edmund-mcmillen
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'Binding of Isaac: Rebirth' reborn on 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One (updated)
Prepare your consoles for ritual sacrifice. An edited version of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the adorably disturbing roguelike from Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen, is on its way to 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One. This is really happening, despite a few years of uncertainty about the game's fate on Nintendo consoles. Back in 2012, McMillen said that Nintendo had nixed The Binding of Isaac (the version before the Rebirth expansion) on 3DS because of the game's "questionable religious content." It is a game about God compelling a mother to murder her own child, after all. However, Rebirth has since launched on PlayStation 4, Vita and Steam, and McMillen has remained optimistic about working with Nintendo. In July 2014, he noted that a 3DS version was still on the table.
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth dev has 'big plans' for expansion
It's been less than a month since The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth returned players to the dark, unsettling basement of action-dungeon crawler The Binding of Isaac with a host of new features, yet designer Edmund McMillen is already planning ways to expand the upgraded re-release. "[O]nce the holidays end, the [N]icalis gang will be jumping back into the abyss and digging into the very large design doc [I] have ready for [them]," McMillen writes in a recent blog entry. "[I] have big plans for this expansion, [I] hope to add a very huge chunk of gameplay in the form of a new game mode that will almost double the amount of things you can do, [I'm] very proud of this new design." Additionally, McMillen notes that the expansion will include additional enemies, bosses, areas, endings, items and a new playable character. As it's in the very earliest stages of development, there's no release date nor title for the next Binding of Isaac expansion. While you wait, McMillen would like your help adding new items to the game. He's currently accepting suggestions on Reddit. [Image: Nicalis]
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth spins to November [Update: trailer]
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the twin-stick shooter's total remake for consoles, will launch November 4. Nicalis flashed gameplay clips and the release date for the remake in a new disturbing trailer, which has since been pulled from public view on YouTube. The developer teased that an announcement for the game was imminent on Twitter. The Binding of Isaac first launched on PC in September 2011, and Rebirth was originally discussed by creator Edmund McMillen in November 2012. The console port was previously expected to arrive in early 2014, but will hit PS4, Vita and Steam now in November. Rebirth was also originally planned for PS3 and 3DS, though the latter was disallowed by Nintendo due to the game's religious content. As of July, McMillen did not rule out an eventual appearance by Isaac on the 3DS eShop. [Image: Nicalis]
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth local co-op FAQ talks flying babies
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth's renovated basement looks prettier than the one players fought through in the original 2011 release, but definitely still full of unsettling monsters. What lurks in the touched-up labyrinth will presumably provide the same intensely-difficult journey found in Rebirth's predecessor, but thanks to Rebirth's addition of local co-op, we won't have to face the horrors alone. Edmund McMillen recently posted a FAQ to explain how Rebirth's co-op works, and the short answer is: flying babies. Rather than getting a full-blown Isaac equivalent, sidekicks steal a heart from Player 1's life and spawn as a randomly-generated baby. If Player 2 willingly drops out to give Isaac his health back, they'll play as the same type of baby if they drop back in at a later point, but getting killed off means a fresh spawn from the baby generator, which offers types including Love Baby, Psy Baby and Spider Baby. Player 2 is free to return as a freshly-spawned baby so long as doing so doesn't leave Isaac with less than one heart. Also, so long as Player 1 doesn't slap the controller out of their hands for wasting health. McMillen stresses that the game is balanced for co-op, so you won't be mowing everything down just because you have double the projectile tears. Babies don't have the same capabilities as Isaac either, so they won't be able to pick up objects, nor will they determine when items are used. Babies also have a "cursed" attribute, like automatically dropping a bomb every minute, a risk McMillen equates to the downsides of the game's pill power-ups. If you're worried about co-op's addition hindering your ability to showcase your talents, McMillen's FAQ states that there will be some related Achievements, but assures that co-op challenges won't stand between players and the 100% completion Platinum God Achievement. [Image: Edmund McMillen]
The floating, fragile indie bubble
Days after Braid hit Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, we posted a story titled "Why should we care about Braid?" We liked the game and felt the need to explain: It was a simple platformer made by a handful of people, it was pretty and it had solid controls. This wasn't a review of Braid. It was a defense of the emerging indie industry, and an analysis of why a truly good, independent game deserved adulation, because some of our readers were uneasy accepting them as legitimate products. Now, we're writing about Sony dedicating a large chunk of its E3 2013 press conference – the one just prior to the launch of the PS4 – to indie developers. We're writing about Indie Megabooth being the largest display at PAX. We're writing about Vlambeer, Klei, Hello Games, Dennaton, Fullbright, Polytron, Chris Hecker and Team Meat without having to remind readers who they are or why they matter. We're writing about Flappy Bird. We're not just writing about the existence of Flappy Bird – a free, tap-to-fly, pixelated mobile game from a young developer in Vietnam – we're writing about Flappy Bird spawning game jams and knock-offs from Fall Out Boy. "The biggest change now is that it is so much easier to make games and it is so much easier to find an audience for games," Braid creator Jonathan Blow tells me. "This means a lot more people can build games and make a living off it, which is nice. However, it also means there is not so much of a crucible against which people refine their skills, so if one really wants to become a top game developer, a lot of motivation is required above and beyond that which gets one to 'baseline success.'"
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth FAQ covers launch, platforms, online options
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is more than halfway done, with roughly 85 percent of the artwork completed and "almost all" of the game's original Flash art reworked in the new engine, creator Edmund McMillen writes in an expansive FAQ. Rebirth is the console, non-Flash remake of McMillen's gloomy roguelike, The Binding of Isaac, in development for Steam, PS4 and Vita. As for other platforms, McMillen says: "The rest aren't out of the question. We would love to release on all systems; the ball is in their courts though. We miiiiight also test the game out on iPad and see how it works – if it works ok then we will also release there." McMillen would love to see Rebith on Nintendo 3DS, but that's not possible right now, he says. "We want to release on 3DS, and will if given the option," McMillen writes. "Isaac currently goes against Nintendo's publishing rules due to its religious aspects. But stuff might change, you never know." He mentioned the religion issue regarding Nintendo in February 2012, but still called out 3DS and Wii U in November 2012 as platform goals. Rebirth features local co-op and the ability for players to stream runs against other people online, plus the option to share your final, end-game Isaac avatar online. It also supports controllers and will have at least three new playable characters, new endings and chapters, and more than 150 new items, pushing the total item count past 300. For clarity's sake, the header image is not an in-game screen of Rebirth's new art of anything. It's a Monstro figurine from The Binding of Isaac, hand-made by McMillen's mother-in-law and eventually available to purchase here.
Mew-Genics will let you influence, mutate cats using furniture
Lots of people feel that cats have some of the strongest personalities in the animal kingdom; but what if instead of just animal personalities, a cat could be a hipster, a VHS lover or Super Meat Boy fan? What if you could control and selectively breed cat personalities so that you could, as Mew-Genics creator Edmund McMillen puts it in the latest update on the Team Meat blog, "storm the cat fights with your epic army of thugged out pussy?" McMillen explains that in Mew-Genics, cats will have varying personalities when they're born, "from lazy to sexy, from passive to psychotic." Personalities are influenced by items and furniture, which McMillen detailed the function of earlier this month. If a piece of home decor is rare, it's also possible the cat will identify with it so strongly that the cat will mutate and an element or design of the item will become part of the cat. In one screen, a cat that identifies with a Super Meat Boy doll has the same black eye and missing tooth as the hamburger hero. In another, a cat that identifies with gangster rap has a tattoo of a knife on his cheek and a bandana on his head. Again: there is a cat thug with a bandana and knife tattoo on his face. I ... I don't know how to end this post.
Mew-Genics wants you to hoard attribute-boosting furniture
Team Meat recently unveiled another aspect of Mew-Genics' gameplay: furniture collecting. Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen discussed the game's furniture system in a blog post on the game's site, drawing comparisons to Nintendo's Animal Crossing series. In Mew-Genics, players acquire furniture through Baby Jack's store then place it in a room in their house. Each piece of furniture, which belongs to one of five "types," influences a variety of stats in the game, from disease rates to each cat's life span. The five types of furniture are large, medium, small, wall furniture and those belonging to item sets. Team Meat says Mew-Genics will include 750 pieces of furniture in total, not including rare alternates for each one. The cat genetics and breeding game will launch in 2014 for Steam, iOS and Android.
Push two cats together to create a new one in Mew-Genics
Team Meat's Edmund McMillen recently attempted to explain how the Super Meat Boy developer's next game, Mew-Genics, operates. Naturally, McMillen opted to describe the game in webcomic form, noting that it is about "cat genetics and the forced evolution of the most adaptive species on this whole planet." The comic illustrates players' ability in the breeding game to mash two cats together in order to create a new kitten, care for them as well as enter them into battles and pageant-style contests. Team Meat previously referred to Mew-Genics as a "cat lady sim" that blends elements of "The Sims and Pokemon with a sprinkling of Animal Crossing and a dash of Tamagotchi." McMillen likened Mew-Genics to an unreleased Nintendo game called Cabbage that was in development by Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto for the canceled Nintendo 64DD system. Cabbage was a multiplayer breeding game that was expected to allow players to take their creature on the go with their Game Boy systems. Mew-Genics is in development for Steam, iOS and Android, and will launch in 2014.
The Binding of Isaac turns 2, celebrates with sale and documentary
The Binding of Isaac has turned 2 years old, but it's gamers that get the birthday presents. For one day, The Binding of Isaac is $1 on Steam, an 80 percent cut from its usual $5 price tag. In addition, the creators of Indie Game: The Movie have released on YouTube a 30-minute excerpt from their documentary in which Isaac designer Edmund McMillen details the origins of his game. McMillen explained Isaac was originally conceived as a game to be made in a week, while his friend and co-designer of Super Meat Boy, Tommy Refenes, went on vacation. "I didn't really have any idea of what I wanted to do, but I definitely wanted to do something risky," McMillen said. "I wanted to do something exciting, because I wanted something to replace that danger of running out of money, and the danger was, maybe I was going to do something that could hurt my career in some way." Two years and 2 million sales later, it seems the game-in-a-week experiment worked.
Mew-Genics trailer has folk singing, exploding cats, 2014 release date
The first trailer for Mew-Genics, the upcoming "cat lady sim" from Team Meat (of Super Meat Boy fame) has arrived, and it's... uh... well, there's singing, giant cats exploding, microscopic cats being injected into another cat, a cat pooping out another cat, and we're not 100 percent sure, but some cats might also be up to some NSFW activities at one point in the video. The teaser ends with a cat exploding into a mushroom cloud, which rains down more cats while a "Coming 2014" fades into view. About that 2014 release date: In an email to Joystiq, Edmund McMillen of Team Meat wrote that the game is "definitely one of those 'it's done when it's done' projects," so exactly when in 2014 we'll get our hands on these adorable kittens is up in the air. McMillen described Mew-Genics as a cat breeding sim, cat fighting sim, cat hoarding sim, cat pageant sim, and cat racing sim, all rolled into one. While you wait for your chance to breed, fight, hoard, show off and race your cats, why not sing the Mew-genics theme song to your cat and/or friends? Trust us, they'll thank you.
Special Edition of Indie Game: The Movie spooled up for July 24
A new version of Indie Game: The Movie, the 2012 documentary chronicling the lives of indie video game developers chasing their dreams, will be released on July 24. This special edition will include 300+ minutes of footage, including over 100 minutes of never-before-seen film that will include epilogues for some of the developers featured in the film. The Team Meat fellers, prominently featured in the film, also provide some new commentary tracks, as do directors James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot. The special Indie Game: The Movie will be available through Steam and the official site for $15, or for $5 if you already own the first version. If you pre-order now, a DVD boxed set is available for $59 (regularly $69), while the Blu-ray version is down to $69 from $89. Boxed sets won't ship until August, at which point they'll revert to their full prices. Both DVD and Blu-ray special editions will be signed by the directors, include exclusive artwork from Edmund McMillen, and offer a code for the digital special edition. Indie Game: The Movie is currently available for streaming on Netflix Instant, as a rental or purchase on YouTube and, until July 22, a $2.99 purchase on Steam, thanks to the Steam Summer Sale.
The Binding of Isaac reaches two million in sales
Team Meat co-founder Edmund McMillen recently revealed that The Binding of Isaac has reached 2 million in sales. McMillen noted his surprise at the game's steady success, having first launched in September 2011, on an episode of the Northernlion gaming channel on YouTube."In the first year we sold a million copies, and now we're already up to two million," McMillen said. He also discussed the Nicalis "demake" of the game, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and the definite inclusion of the Mystery Man unlockable character. The Mystery Man will use randomly-generated items and stats, offering a new challenge to players each time he's selected. McMillen also elaborated on the constraints that Flash presented in developing the game, and how Rebirth would benefit from fewer performance issues.
Basement Collection retail edition bundles in Indie Game: The Movie, out March 8
Team Meat's beardier half and Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen is bringing out a retail version of his gaming anthology, The Basement Collection, which Merge Games is releasing on March 8. The retail bundle includes a copy of the excellent Indie Game: The Movie, which chronicled Team Meat's journey to bring Super Meat Boy to XBLA.The bundle also includes a DRM-free disc with PC, Mac, and Linux versions of The Basement Collection, a Steam code for an additional version of it, a 36-page booklet of McMillen's 'The Box' art (as featured in Indie Game: The Movie), full soundtracks for each of TBC's games, and a sure-to-get-you-noticed sticker of Steven from Time Fcuk. As for TBC, the games in it are Aether, Time Fcuk, Spewer, Meat Boy, Grey Matter, Coil, and Triachnid.The retail edition is priced at $19.99, although Merge Games is offering a variety of pre-order offers to knock assorted percentages off that.
Team Meat teases cat fighting, full Mew-Genics announcement next week
This may come as a shock to some of you, but Team Meat's mysterious, feline-focused project Mew-Genics will feature cat-on-cat combat as a heavily integral part of the game's design, Edmund McMillen has revealed. Who ever would have guessed? Team Meat's games are usually so nonviolent.Furthermore, McMillen stated that he has been "using faked graphics for all the cats" in his weekly updates about Mew-Genics, meaning that everything we've seen so far has essentially been concept art. Next week, however, Team Meat will "finally announce what this damn game is," according to its official blog.
Today's Steam daily deal is nothing to cry over: Binding of Isaac 75% off
The Binding of Isaac is Steam's Daily Deal for Monday, January 28, on sale for $1.25 through January 29 at 10 a.m. PST. Interested parties can snag the game and the soundtrack in one smooth bundle for $1.50 during the sale. Wrath of the Lamb, Isaac's massive expansion, is just $0.75 and the soundtrack on its own is $0.25.Madness, depression and weeping babies have never been so cheap.
Mew-Genics reveals the sordid world of sewer cat racing
In the underground world of sewer cats (and we do mean underground), racing is the thing to do. At least in Mew-Genics it is – today's tidbit about the game teases Frank's Cat Races, a sewer-based scheme where players will be able to test how fast their felines are and potentially find their fortunes, Team Meat writes.We met the mastermind behind the cat races, Frank, in November, and if you'll recall, he has "head problems." He also has a tail, though apparently it's not much of a problem.
Nicalis wants your input on The Binding of Isaac's makeover
Nicalis is proposing four different art styles for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the console remake of Team Meat's bizarre PC game. Fans can vote on the four mock-up 16-bit art styles seen in the gallery below to determine which direction Nicalis will take the remake in.According to The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen's Tumblr blog, the game is getting a face lift "because I think the art is tired and I'm sick of looking at it." The survey also asks for input on which platforms the game should appear on, with 3DS and Wii U listed as options.Nicalis will begin development on the project in January and hopes to launch PS3, Vita and PC (Steam) versions of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth by the end of 2013, with Xbox 360, iOS and Nintendo console ports a possibility. %Gallery-172447%
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth PS3, Vita, PC ports in progress
Surely Edmund McMillen didn't think 1 million Binding of Isaac fans would be satisfied with the scant details he provided about the game's console version, Rebirth, in yesterday's postmortem.He's taken to Tumblr to clear up questions about Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, confirming that publisher Nicalis is working on ports for PS3, Vita and PC via Steam. Nicalis is talking to Microsoft and Nintendo, and even iOS is an option, "if it's not garbage."Rebirth will include Wrath of the Lamb and a new, similarly sized expansion that features a fresh final chapter and ending, two new playable characters, and "tons more items, rooms, enemies, bosses and the like."Rebirth will have local co-op only, and it will contain some "secret stuff" that couldn't be added to the Flash version. Composer Danny Baranowsky is mixing up some new songs for the console version. It's set to begin development on January 1 and be finished by the end of 2013, and McMillen wants to have a loyalty pre-order discount for anyone who owns Isaac already."The biggest thing to keep in mind here is that development is just starting with the remake, nothing is totally set in stone and a lot will change over time," McMillen cautions. "I'm currently in full-time development of Mew-Genics with Tommy and we have a few other little tricks in store for you next year, so my goal with Rebirth is to simply make sure the remake is top-quality and then detail out the expansion and updates once development is much farther along."Yeah, yeah, whatever, McMillen – our eyes glazed over in glee right after reading "Vita."
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth starts over on consoles with Nicalis
Edmund McMillen's postmortem of The Binding of Isaac may be a bit premature, since right at the end he discusses a new way that the game will live on, in a console version published by Nicalis. It's called The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and it will feature local co-op, revamped 16-bit graphics, and a second expansion, alongside Wrath of the Lamb, that didn't make it to the Flash version.McMillen says he was hesitant to develop another console title, after Super Meat Boy on XBLA ate up two years of his life. One of his guidelines in working with Nicalis is that he won't "deal with anything when it came to business."The Binding of Isaac has sold more than 1 million copies on PC and Mac in its first year on Steam, and 25 percent of those people bought the Wrath of the Lamb expansion as well. That's up from 700,000 full copies reported in June.There's no consensus on which consoles will get Rebirth, but in February McMillen noted he was looking at "1-2 Sony platforms." In the postmortem, he names Microsoft and Sony's digital platforms, as well as a Nintendo eShop release for Wii U or 3DS, the last of which is a one-eighty from that relationship earlier this year.
