it's really up to them," McMillen posted. He confirmed in separate posts that he still owns the rights to the emote, and reiterated that he "would be 100% fine with them renewing the rights."

So, why isn't that happening? Some on X suggested, presumably ironically, that Twitch can't afford a new deal: Twitch is owned by Amazon, one of the biggest and most valuable companies in the world, but has reportedly struggled to turn a profit. That doesn't strike me as likely. I don't know how much a license for a single emote based on an old indie game would cost, but I can't imagine it would be a very big slice of Twitch's revenues. Others have speculated that Twitch wants to shift to emotes made in-house that it owns outright, which could be what McMillen was alluding to in his reference to "new Twitch policies."

Whatever the reason, there's been no sign that a new deal might be made. It's possible that BibleThump could live on elsewhere, though. In response to Twitch's message about the expiring license, streaming platform Kick, the place that pays guys like xQc and Nickmercs mountains of money to do gambling streams and recently hosted notorious former Twitch streamer (he was banned for life in 2023 for "hateful conduct) Adin Ross in a bizarre, baffling stream with Donald Trump, posted an image of the emote and a message to McMillen: "We cooking?"

The reaction to Kick's tweet was almost universally negative, with multiple respondents asking McMillen not to take the deal. McMillen himself hasn't indicated whether or not he might be interested in a deal, but he did repost Kick's message. Make of that what you will.

The best roguelike about a child escaping from their murderous mother is getting online cooperative play soon. The Binding of Isaac has had local cooperative support for a very long time, but it looks like you won't need to jerry rig online support using Steam Remote Play for much longer.

The Binding of Isaac's executive producer Tyrone Rodriguez posted a screenshot of the matchmaking screen today, corroborating fairly obvious evidence from earlier this year that the functionality was in development. It's probably no coincidence that today marks the 12th anniversary of the roguelike's initial release on Steam, back when it was a moreish Flash game designed to help co-creator Edmund McMillen get to grips with roguelike game design for the purpose of developing Mewgenics.

McMillen recalls as much in a TikTok video posted to celebrate the occasion, describing the then-not-easy process of getting a lil' old flash game on Steam. He also teased a "big" update coming to the Binding of Isaac Repentance, all but confirming the online cooperative feature with both a screenshot of the matchmaking and the admission that "a lot of you know what it is already".

Here's Rodriguez' tweet:

Twelve years is a long time to spend developing a sole game, but it has parallels in the indie sphere: Terraria and Stardew Valley keep growing and growing. Meanwhile, poor Mewgenics still hasn't released, but is expected to arrive some time in 2024.

The Legend of Bum-bo, Edmund McMillen's "puzzle based deckbuilding roguelike" prequel to The Binding of Isaac, arrived in November 2019, and was pretty good stuff: "A fun blend of puzzle and roguelike that inspires forward-thinking, but cuts your strategy short," we said in our 72% review.

A handful of small updates followed, but almost a year passed between the last of them, in December 2019, and "a long overdue update" in November 2020, in which McMillen explained the long silence, apologized for the "lack of transparency and seemingly abandoning the project." He also said that new DLC was in the works that would add "a few new alt bosses, new items, a few features that were on your most wanted list and a new playable character, Bum-bo the Lost."

That update, called The Lost Expansion, is now live on Steam, and free for all players. As planned, it includes a new playable character called The Lost, a new type of tile called "Ghost Tiles," a trio of new bosses, more than ten new unlockable items, new challenges and achievements, improved audio, and the ability to save and resume your progress mid-game.

"I know its been a long horrible year since this game released and i hope this free update can act as a peace offering from us to you, the players!" McMillen wrote.

The expansion also makes a number of quality of life improvements:

• Added ability to view your current spells and trinkets when choosing new ones
• Added ability to view descriptions for your current trinkets
• Added ability to cancel when replacing a spell/trinket or purchasing a shop item
• Game options menu is now accessible from the pause screen
• Improved visual and sound feedback for critical hits
• Improved cursor feedback for the puzzle board and other UI elements
• Added 'Random Bum-bo' option to the character select screen
• Many bug fixes to spells and enemy behaviors
• Dozens of minor improvements to player UI and other visual details

The Legend of Bum-bo is on sale on Steam for $7.49/£5.69/€6.24 until March 12.

That delay on The Binding of Isaac: Repentance is a short one, as the final expansion for one of the most beloved roguelikes of all time is coming on March 31st, 2021. That'll be almost three years after it was announced, but it was only supposed to release in December. December to March is a hell of a lot less time than a lot of other games were delayed by 2020's nonsense.

Developer Edmund McMillen has posted a trailer for Repentance to Steam, a nice little summary of how I feel about the game, which is crying on the floor. Anyways, the Repentance expansion is a cool concept, based around the hugely popular Antibirth mod for the game and made in collaboration with that mod's authors. It's such a huge expansion that it's basically a sequel to the original. Some 130 items, a hundred new enemies, 25 bosses, and thousands of new rooms join the game.

In the post accompanying the new trailer, McMillen said that they were waiting until March for polish reasons. "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," he said. That's polite. I'll go ahead and name the last release as The Legend of Bum-bo, which was unfortunately just a good and fun game rather than a genre-upending instant classic. McMillen and other developers will post more update blogs to the Steam page as release approaches.

The Binding of Isaac first released back in 2011 as part of the very first wave of the roguelike revival, and has gotten more than a few expansions and/or updates since, including full-game overhaul Rebirth in 2014. You can find it on Steam and on Humble. 

The Legend of Bum-bo, a prequel to The Binding of Isaac, is a pretty good smoosh-up of deckbuilding and match-four with an absolutely gorgeous aesthetic mimicking cardboard cut-outs. While the reception was generally positive, the game launched in something of a bad state and received many patches in quick succcession before, in December last year, it all went quiet.

Developer Edmund McMillen, best-known for Super Meat Boy, has on a few occasions teased a free mini-DLC that will add to the base experience, and act as some sort of recompense for the early issues. Now in an update posted to the game's Steam page, McMillen talks about that launch, explains why the DLC hasn't yet appeared, and promises it's coming next year.

"When the Legend of Bum-bo launched on Steam last year it was instantly apparent that it was the messiest launch of my career... James [Id] worked non-stop for days to fix bugs and update the game after months of crunch. He was able to get the game in a stable and playable state within a few weeks, the holidays were upon us and we had started planning a free mini-DLC to make up for our launch issues, I updated many times... but then, radio silence.

"First off I'd like to apologize for lack of transparency and seemingly abandoning the project, I assure you this isn't at all the case but I still feel a huge sense of responsibility and regret for how I dealt with the aftermath of Bum-bo's launch."

McMillen goes on to explain that co-developer James Id had a rough time dealing with depression following the game's final post-launch update, and Covid only made things worse. "I felt helpless seeing him in this situation, but I could do nothing to help him outside of pulling back and trying to figure out another way to continue dev without him as lead programmer. As the months went by James would rise and fall, there were times where dev was back on and things were looking up... then Covid started and as you all know isolation doesn't usually help these types of situations."

Id is now "doing much better" while McMillen has arranged to work with another small team in order to both finish the game's DLC and port it, consisting of Simon Parzer and Adrian Gavrilita, two programmers whose previous work includes Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.

The DLC will contain "a few new alt bosses, new items, a few features that were on your most wanted list and a new playable character, Bum-bo the Lost!"

McMillen ends on a slightly melancholy note, though not without optimism, writing that "my relationship with Bum-bo was very bitter sweet... but I really hope that once this DLC launches next year and it eventually comes to consoles it will be in a place we are all very happy with."

Here's hoping McMillen does end up happy with it. One of the reasons this developer's games can hit hard is their unflinching openness about gross, weird and taboo topics: games like Binding of Isaac ache under the combined weight of empathy and body horror. Beneath the adolescent surface of McMillen's work beats a heavy and thoughtful heart, which is why his best work lingers in the memory. He's also improved his games hugely in DLCs and reworks over the years, and I've got both cheeks crossed Bum-bo will soon number among them.

The Binding of Isaac is almost a decade old now and developer Edmund McMillen isn't done with it yet. In 2014, it spawned a remake, Rebirth, and then an expansion, Afterbirth, which even got its own expansion, Afterbirth+. Now we're getting Repentance, due out at the end of the year. 

McMillen has said he's never really finished with Isaac, but if this really is the conclusion of Isaac's nightmarish exploration of his hell-basement, it looks like it's going out with a bang. McMillen claims it's "basically a sequel at this point", and judging by the list of features, it's not a hollow boast. 

Amid the additions are more than 25 new bosses, more than 100 new enemies and more than 700 items in total, with around 130 of them being new. A new quest, chapters and final boss also means that you'll lead Isaac through more than 5,000 new room designs, each assuredly gruesome and nauseating. 

It's based on the huge Antibirth mod, with McMillen bringing in the mod team to build on it, turning it into an official expansion. Repentance is shaping up to be quite a bit larger than Antibirth, but the original mod still introduced thousands of new rooms, nearly 100 items and even featured an original soundtrack. 

Last year, McMillen said he wouldn't be working with Nicalis, which published Rebirth and handled the console ports of The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, on future projects. Nicalis founder Tyrone Rodriguez was accused of pressuring employees to drink, using racial slurs and exploitative behaviour, leading McMillen to look elsewhere for the ports of The Legend of Bum-bo and console versions of the upcoming Mewgenics. 

Repentance has been in the works since 2018, however, when Nicalis announced it with a wee teaser, and McMillen said it would release as originally planned, with the company still publishing it. 

There's a Steam page up now, but we'll have to wait for the full expansion details. The page teases new features, quality of life improvements and tonnes of secrets. McMillen says we can expect blog updates to start appearing regularly from the second half of October, with the launch planned for December 31. I can't think of a better way of ending 2020 than fighting monsters while I'm up to my knees in shit.

Edmund McMillen, creator of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, is taking another detour into physical card games, this time with cheerful tapeworms wriggling around in some poor sod's digestive tract.  

He's had the concept for Tapeworm knocking about since the days of Super Meat Boy's development, but it wasn't until after the successful Kickstarter for The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls—also a card game—that he decided to turn the prototype into something everyone could play. 

Tapeworm is a 2-4 player 'spatial' card game where everyone's trying to get rid of their hand by nurturing and cutting up grotesque gut parasites. Players can keep playing cards as long as they still have tapeworm segments that correspond to the worm that they're trying to grow. 

It's nice and straightforward, with McMillen explaining that he wanted to make something his nieces and nephews could play. "They're really young, so I wanted to make something as simple as Uno, but have a good amount of depth so adults could play it." 

A smidgen of complexity has been added through abilities like cutting worms to create new openings for cards, swapping cards with your opponents, or forcing them to draw more cards. It doesn't sound like it will take long for anyone to wrap their head around, though, with the most advanced strategy being simply creating a fully connected ringworm, allowing the player to ditch two cards from their hand.  

The worms are excellent worms, too, and while I wouldn't be very keen to have them squirming away inside me, they are kinda cute. Lots of silly faces. "I'll make one that looks like it's crying," McMillen promises. 

It cropped up on Kickstarter today, with McMillen looking for $25,000. That took no time at all, and it's now quickly approaching $100,000 in pledges. There are still 30 days to go. Only two stretch goals have been revealed so far, for 100 percent and 200 percent funding. With them met, backers will get an exclusive set of stickers and a small poster. 

Since the prototype was designed years ago and it's already playable, backers won't have to wait too long for their copy; it's expected out in October this year. 

Gish is a sidescrolling platformer, released in 2004, about a sticky blob-type thing who sets off to rescue his girlfriend after she's kidnapped by a mysterious creature of darkness. It sounds weird but it's actually really good—good enough to warrant inclusion in the first-ever Humble Bundle, all the way back in 2010. And more than 15 years after release, it's also getting a new update.

News of the quality-of-life update came amidst a series of tweets from Gish co-creator Edmund McMillan, who has big plans for 2020. McMillan's most recent game, The Legend of Bum-Bo, will also be getting some "fun updates" next year, including "saving/loading, quality of life polish, bonus content and more fixes," and he hopes to start revealing more about The Binding of Isaac's final expansion, Repentance, ahead of its planned release in mid-2020. "@FixItVinh and the team are doing a mind blowing job on it and it will be well worth the wait, trust me," he wrote.

McMillan also said that the on-again, off-again Mew-genics will be back in development next month. This is interesting because I didn't realize that development had been paused (again): It's been put on hold multiple times over the past several years but the last we heard from it was in June, when McMillen announced that it was "officially back in development." 

Maybe this new tweet is a recommitment rather than a resumption? Whatever the case, it's good news if you've been looking forward to someday actually seeing what Mew-genics is all about.

He also teased a "small secret game about worms" that he expects will be out in February or March, and a possibly-final expansion to The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls, a tabletop card game, that will arrive around the end of 2020. He had some bad news for fans hoping that Four Souls will be brought to the digital realm, saying in a tweet today that a videogame version is "probably not" going to happen.

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen has halted plans to work with indie publisher Nicalis on two of his upcoming games, including the recently announced The Legend of Bum-bo. McMillen made the decision following a Kotaku report containing allegations of racism, abusive behavior, and dubious business practices at the company.

The allegations were made by multiple external developers and former employees, who claimed that Nicalis founder Tyrone Rodriguez pressured employees and potential clients to drink heavily at events, used racist slurs, and engaged in other forms of controlling and exploitative behavior. Skype logs obtained by the site also show Rodriguez using racist, homophobic, and antisemitic language in the Nicalis group chat.

Enter the Gungeon designer David Crooks also described how Nicalis "ghosted" him on an agreement to develop a PlayStation 4 port of the game. Crooks and Nigel Lowrie of publisher Devolver Digital both said that after Nicalis signed an NDA and received access to the Enter the Gungeon source code, Rodriguez stopped responding to calls and emails, eventually forcing them to find someone else for the job.

Nicalis has previously handled console ports for The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, both developed by McMillen, but he told Kotaku that Rodriguez "wasn’t ever my boss, he’s always just been a publisher of my work" and said that plans to work with the company on two future projects would be canceled. 

"I won’t be moving forward with Nicalis when it comes to the port of The Legend of Bum-bo or any console versions of Mewgenics," he said. "[Binding of Isaac: Repentance] will still be releasing as originally planned, the team poured their heart and soul into this DLC and it’s very close to releasing."

Nicalis did not comment on McMillen's decision but denied the allegations in a statement. "Developing and publishing games is a dream for the staff of nearly 20 that work at Nicalis, Inc. Some of our team have been with the company almost a decade and we work hard to create an environment where we treat our team members with respect. They are what make the company," it said. 

"We do not condone abusive workplace environments or discrimination and have people from all walks of life. We hope for the continued success of our internal team and our external developers. Regarding the companies under mutual NDA with Nicalis, Devolver (publisher of Enter the Gungeon) and The Game Bakers (developer of Furi), we can only comment that we do not have any signed publishing agreements with them and never have."

The Legend of Bum-bo is the latest game from Edmund McMillen of The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy and The End is Nigh fame. It's a "deckbuilding roguelike" spliced with a dungeon crawler, and it's now got a firm release date: it'll hit Steam on November 12.

"Players collect hordes of items that can be modified, upgraded and comboed with others in many interesting ways," the Steam description reads. "Play as one of many Bum-bo, each with its own unique abilities, as they smash, bash and splash their way through a variety of cardboard monstrosities, giant bosses and dark personal urges..."

Oh yes, dark personal urges: sign me up. The game is described as a prequel to The Binding of Isaac, and it'll boast four playable characters, more than 100 modifiable and upgradeable items, ten bosses and 30 enemies. That's the announcement trailer above, it's really something.

It'll hopefully tide us all over until the eventual release of The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, which is the roguelike's final DLC pack, and is scheduled to release some time later this year.

This is the third time we've had to write a story saying Mewgenics isn't dead, but guess what: Mewgenics isn't dead. 

Indie designer Ed McMillen's next game, a prequel to The Binding of Isaac called The Legend of Bum-bo, is due out in late August/September this year, and he's got other projects on the go, like another Isaac DLC called Repentance in December. But he's still got time to think ahead, as he confirmed on Twitter this week: "After over 6 years stuck in limbo, Mewgenics is now officially back in development!"

We don't know much about what it will be like, though programmer Tyler Glaiel has been sharing some early animations. The music will be by Ridiculon, who also provided soundtracks for McMillen projects like The End is Nigh and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and the background art by Krystal Fleming, who was responsible for the cutscenes in The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth.

As a reminder, here's the original the original Mewgenics teaser from 2013.

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen said April's Forgotten update for The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+, a collection of add-ons for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, would be the game's final free booster pack. However, earlier this year McMillen told Polygon that he's "never done" with Isaac, and according to publisher Nicalis, there's more Isaac in store—in addition to the Four Souls card game, that is. The publisher tweeted a brief teaser for a new game (or add-on) titled The Binding of Isaac: Repentance last night. Give it a look: 

Some players have pointed out that the logo for Repentance bears a strong resemblance to The Binding of Isaac: Antibirth, a free fan-made expansion released in December 2016. At the time, McMillen discussed officially adding the mod to Afterbirth+, and when we spoke with him about the influence mods had on Isaac's popularity, he described Antibirth creator The-Vinh Truong as being "on a whole other level" from other modders. So it's possible Repentance will integrate Antibirth or other mods in some way, but take that as the speculation that it is, since neither Nicarlis nor McMillen have confirmed anything. 

For his part, McMillen offered a tease of his own on Twitter around the time the trailer went live:

The Binding of Isaac: Repentance will be at PAX West, and so will we, so sit tight for more information.  

After weeks of teasing, The Binding of Isaac co-creator Edmund McMillen has revealed his latest Isaac venture: a tabletop spin-off called The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls, which launched through Kickstarter on Wednesday and blew past its goal within hours. The dice-and-card game represents a whole new vein of design for the indie creator, making something entirely physical and wholly multiplayer for the first time. As Edmund and his design partner and wife Danielle told me, the game's invention was as much about them having fun creating it as it was anything else.

“I was approached like a year and a half ago and they wanted to license the Isaac IP to make their own game, and I was like 'well no I'm not going to do that, I'd need to design it myself and I don't have any ideas for any kinda board game—if anything comes up I'll let you know!'” Edmund said. About a year later, he was sick one weekend and decided to take a crack at designing an Isaac card game. "I started prototyping some stuff on paper and then once I was feeling better, my wife and I went to a crafts store and got a bunch of index cards and within a week I had a pretty rough prototype that was playable.”

Now that development is essentially finished, the Kickstarter is a way to get mass production off the ground with Studio 71, who’re publishing the game as well as overseeing the bulk of the business side of the campaign. For the first time in Edmund's career, designing a game hasn't been an isolating drudge—sitting in front of a computer with his team over Skype, everyone tapping away in relative silence.

Four Souls required long sessions with multiple players to double-check each new wave of alterations. “It's just 'Hey, I'm going to test my game, I'm going to have a bunch of friends come over, eat pizza and play games all night long once a week every week for six months,'” Edmund said. “It's fun!”

Here's the basic breakdown of Four Souls:

There are three decks. There's the item deck, which contains 100 treasure cards, a mix of items from Binding of Isaac and some new creations. The loot deck makes up the cards you'll have in your hand and draw regularly. Last is the monster deck, "full of bosses and basic monsters and random happenings, like treasure chest rewards or curses."

How do you win? Kill bosses to collect their souls, and the first player to four souls wins the game. The game is currently built for 2-4 players, with the final version expected to support up to six, and sessions generally last from 30 minutes to an hour.

I compare it Munchkin, another card game that's similarly heavy on monster encounters and co-operative play, but Edmund considers it more a melding of Magic: The Gathering and Settlers of Catan, citing the use of a stack-system from the former and reliance on bartering and “alternate win conditions” from the latter. There are a number of characters to choose from, including Maggie, Judas and Isaac himself, each offering some play-modifying ability, and there's the requisite hearts for health and pennies for currency.

During their turn, players can activate item cards from their hand, and can then choose to either buy an item from the store—the top two face-up cards of the item deck—or attack a monster to begin an encounter. The rest of the table can assist or interfere with the right cards, and the turn ends with either the monster or the challenging player dying.

Death isn't quite as big a deal as it is in the roguelike. It's mercifully impermanent, carrying with it a penalty of one item, one discard from your hand, and one penny.

Dice play is a big factor, generating the RNG Isaac's known for. Combat relies on rolling, making every turn that bit more dramatic. “I don't think I appreciated before just how fun it is to roll a dice,” Danielle McMillen said. “And then getting a critical hit with a group of people is like, 'YES!'” 

The current iteration of Four Souls has been rigorously tested, with feedback from Tyler Glaiel, Edmund's collaborator on The End Is Nigh, and George Fan, creator of Plants Vs. Zombies. But it's not completely design-locked just yet. A function of the Kickstarter campaign will be getting feedback from a wider selection of sources.

“As we go, even beyond the Kickstarter, hoping we get what we need, I'm going to be very open about development and show the layouts of cards so we can get feedback,” Edmund said. “I want its design to be as simple as possible without losing depth.” Expect the McMillens to stream play sessions during the campaign, too, to explain the more intricate aspects and demonstrate all the different play-styles one can employ to make things get “very Isaac-y.”

When I interviewed Edmund previously on the ending of The Binding of Isaac, he spoke about the dark period of deep introspection that created The End Is Nigh, his most grim and nihilistic project to date. The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls is, for he and Danielle, the end of the journey that started with that development cycle and a re-kindling of their love of design and game-making. Of course, Edmund hasn't left digital games—he has The Legend of Bum-bo coming later this year—but this was a refreshing change of pace for the McMillens both.

“It was a much, much needed break from the usual bullshit,” Edmund said with a sigh. “The End Is Nigh was so rough. And getting through it and being able to look back on it and being able to appreciate it for what it was and teaching me that it's not just a loss—this was definitely the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Update: With his next game due to be officially unveiled this week, Edmund McMillen took to Twitter to share more information about the mystery project, along with its first official artwork.

Previously, McMillen said he's working on a turn-based multiplayer game that's based on one of his old games but is not directly connected to The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy, or his upcoming puzzle game, The Legend of Bum-bo. He's since clarified that it is, in fact, a Binding of Isaac game, but it's also something completely new. He describes it as "a spinoff that kind of connects the end of Isaac to ideas I have for a sequel," and it's set "after/during the end of the current game."

Here's everything else we learned about this mystery Isaac game from what McMillen shared on Twitter:

• It's titled The Binding of Isaac: _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _  (and the last letter is 's')
• It can only be played in local multiplayer. There is no singleplayer component, and you can't play online. McMillen says playing with four people "is ideal." 
• It's a turn-based "casual strategy" game that uses cards. But while it is something of a card game, it doesn't have a mana system like Hearthstone or a land system like Magic: The Gathering.  
• There are currently eight playable characters, and McMillen is working on more.  

 Original story:  

Edmund McMillen has been busy. Six weeks ago, he released the final free content booster pack for The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+. A few weeks prior, he and James Id released the first trailer for their upcoming match-four dungeon-crawler, The Legend of Bum-bo. And a few weeks before that, McMillen said his delayed, cancelled and now revived game Mewgenics is back on track. Apparently McMillen's still got free time, though, because judging from a recent string of tweets, he's got a new multiplayer game in the works.  

With its official announcement still a few days away, little is known about McMillen's mystery project, but he did share a few interesting details on Twitter. Firstly, it's not connected to The Legend of Bum-bo, The Binding of Isaac or Super Meat Boy. And for those wondering: no, it's not a battle royale game. McMillen also held a dedicated Q&A, and assuming his answers are only half-joking, his mystery game is a turn-based, local multiplayer PvP game that's not a platformer or a shooter but is based on one of his old games. That oughta narrow it down.  

The Legend of Bum-bo is not an easy game to explain. Broadly speaking, it's a first-person dungeon-crawler with a turn-based battle system built atop a match-four puzzle game, but even that feels reductive in how it glosses over just how much poo and snot is involved (it's a lot). The upcoming project from The Binding Of Isaac co-creator Edmund McMillen might be simultaneously his strangest and most familiar game to date (poo and snot, after all, are McMillen hallmarks).

The basics: players pick one of four characters, each offering different skills and items, before setting out on a four-chapter quest that'll see them traverse four dungeons, each containing two bosses. The explicit plot is about retrieving some gold, but as I expected from McMillen, and what he was keen to remind me of during the guided demo, is that there's a lot more under the surface for those who go searching.

Bum-bo is a Binding of Isaac prequel, and the thematic links are immediate. A music box rendition of Genesis, the song Isaac's mother sings to him, plays over the intro screen. Isaac's bubbly-but-grungy aesthetic is still here. But there's also an almost defiant undercurrent to how Bum-bo rejects the quick-fire chaos of Isaac in favour of quiet calculation. The whole process is much slower, having players move room-to-room with a set of arrow-keys at the bottom of the screen, like the point-and-click RPGs of old. Each room will hold either some treasure, an enemy, or be empty—or possibly an item-selling NPC. If it's an enemy, players are stuck and must engage in battle, and if not they can come and go as they please.

Bum-bo makes the jump from 2D to 3D, but in a roundabout way. The rooms are essentially cardboard boxes, with everything else being cardboard inserts that create a layered diorama. Like a lo-fi Paper Mario, everything is its own 2D image animated on a card, and every interaction has these pieces move and connect as if being controlled by a puppeteer. McMillen points out that when he was a kid, making dioramas was one of his main sources of entertainment, and making a game that evoked that kind of DIY fantasy was important to him.

The overall construction, headed up by lead designer James Id, is clever and intricate. A dynamic camera zooms in for various special moves and big moments, hanging back to create the UI when it's the player's turn. Little flourishes add to the feeling of a kid's puppet show: stains on the floor and walls from attacks, fallen enemies literally tearing apart when defeated, and the health bar being little hearts that sway as they hang from the top of the screen on string.

For Isaac diehards, the battle system is going to be the point of contention. This isn't an action game. It's not made to be done quickly, or even to play on the same muscles as Isaac or Super Meat Boy. Using a match-four mini-game, you've to gather mana of each of the five colours—brown (poop), green (snot), yellow (urine), red (heart) and white (bone)—to do your moves. Each of these also have a corresponding ability: matching hearts replenishes health, matching snots creates a booger that can be thrown at an enemy, and so on.

Every character comes with certain attacks and spells that require different colour combinations, some doing simple damage, some doing damage and having an after-effect, while more abilities and items can be earned and bought later. Each turn, you start with a certain number of movements that you must split between the mini-game to generate mana and attacking with whatever you have the necessary bodily substances for.

Enemies come either flying or on the ground, and each dungeon will have its own particular nasties. Their attack area is composed of a front row and a back row split into three columns, and the front row must be completely destroyed before attacking the back. Some foes can exist in both rows by losing their head, which creates a headless creature in the back. A warning flashes up that they're readying a bite or a projectile or what have you, allowing players to focus their offensive on immediate threats while gathering storage for more elaborate moves. A luck meter increases chances of critical hits and dodging, and hearts can be replenished in battle as well as through scouring for treasure.

It's an intuitive system that's more reserved than Isaac, but still manages to retain some of that chaotic strategy. As I'm questioning the flow of battle, Edmund laughingly tells me the whole thing is probably just a sign he's playing too much Magic: The Gathering. Watching it in motion, it certainly feels like the kind of game those of us who spent our lunch-breaks in school playing Magic would then go home to spend hours playing.

The demo I saw was a portion of an obviously incomplete game. While the actual exploring was cohesive, the between-levels casino, where players can gamble for supplies and new items, was missing background art, the NPCs sitting in a large black void. But what's there is already oozing with that magic fans of Isaac have to expect. At the end of the demonstration, Edmund is defeated by the first boss, a giant poop monster (what else?). He discusses his worries that some may not like Bum-bo because of how different it is. Only time will tell on that, but what I saw was most definitely an Edmund McMillen game.

On April 30, 2018, the last official add-on scheduled for The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ was released. Booster Pack #5 contained 'The Forgotten' and a treasure trove of bits and bobs, including "White Poop, a new poop type." It's been quiet since then. For the first time since the original incarnation of the randomly generated gross-out dungeon crawler was released in 2011, it seems like Isaac may finally get to rest.

At least, in game-form. "There's a lot of little things I want to add and that I really want to explore with the IP that I haven't been able to because I've been mostly just working on the game," Binding of Isaac co-creator Edmund McMillen tells me. "Without revealing too much information, yeah, there's stuff on the horizon."

Isaac and he have now been together for the bulk of a decade, a period that's seen all kinds of change in the games industry and in his personal life. Isaac's come to symbolize the kind of auteur-driven success many enter the medium to obtain, with the kind of longevity major publishers fall over themselves to replicate. And it all started with a two-week game-jam.

The origins of Isaac 

Wanting to take a vacation post-2010's Super Meat Boy, McMillen chose to stay home and make a quick passion project with friend Florian Himsl as a way to unwind. Two weeks gradually became three months, and friends started telling them they should consider making the thing into a proper release. "It was just one of those situations where everything clicked together and it was too hard to put down, but I also didn't see any means of actually selling it," McMillen says, "because at the time it was Flash and I didn't think Steam would be interested or even allow Flash games on Steam."

Indie distribution was still finding its feet, and they considered simply selling the IP to someone like Adult Swim for a big down payment. However, encouragement from those in the know pushed McMillen to overcome his assumptions and reach out to his contact at Valve to see if Steam would give Isaac a look. Thankfully, they did, and soon Isaac was available to the world.

But back then Isaac was a very leftfield piece of work. Nowadays its core elements are common, but in 2011 the response was muted. Review scores were decent, but nobody really seemed to get what was really on. "They just kinda put it aside, it was a lot of 'oh it's like a remix of Legend of Zelda, and it's pretty cool,'" McMillen says. "It was like, OK, well, I don't know how I'm supposed to sell this thing."

It wasn't until Let's Plays latched onto the game that things started to snowball. Hours of videos demonstrating the ever-changing longplay aspect of Isaac on YouTube generated a sudden spike in interest. McMillen remains at a loss as to why people enjoy watching it, but the benefits were quick and significant. "100-200 copies, 1,000 copies a day—that summer, the first summer after release, which was probably nine months after release, is when it just exploded, and it just kept climbing higher and higher and higher."

Little did he know that a steadfast community was forming, and that it would prove integral to Isaac's longevity. Ryder Hicks, owner of The Modding of Isaac, was one of them. "I had some friends on Steam that were playing it and I was like 'What is this?' and I watched the trailer and it was very bizarre," he says. "And I was like 'all right I gotta try this' and it was amazing."

The Modding of Isaac is a community forum for fanmade Isaac creations. Through the 2014 remake The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and beyond, modding it has become easier and easier, drawing in more creators. Hicks had run a modded Team Fortress 2 server for years, and wanted to help this community grow in the same way, working to preserve mods and encourage their creators. "It's so easy to mod and add stuff that you think might be interesting," he says. "If you're like, able to theme it in properly, you can make it some pretty cool stuff by yourself, not really having to put in a whole lot of work."

The modding scene blindsided McMillen, but has since become vital to The Binding of Isaac. The-Vinh Truong, aka '_Kilburn', now an integral Isaac team-member, began as lead designer on one of the biggest mods, Anti-Birth. "Initially I didn't want it to be anything too big, just a few items and enemies, and then Afterbirth came out and we hadn't finished our mod yet," Truong says of Anti-Birth. "But we saw what that added and thought maybe we could use this as an opportunity to show what we could do."

Anti-Birth is a testament to how inspirational Binding of Isaac has been. It's a massive slab of new stuff, containing intuitive bosses and clever items built by Truong and his friends in their spare time. During our interview, McMillen can barely restrain himself from singing the modder's praises, going so far as to call him the best collaborator he's ever had. "There's a lot of great modders out there, but he's on a whole other level," McMillen says enthusiastically. "I feel like he understands me in a way that I'm not completely aware of yet." Truong is considerably more modest: "[People] don't always get what the game is supposed to be like. I'm not going to pretend that I do, but I try. I guess I do my best."

The following of Isaac

At this stage, McMillen is very aware of the crossroads facing Isaac. The free updates were becoming more and more elaborate, and the question of a sequel has been looming. The additions contained by Booster Packs were starting to make their way uncomfortably close to his list of ideas for a sequel. Ending the updates now is as much about putting a formal follow-up into perspective as anything else. 

"When people ask what would you do to improve the game, there's a bunch of stuff that I would do. And I probably say that the first thing that I would do is strip out the story bosses," he says, on the subject of possibilities for number two. "Like, after you get to a certain point in the game, no more story bosses. No Mom, no Satan, all those dead-end bosses. Then I would design bosses that are more difficult and randomize them into those slots, and then you'd have a more random experience. That's where I'm heading just for a base level design for a sequel."

The current game is now at a critical mass, as he puts it, and any more big additions would require uprooting the carpet and taking down the upholstery. It would require another re-design, when a blank slate with new foundations makes more sense. After the troubled development of Afterbirth+, during which Edmund was absent for four months due to personal issues, he's keen to make sure everything they put out is as consistent and worthwhile as possible.

The ending of Isaac 

Though he loves The Binding of Isaac and loves working on it, it eventually became work. After several years of various ups and downs professionally and personally, McMillen was ready to quit games and take his life elsewhere, a feeling he dealt with in a familiar way—by making a game about it. "The End Is Nigh was by far the most cathartic experience I'd ever had," McMillen says of his macabre 2017 platformer. "I was ready to be done with games. I just wasn't getting what I have gotten out of it. I just had a bunch of terrible experiences when it comes to designing and working with people."

Formed from the husk of previously announced but unfinished Ouroboros, The End Is Nigh let him really ponder if everything had been worth it. It's a story of perseverance by any means, challenging you to find the motivation to try again and again, without the promise of a happy ending. Thematically, it was his toughest undertaking, and he considers it one of the best games he's made.

Right now, McMillen is seeing where the wind takes him. There's Legend of Bum-bo, a Binding of Isaac prequel, and he mentions a desire to release smaller, weirder games in the future. After nearly quitting in 2016, now he sounds optimistic, no doubt bolstered by having Vinh around to riff ideas with and Ryder's site collecting together Isaac's ardent fans. But whatever comes next, he's resolute that the ending of Binding of Isaac has already happened.

"The Forgotten in itself is the final ending of the game. You loosely see that Isaac's bones have his soul chained to the ground because of how he died," he explains. "It puts into question what happened and why, and where is he now. In the story of the game, that is its conclusion, and I don't see myself adding any more to that."

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ is a collection of add-ons for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and Afterbirth, respectively the definitive edition of the breakout roguelike shooter and a separate DLC pack. Today, Afterbirth+ received its final update, The Forgotten Update, which adds "new items, new unlocks, new trinkets, new enemies, a new character and over 800 new rooms to explore." As creator Edmund McMillen said on Tumblr, it also comes with a new boss, plus it's free to players who own Afterbirth+.

Earlier this month, McMillen and James Id released the first trailer for their upcoming duo project: The Legend of Bum-bo, a match-four dungeon-crawler about a distinctly Isaac-y blob named Bum-bo and his favorite gold coin. Back in March, he also revisited Mewgenics, a strange little cat game which McMillen says is back on track but still a few years away. 

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen first teased The Legend of Bum-bo in March 2016 as a "turn-based puzzle RPG thingy that's randomly generated," and this January confirmed it had been delayed to the second half 2018. Today, McMillen and co-creator James Id revealed the first trailer for Bum-bo in a Tumblr post outlining the gist of the game. 

The premise is about as simple as you'd expect from a game starring a blob named Bum-bo: a bad guy took Bum-bo's coin, and to get it back, Bum-go has to chase him through some dungeons. More specifically, he has to use a match-four puzzle system to "create offensive and defensive attacks and gain specific types of mana to cast epic spells that range from jagging stuff with a fish hook to summoning mom’s leg to crush all who stand in your path."  

"Every dungeon Bum-bo enters will be randomly generated," the announcement post reads, "and much like Isaac feature hoards of monsters, bosses, traps, puzzles and randomly chosen spells, so each run will be totally unique and each successful play through will unlock more items, trinkets, playable characters and more."

The Legend of Bum-bo features a papercraft aesthetic, but its general vibe is reminiscent of The Binding of Isaac. McMillen says these similarities are intentional, and that he considers Bum-bo a prequel to Isaac. However, he says he can't explain the connection without spoiling it, so we'll just have to play it for ourselves to find out. I suspect it has something to do with the spell for "summoning mom's leg."

The Legend of Bum-bo will launch on Steam later this year. Meanwhile, McMillen's other game, the cutesy cat game Mewgenics, is back on track but still a few years away. 

Cutesy cat game Mewgenics was announced way back in 2012, after which it was delayed, canceled, and then in January of this year, brought back to life under slightly new management. With Team Meat cohorts Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes having parted ways, McMillen is now working on Mewgenics with The End is Nigh co-creator Tyler Glaiel. And despite the glacial pace of development so far, McMillen said they are in fact getting down to work on it. 

It's not exactly imminent, then, but McMillen added that he may also have one or two "special secret announcements" to make this year. Related to Mewgenics? He didn't say, but hopefully. 

McMillen described Mew-Genics "as a cross between The Sims and Pokemon with a sprinkling of Animal Crossing and a dash of Tamagotchi," all of it pulled together in "a game that feels alive, a game that creates stories as you play where consequences actually mean something." And cats, of course. But all of that was in early 2013, and so it's not unreasonable at this point to assume that some (or all) of that basic intent has changed. 

This is what it looked like five years ago. 

Glaiel, for his part, tweeted this. I don't know if it anything to do with Mewgenics, but there's something that looks like a cat in it.

McMillen also delayed The Legend of Bum-bo, "a turn-based puzzle RPG thingy," earlier this year. It was originally expected in late 2017, but is now due out in the first half of 2018. At the very least, it sounds like it'll arrive sooner than Mewgenics. 

Mewgenics was a curious cat game initially announced by Team Meat (they of Super Meat Boy fame) back in 2012. Since then, it's been put on hold, delayed, and then finally, in early 2016, cancelled. At the time, McMillen said that it was possible for the game to make a return some time in the future. And guess what? That future is now. We're living in it.

McMillen announced that the game is back in development in a new blogpost. Only this time, he's collaborating with Tyler Glacial, he of Closure and The End is Nigh fame. 

"Tyler and I are currently prototyping some stuff for [Mewgenics] and if all goes well I’m 99% sure that little monster will once again become my obsession. Mewgenics was always my oddball dream project and probably the game I’m questioned about the most these days. Mewgenics is being remade from the ground up so don’t expect to see much for a year or two." 

He adds: "Who am I kidding I’ll probably start teasing the first beta images once things get moving along…"

In other news, McMillen's primary focus is still The Legend of Bum-bo, described as "a mix of Puzzle Quest and The Binding of Isaac with a tactics spin". It's due to release some time this year, with gameplay footage promised soon (see the teaser trailer below). 

Finally, it looks possible that new The Binding of Isaac material will be forthcoming. "I did say many times this was going to be the last Isaac DLC.. and at the time i strongly believed it. but there seems to be something pretty cool on the horizon, its creeping up slowly.. its familiar but a bit different and its being held up by a group of people… when i squint i think i can make out a… oh sorry i gotta go, there is someone watching me in my space ship."

Check out the full blog post, there's some interesting stuff there about (the bloody excellent) The End is Nigh, and why the game was released with next-to-no pre-release marketing.

The End is Nigh, a collaboration between The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, will release on July 13, it has been confirmed. Along with the news, a new gameplay trailer has been uploaded by Glaiel, offering a more substantial serving of footage than previous videos.

For anyone who played and loved Super Meat Boy – which McMillen worked on – this looks essential. Even the movement of player-character Ash looks similar to that oddly loveable chunk of meat, though the levels don't appear to scroll, instead switching to different screens.

Whether the game holds surprises or whether it is, indeed, a fairly straightforward platformer is besides the point: I think it's gonna be good. Here's the video.

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen told the world last month that he and collaborator Tyler Glaiel had been working on a brand new project that was very near, but not quite ready for, an official announcement. Today he unveiled that project as The End is Nigh, "a sprawling adventure-platformer where you die a lot, but that's okay because you are probably already dead anyway." 

The End is Nigh puts players in control of Ash, "one of the few 'things' that have 'survived' the 'end of the world'," as the Steam description puts it. "Follow Ash as he flops his way through a future of pain and suffering. Feel his stress levels rise as you throw him into an endless swarm of decaying, mutant animal-like creatures and help aid his final epic quest... to simply make a friend (out of pieces of people he finds along his journey)." 

You will also collect videogame cartridges and tumors, "if that does anything for ya."  

The reveal trailer gets very loud and sweary in spots, so depending on where you are right now, you might want to turn the volume down or throw on some headphones before you watch it, or just wait until later.

McMillen said in his May tease that The End is Nigh is "easily one of the largest games I've ever made," and it appears that he wasn't kidding. The game will include over 600 levels spread across 12 (and possibly more) chapters, with 80+ achievements, more than 20 "fully playable mini game cartridges" (each with their own achievements) and hundreds of "little squishy tumors" to collect, 80+ main-game achievements to earn, and "loads of hidden extras and endings that you will probably see someone else find before you do." 

"Stress" is also cited as a feature, and based on the teaser I can see why. The End is Nigh looks really good as a high-mortality twitch-platformer, which is exactly the kind of game that drives me almost immediately apoplectic. I can respect and even admire games like that, but I sure can't play 'em.   

The End is Nigh is set to come out on July 12. Pricing hasn't been set, but the very McMillen-esque system requirements are below and you can find out more at edmundm.com. 

Minimum:  

• OS: Windows 7 or higher
• Processor: Intel Core i3
• Memory: 1 GB RAM
• Graphics: anything made after 2008
• Storage: 500 MB available space

Recommended: 

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i7
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: nVidia 9999999999999GTX TI SLIx200
• Storage: 500 MB available space

In a recent blogpost on the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth website, creator (and co-creator of Super Meat Boy) Edmund McMillen teased a new project. It's a collaboration with Closure programmer Tyler Glaiel, and while McMillen didn't really say much about it, it's likely to be the cylindrical platformer he teased last year.

"...not many of you know this but Tyler and i have been in crunch mode for the past 3 months trying to finish this secret project," McMillen wrote at the weekend. "We are coming close to announcing it and its release date, so keep an eye out for it, i don't want to spoil the fun yet but i can say this."

"It's hard, it's weird, it's personal, it has amazing controls, it's a totally new unannounced IP and it's easily one of the largest games i've ever made level wise."

Of course, there's every possibility that this new project is something we've never seen before, but here's the brief footage of the McMillen / Glaiel project that was teased last year:

The Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen announced the contents of Isaac: Afterbirth Plus' second 'mod booster' pack yesterday, and right at the bottom of that blog post, as if to reward people for scrolling down, he revealed that he's been working on another project with frequent collaborator Tyler Glaiel. It's an "unannounced IP", so it's presumably got nothing to do with The Legend of Bum-bo, which was similarly teased last year, before retreating into the shadows, never to be whiffed again.

Here's what McMillen has to say about the secret project:

"On a side note not many of you know this but Tyler and I have been in crunch mode for the past 3 months trying to finish this secret project. We are coming close to announcing it and its release date, so keep and eye out for it, I don't want to spoil the fun yet but I can say this.

"It's hard, it's weird, it's personal, it has amazing controls, it's a totally new unannounced IP and it's easily one of the largest games I've ever made level wise."

I'm not going to speculate, because McMillen's announcements are always surprising, and because it sounds like we'll know before too long. So let's take a look at Afterbirth+ and its second mod booster pack, which once again incorporates some select mods into the base game. This time, give a big welcome to the projectile-repelling Telepathy, the item-ferrying Moving Box, the charge-replenishing Jumper Cables item and more.

Today's announcement that The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ is live on Steam was a bit premature, because at this particular moment it is actually not live at all. But it's coming, any minute now, possibly by the time you read this, and creator Edmund McMillen said in a message that while the Afterbirth expansion will "close the book on a five-year journey" that began as just a fun Flash project with a friend, it also marks a new beginning for the game. 

"I never had any idea Isaac would become what it has, this little monster has consumed my brain for what feels like a lifetime and I'm at a point now where I can be happy with officially finishing the story and calling the Isaac project done," he wrote. "But as sad as that may sound to some, this is really just the start of things to come. AB+ started as just a mini DLC of mod tools, but slowly ballooned into another game expansion with a bunch more added content… But still at its core the whole point of AB+ was to hand the game off to the community, who at this point knows the game better than i do." 

McMillen said that going forward, the game will get monthly "booster pack" updates that will incorporate the best user-made content into the official game, a plan he unveiled back in November. Mod makers don't have to submit their work for consideration—"You can honestly do whatever the hell you wanna do," McMillen wrote—but for the benefit of those who do, he also provided a list of basic guidelines for the content he's looking for, including theme and design tips, ideas about enemies, bosses, and challenges.

Getting your work to him will be a bit of a crapshoot at first: He suggested tweeting a gif or video of your mod in action (but don't overdo it), or maybe posting something on Reddit. "It's a bit hamfisted," he admitted, "but as the months roll by I'm sure we will find a smooth way to exchange ideas and I'll keep updating the blog with new info as the year unfolds." 

The Afterbirth+ announcement post also warned that "like any launch there is a good chance that we missed some bugs and players may experience some issues that our testers might have missed." The developers will continue to work on over the launch week, and there may be some nerfing too, if it proves necessary. 

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ isn't going to make it out before the end of the year, but it will come awfully close. Developer Edmund McMillen announced today that the game will debut on Steam on January 3 with a full suite of mod tools, new items, trinkets, and pickups, a new final chapter, plus a new final boss, playable character, "greedier" greed mode, and more. 

"So basically what you are looking at is a slightly smaller afterbirth expansion but with mod tools that potentially make it 20 times larger!" McMillen wrote. "I'm honestly quite excited about what the community will end up making and even more excited to make some of it totally official in Isaac!" 

McMillen said in November that he'd be keeping an eye on the Binding of Isaac mod scene, and that he'd be picking particularly good ones for official inclusion in the game. "I'm positive that there are a ton of cool ideas out there that are so left field that they MUST be added to the main game," he said at the time. 

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ will go for $10 on Steam, but will be available for a week after launch for $6.66. Until then, enjoy this devilish new teaser.

It's been almost a full year since The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ was announced for release sometime in 2016. And as of today it looks like that date is going to hold: A new post at bindingofisaac.com reveals more about the expansion, which will include new items, enemies, bosses, challenges achievements, and "in-depth mod tools," and says it will be out within the next 60 days—hopefully before the end of the year. 

"We are currently in testing and finalizing achievements, but are running into some minor release overlap issues with the holiday rush," Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen wrote. "What i can say is AB+ will release in the next 60 days on steam the goal has always been to release at the very end of the year and [we] are still shooting for it but there are some things that are a bit out of our control." 

Following the release of the expansion, McMillen said he'll be keeping an eye on the mod scene on Reddit, and will every so often select a favorite for official inclusion in the game. "This is a feature im really looking foward to, i feel like ive personally scraped the barrel when it comes to item design and feel quite depleted, but im positive that there are a ton of cool ideas out there that are so left field that they MUST be added to the main game," he wrote. "So once this thing releases, its time to prove your worth!" 

He also touched on the status of the other projects he has in the works, The Legend of Bumbo and 0uroboros. Legend of Bumbo "has been a hard nut to crack" but is now "an officially fun and very interesting game," which means it will be getting its own dev blog within the next few weeks. As for 0uroboros, "sadly there isn’t much new to show gameplay wise but im sure we will have some fun news to share in a month or so."

The Binding of Isaac co-creator Edmund McMillen has announced the official title of the new project he teased earlier this summer, which is now called Øuroboros. Or 0uroboros, depending on your preference of font. The important thing is that it begins with a zero, not an O, although how important that actually is, I do not know. McMillen explained that, while the new game will feature the same protagonist as Time Fcuk, one of his previous games, it is “not at all a sequel ... [and] not remotely a puzzle game.” 

“The best way to describe it would probably be like if you took Mega Man, tossed him out of a moving car so fast it caused a tear in time and space that pulled our existence inside out. your guts being on the outside of your body would make it a lot easier to slide under doors and through the cracks in the sidewalk. writhing in pain as you slide deeper inside the earth, only to find yourself smashed against the veiny eyeball stalks of another iteration of you that seems to have slipped down here years ago. you guys have a long talk about your aches and pains but are suddenly interrupted by the gooey paper thin body of some other guy who looks exactly like you and your new best friend,” McMillen explained. “'Who the fuck are you buddy?' you ask him… no reply.” 

And then you kiss. Passionately and with purpose. 

Somewhat more succinctly, he added, “0uroboros is an action based platformer/shooter with random level generation and the like, ala binding of isaac or spelunky, but… off. No idea when it will be done, but its nice to have a title and finally give it a voice.” 

The post includes a brief gameplay video that was actually put up at the end of August, very similar to the one that came with the July tease and somewhat Isaac-ish, but with more of a rotational thing going on. McMillen also revealed details on some Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ that were “spoiled” at PAX, and said that there's no news on the Legend of Bumbo front, but that he hopes to be able to reveal gameplay and the story soon.
 

Despite ongoing work on The Binding of Isaac and a forthcoming, turnbased RPG spin-off called The Legend of Bum-bo, Edmund McMillen has yet another project in the works. Teased on his official Tumblr earlier this week, the unnamed game is an action platformer featuring the same protagonist as one of McMillen's earlier games, Time Fcuk.

Speaking to Eurogamer, McMillen confirmed that the game isn't directly related to the Binding of Isaac universe, nor does it have a name. "We are just leaking out early teases for now," he said. "All I can say is I think most would describe it as a Mega Man / Isaac-like, but a platformer with really tight controls."  

Closure programmer Tyler Glaiel has also confirmed on Twitter that he's collaborating with McMillen on the game. 

Still, it could be a while before we see it: Super Meat Boy Forever is still in development or, at least, that was its status back in August last year. Oh, and there might be a proper, non-autorunning sequel to the meaty platformer too.

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth caused quite a stir when it came out in October. It wasn't the DLC itself that caused the uproar, though, but rather the complex ARG it kicked off, which began with what appeared to be a bug that left promised elements of the game inaccessible. Hopefully the launch of the "mini DLC" tentatively entitled Afterbirth+ will go a little more smoothly, or at least make fewer people angry when it rolls out.

And yes, Afterbirth+ is actually something that will exist sometime next year. Tyrone Rodriguez of Nicalis made the announcement on the Binding of Isaac blog, although the details were heavily redacted by "Evil Edmund," aka Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen.

"Afterbirth † will have a bunch of new ***** ********, including a couple of new bosses, a few transformations and new items/trinkets. How many? That’s a ****** you’ll find out on *******," he wrote. "Oh, also, ***** ***** **** and maybe something else related to ***** ****. There’s also a *** ****** I’m leaving out until a later time so you can wonder and conjecture/speculate ***** ****."

Got that? Afterbirth+ will also include a Bestiary that will provide detailed information about enemies you've encountered, as well as support for mods, which Rodriguez said is the "big news" in the announcement, and a "user-friendlier" room editor, mod editor, and Lua support.

"It’s a lot of changes to the game and I’m really excited to see what all of you make. Thanks for sticking around and being patient while we continue to improve the game," he wrote. "Keep sending your good/bad feedback. We are listening, even if you think we aren’t."

A launch date more precise than "next year" was not mentioned.

Team Meat put the cat breeding game Mewgenics on hold last year so it could concentrate its efforts on Super Meat Boy Forever. At some point after that, Team Meat co-founder Edmund McMillen shifted his focus to Fingered, a strange little side project about assigning criminal guilt in a world of moral relativism he unveiled last week. With that now released, McMillen told Destructoid that Super Meat Boy is back on top again, but Mewgenics will have to wait awhile longer.

"Super Meat Boy Forever is back in development again and is my primary project at this point now that Afterbirth is basically complete on my end and Fingered is [almost] out," he said. "Mew is on hold till after Forever is out, the only target release is, 'When it's done.'"

"Afterbirth," for those having trouble keeping track of all these abbreviations, is DLC for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, which McMillen announced in March. That project doesn't yet have a release date but McMillen said it should be ready to go in the next month or two. Super Meat Boy Forever doesn't have a date either, although hopefully it won't be too terribly much longer now that development is once again full steam ahead.

On the other hand, as Shaun pointed out earlier this month, McMillen seems to be easily distracted, and it wouldn't be entirely surprising if something else takes priority between now and then. In fact, his observation came in response to Team Meat's musing about a possible full-on SMB sequel, which arose from efforts to get SMB Forever finished. McMillen's Fingered collaborator James Id acknowledged that tendency to get off track as well, describing it as something "that will inevitably make everyone ask, 'Where's Mewgenics?'"

Update: The post originally suggested that Fingered is a Team Meat game, which is not the case. I've updated to clarify that it's a separate, independent project developed by McMillen and Id.McMillen also said that, as a designer and artist, he tends to have multiple projects on the go at the same time, and that non-Team Meat games, like Fingered and The Binding of Isaac, "do not at all affect" the Team Meat release schedule.

Fingered is described as a "police sim" about assigning guilt and administering justice across "21 levels of confusion". You have to judge perps based on descriptions, but it's implied that the perspective of your character will change your perception of said perps. Pesky relativism! It's out on August 18.

I didn't get any of that from the trailer, because the trailer—made by collaborator James Id, who made trailers for Mcmillen's previous games—is one of the weirdest things I've seen all year. You might not want to watch it in front of people, unless you want to have to try to explain it.

The screenshots are pretty weird, too. Take this one, for instance. Look closely at this perpetrator's "defining features".

I think this one probably gives the best idea of what the game is about. As far as I can tell, you get testimony and a line-up, and then you finger the perp.

Fingered will cost $1.87 and presumably no more than a couple of quid over here, so don't expect a huge game. I'm still hoping the next full-sized game after Super Meat Boy Forever will be Mew-Genics. Fingers crossed.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth will feature daily runs with leaderboards, co-creator Edmund McMillen has announced, allowing players to compete on a more-or-less level playing field for the best score on the internet. Yes, all of it.

"Every day the game will generate a specific seed that will be generated the same for everyone (minus locked things) and you can now compete against the internet for best score in the run!" McMillen explained. "This feature was one of my favorites in Spelunky and i always wanted to do it in Isaac… But how do you score a game like Isaac? More on that in a later post."

The "minus locked things" comment refers to the fact that some players will have unlocked more powerful items than others, giving them a potentially significant leg up on everyone else. Hey, life's tough—and McMillen's promise of more information about how the game will be scored suggests he has a plan for redressing imbalances, at least partially.

The post also revealed a pair of new items for the game: Dead Eye, "a fan suggested item that raises damage with each consecutive hit and causes your tears to become red glowing balls of death if you play well," and Continuum, which turns your eyes purple and causes your tears to "loop back" when they're shot off the screen.