The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen has revealed that his iconic roguelike was actually made as practice in preparation of Mewgenics.
After their 2010 platformer breakout hit Super Meat Boy released, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes' Team Meat began planning its next game. Announced in 2012, Mew-Genics was cancelled in 2014, with McMillen leaving the studio later down the line. McMillen announced in 2018 that he had secured the right to Mewgenics (now unhyphenated) and development on the game had resumed, before announcing its February 10, 2026, release date at the PC Gaming Show.
In between all of this, McMillen collaborated with Florian Himsl on The Binding of Isaac, which would become his biggest game to date, with an expansion and a remake (which in turn received four expansions) still being updated to this day. However, as it turns out, the only reason Isaac exists was for a bit of practice for Mewgenics.
Speaking to NoClip during their preview for Mewgenics, McMillen said, "Me and Tommy talked about doing a roguelike… especially after playing something like Spelunky," with McMillen feeling the genre was "untapped" at that point in time. And while Refenes was on vacation after Super Meat Boy, McMillen "wanted to do a prototype of another basic roguelike to get my feet in the water for this big roguelike me and Tommy were going to do." And three months later, The Binding of Isaac was done.
Mewgenics didn't go too well in the direct aftermath, with McMillen saying, "I think it was just too risky for Tommy and he did not want to work on it," adding that, "I remember finding out through somebody else that the game was cancelled," having thought the project was only on pause.
However, In the same year Mew-Genics was cancelled, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth launched and has grown into a massive game, with its own card game spinoff and puzzle roguelike spinoff The Legend of Bum-Bo, while still consistently having daily playercounts over 20,000 according to SteamDB, but it's funny to think that one of the most iconic roguelikes (it's certainly the game I think about when I think of the genre) was made to "get my feet in the water" by it's creator.
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