"We could have just made The Binding of Isaac 2," say Mewgenics creators, and a "very easy" sequel to one of the greatest roguelikes ever "would have gotten 20 million wishlists like one second after announcing it"

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Mewgenics seemed "like a monumental task, but why shouldn't we be able to do it?"

Edmund McMillen
(Image credit: Edmund McMillen)

Mewgenics has been in various stages of development for well over a decade, and if the early scores are any indication all that dev time has resulted in a uniquely deep strategy RPG. But the devs themselves might've had an easier – and more financially viable – time making a straightforward follow-up to The Binding of Isaac, widely regarded one of the best roguelike games ever made.

"We both hadn't made [a strategy game]," Mewgenics co-creator Edmund McMillen tells GamesRadar+, "and I think we both knew going in it would be really cool to do this, but this is the hardest thing in the world to make. This is very hard, and this is going to take a lot of work. I don't know, we've been doing this for a long time, and I think we were just kind of up to the challenge."

"I've been making games since I was a teenager," McMillen's co-conspirator, Tyler Glaiel, adds, "and I definitely had tried to make RPGs or strategy games when I was younger. They're very difficult to get right because you can't rely on reflexes to balance fights. Reflexes are a very analog thing. You can be like, 'This fight is 2% too difficult, let's slow it down 2%.' You don't get that with a turn-based game because it's very discrete. The actions are very careful and thought out. The systems need to be solid, they need to make sense. There's just a lot that goes into it. A bunch of attempts – I think we both had tried it."

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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