The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth News

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

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

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

Let’s get started...

What’s your name?
Edmund: Edmund McMillen.

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

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



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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

It's me again. Happy The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth sixth anniversary! Thank you for your continued support, your hugs, shitposts, Isaac memes and dedication to the game. It means a lot to the team.

So you may recall a few weeks ago we interview Team Ridiculon. Well, we're not going to do that again. At least not today. What we are going to do is continue to preview some of the rad tracks from The Binding of Isaac: Repentance in the coming weeks.

This week we've tracked down (get it) Matthias to give us a new, um, song. It's called Fissure and it's your new favorite song. He also walks us through some of the more granular, fine details of the music.



So what should you expect while you listen to this track?

Fissure AKA Mines has a really slapping half-time groove. Matthias and Jon want you to feels like you’re getting sucked into the earth with elements like distant anvils are clanging away. Also.. Jon is literally destroying the guitar in the B section. It sounds like he’s actually plucking feathers off of a live chicken.

Matthias also played RotoToms. Which is a very dear part of his metal youth.

Like other thematic songs in the Isaac work, the melody is Sad and Proud and Dissonant. What you are hearing in this teaser is both the “Light” and “Dark” worlds back-to-back.

In usual Ridiculon fashion, the sound team continued to iterate on this one until they were happy with the feel and sound of the song. For Fissure it was four attempts to achieve the strangling guitar sound, the coaxing out textures that stray from traditional harmony. This particular track is filled with wonderful guitar noise.

It's a Minor in straight up 4/4 time

Also...

Please note the cool backwards drums.



Chord progression (for those asking) is a secret recipe. You’ll have to come find Ridiculon on Cape Cod and transcribe it in person on the back porch of the studio. Winters are cold so please wait to visit them until summer of 2077. It’ll be like Rey finding Luke on that really tall rock near the ocean. Hopefully they don't just throw away a perfectly good lightsaber.

Welcome back!

Thanks for return to The Binding of Isaac: Repentance devblog. I’m your host.

Last week we interviewed some of the newest members of The Binding of Isaac team (and in the future we’ll interview some of the oldies, too). Vinh, Nik and SAG really opened up and gave some awesome insights into what they were doing before Isaac and what they’re working on now. So we made the decision to divide the interview into two parts so you could get to know them better.

This second part of the interview delves further into the development of the game, the background and some of their process in the making-of.

I really hope you like, we’ll continue to talk to more members of the Isaac team here so if you haven’t already added the game to your wishlist, please do so.

For now, let’s continue where we left off

You're working also closely with the original Rebirth development team on Repentance, which has benefitted the development of the latter significantly.
Vinh: It's pretty crazy to walk in the Rebirth team's footsteps and see how they did things. It's one thing to try to make sense out of the garbled output of a disassembler, but to actually see the code the way it was originally written, and to work with the people who originally wrote it, that's something else entirely.

I'd say my coding style has changed a lot from trying to stay consistent with the code base, I've definitely picked up a few handy optimization tricks here and there and my code is a lot more readable now, I can't even read my own code from Antibirth anymore!

How are you able to nail the style and also resolve your design aesthetic and the needs for the Isaac world?
SAG: Edmund offers very thoughtful information on when something doesn't look right. It's also quite easy to follow! Most of the time I run a design to Vinh and get some feedback from him and Ed to see if something fits. I'm happy with my designs as a result because getting feedback from the big man himself makes it easier to understand how an enemy or boss looks, what it uses to attack, and other things like that.

There have been some stylistic changes to certain monsters that I initially was sad to see go, but now these changes have grown on me and I love and appreciate them now. As for design aesthetic sometimes I imagine a separate Isaac world in my head filled with possible monsters. It helps me narrow down a certain design and then I take some of Ed's elements to make it fit. Will you ever see this separate Isaac world in my head? Maybe, if have the motivation to...

When I was designing the bosses early on, my plan was that "This boss belongs in a room this size" and placing that boss in a room smaller than intended doesn't seem to yield the desired result of increasing the challenge.
Nikola: Yeah, that's pretty much it. Some bosses aren't that bad in small rooms, but if you had a boss that spawned a bunch of troll bombs in a tight room all you could do is pray. While that's pretty fitting for the game's themes, I didn't really have fun in those rooms. Besides, in the much later floors, some of the bosses come back as regular enemies, so I think in that case it's fine.

Are there any limitations for your development needs in the engine that you've encountered and how have you remedied this or worked around it?
I'd say the biggest limitations are shaders, basically what handles all the fancy visual effects. We have to work with a very outdated shader language for the sake of staying compatible with even the oldest machines, I see that as a good thing but it also means there are a lot of features we don't have access to.

It's interesting in a way because it forces us to come up with creative ways to make good looking effects with fairly simplistic code. In Antibirth, Downpour used something called "clipping planes" to cut sprites at their base, giving the illusion of Isaac and all the enemies being partially submerged in water. This is something not all graphics cards supported so we had to get rid of it.
We could have come up with a workaround for it but I never liked that effect in the first place, it looked really awkward with bigger enemies or bosses like Monstro. One of the new floors actually has an effect I'm quite proud of, and it doesn't even use shaders at all! I don't want to get into the details too much but it blends a couple of scrolling layers with the overhead shadow that's visible in most floors to achieve a rather nice atmospheric effect. I hope you'll like it when you see it!

A lot of the effects we did in the original Rebirth series were inspired by classic art effects that wouldn't require the most powerful hardware, you've probably noticed that during your time in development.
Vinh: Honestly I don't think hardware has ever been a limiting factor, Isaac is a retro looking game and while it's fun to add fancy effects that would be impossible on older consoles like the new water shaders, I try not to stray too far away from Isaac's low budget flash game roots.

I suppose one thing I'd add to Isaac if I could would be HDR support. That'd allow for small objects that glow in the dark, or the player's eyes adjusting to the light when moving from a bright room to a dark room and vice versa. This is already something I simulate via shaders but it has its limitations, HDR would make all of that a lot more natural.

Actually, some time before Afterbirth+ released I had a dream about it being revealed at PAX, and it featured HDR support along with some footage of the basement showing off some seriously cool lighting effects, with more vibrant lights and darker shadows. This actually inspired the look of one of the new floors some of you might have seen at PAX West last year!

How different does it feel for you making a mod for a game you love than being one of the people on the dev team responsible for making it happen? Do you feel a different sense of responsibility or about the same?
SAG: Back in the Antibirth days we were all just having a fun time spitballing ideas and making something. We all got to know each other and we all had great hopes and ambitions for the future. Everything was great! We all felt like one big happy family. When working on Repentance, the overall vibe felt... different.

We were all the same three dummies we were when working on Antibirth, but there was a strange sense of seriousness in the air. Like holding a huge weight on your shoulders - an important duty you need to fulfill. It's the same feeling as like, a prince or princess being the next to run a kingdom as a king or queen. Your freedoms and funtimes just sort of... fade, once you get to that place. I share this same responsibility with the others and honestly I feel pretty bad for the delays... time has not been very kind to us, but we still keep our chins up and try to make Repentance the best it can.

How do you merge those new design mechanics seamlessly into "classic" Rebirth design? Do you smile when you imagine surprising a veteran Isaac player with something they've never experience before?
Nikola: I think consistency is important (or at least that's what Vinh's been telling me for years), so making these new rooms still feel consistent with the style of rebirth rooms is fairly important. That familiarity in how rooms are structured is important for long time fans, who instinctively know how to handle a situation. Luckily, by the time brand new players unlock the new repentance floors, you should be familiar enough with the game to not be totally lost.

Also, you bet I'm smiling whenever I put in some weird new mechanic in the game players aren't used to. I'm really looking forward to everyone playing the game and encountering these new rooms and enemies and going "What the hell is that?" I know I like to put in some obscure or rare surprises in my own games 'cus it makes people go on wild goose chases and come up with outlandish theories of what other rare events could be in the game. I really enjoy stuff like that.

That's exactly how we felt when designing really clever traps in 1001 Spikes. IF, and a big IF, this wasn't Isaac and consistency with thousands of other rooms weren't a consideration, what kind of experimentation would you want to do with the rooms?
Nikola: I don't think it would be that much different from what I do now. I think the others would agree, there is comfort in using previous references for consistency. Sometimes coming up with things from scratch is hard and it's good to have a base to fall back on. I think a healthy mix of that and experimentation is what makes for good content.

A lot of your designs are much larger than even some of the largest Rebirth bosses, do you enjoy working in larger scale pixel art and what kind of challenge do you find in it?
SAG: Larger scale pixel art is pretty tough but it is absolutely rewarding in the end. Bigger bosses have all these little details like scratches or wrinkles and it takes some time for it to look perfect. Now multiply that like... 10 or 20 or 40 times...

I'd say it's not harder in a drawing sense, the hardest part is that they require much more detail than small or medium bosses. SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE THAT HAVEN'T PLAYED ANTIBIRTH. I still remember the time I was making sprites for the Witness. This boss is HUGE. The head alone is almost as big as Delirium's and had much more intricate detail. I believe I started on it 2 weeks before Antibirth was released? Every head took roughly 40 minutes to line, color, and shade. I had to do this like... 10 times?

The Witness also had giant arms and another phase with lots of giant parts... Hay nako I lost so much sleep over this LOL. Repentance has so many weird and wacky monster designs. I really like how Ed is approaching with his designs, many of them using challenging and interesting concepts we have never done before, art and animation wise.

Min Min was a design that grew on me, and I've grown to love the idea of a ghostly girl wearing an empty shell like a jack-o-lantern. For a while there's been one monster that I created that I really like. He's got a big head full of teeth and walks on two stubby feet. At first glance he doesn't sound threatening but he holds a really nasty surprise...

The changes you've made from Antibirth, both as a team and as a game, do you feel it's for the better two years later?
SAG: I think the changes we've made are for the better! Some of them came at a really small cost so I'm totally cool with it. I wonder what the other guys think!

Did you review the original flash codebase?
Vinh: I haven't studied the original Flash codebase, though I think I caught a glimpse of it when looking at the code that governs boss pools. I've seen Florian work on Eternal Edition a couple times and he has a rather unusual way of coding things, which I'm pretty sure I could recognize there! Going from Antibirth to Repentance was pretty smooth, in fact some of the features that took me a long time to code in Antibirth were much easier to achieve in Repentance, mainly because when making a mod, it's much easier to add content than to modify or remove it.

If you wanted to slightly modify the behavior of an existing enemy, the best option was usually to rewrite its AI from scratch, replicating its original behavior, and then adding your own changes. This is something that becomes completely trivial when you're able to modify the original code base. Most of the challenge from porting Antibirth content actually came from redesigning it. There are a lot of things in Antibirth I'm not particularly proud of, and it can be hard to take a step back and rebalance them without being influenced by the original design.

We have a lot of different room sizes and shapes now for the game, is there a specific room type you really enjoy designing?
Nikola: Standard size rooms are my go-to, most of my room ideas are usually normal sized rooms. But despite what I said about Bosses earlier, I really enjoy the occasional small rooms too. Those rooms are way more concentrated and focused which I think is sometimes a neat thing to make something interesting out of. Making rooms I see as solving puzzles, so small rooms are a neat challenge to me. I also like "Tall" rooms, at least more than "Wide" rooms. I'm really not sure why, I think it's cus they resemble squares more. One thing I kinda wish I could do is make bigger rooms be 1 tile longer, so that they have a true middle tile. But I can deal with just making some enemy placements a little asymmetrical, it ain't a big deal.

You've been working together now for a few years. How has your team dynamic changed or grown during this time?
Nikola: Working with Vinh and Sag has been fun. Surprisingly, both Vinh and Sag have the exact same work ethic, so they're both doing some real good work.

It might not feel the same as when we were a scrappy team working on a big rebirth mod back in the day, but at least we've improved how we work together sense then. Some things got easier because we have feedback from Edmund, so it's nice that we don't have to guess what fits in the game anymore.

SAG: I keep some sort of internal clock in mind for when Vinh and Leather are awake, and it's pretty easy to follow. For me, the best time to chat is at night - that's when literally like the other half of the world is awake. Usually in the day I just play games and take naps. Though it hasn't been easy recently, with classes and all...

Throughout the years we've had many ups and downs, some happening to all three of us at the same time. It's made me appreciate working in a small team that knows and understands each other. If I made a game sometime in the future, I would not mind bringing Kil and Leather along...

Vinh: We actually started drifting away from each other for a little while once Antibirth came out, our baby was out there and none of us were really sure about what to do next. Repentance is what brought us back together and I'd say we're closer than we've ever been! Nik and I are actually in the same time zone so we basically talk to each other all the time every day, we don't see Sag around as often but whenever she's around it's always a good time.

Sag was the first person to join the Antibirth team and her art has improved a ton since then. Many of the bosses and enemies from Antibirth have been visually revamped thanks to her (not to mention Maggy's glorious hair) and I think I can safely say Isaac has never looked this good. Seeing her make art for new content is always a huge motivator for me since it's a lot easier for me to imagine how something works if I can see what it looks like.

Nik came in as a guest artist/designer and ended up being our dedicated level man and probably lead enemy designer. His design skills have improved tremendously since Antibirth, many of my favorite new enemies and bosses are designed by him and I know I can trust him when it comes to making room layouts for the new levels. We used to butt heads all the time about enemy or item designs and while we still do, I've come to trust his instincts a lot more.

We're all so close to the end, does the end of this development journey feel similar to that of Antibirth? What are you looking most forward to on release of the game?
Vinh: Oh boy! Things are a lot more tense now that there are so many expectations to meet. Releasing Antibirth was easier because it came out of nowhere, nobody was expecting it, while people have been waiting for Repentance for more than two years... it's a lot of pressure! I hope it will live up to the hype and I'm really excited to watch everyone find all the new secrets. Especially that one.

SAG: The end of this journey carries a different vibe... fans that have played Antibirth know a bit of what to expect and there are also fans who have never seen Antibirth at all, so it feels like we've been developing a full game and a half game at the same time, you know? It's kinda weird now that I think about it...

The initial reaction for Antibirth was the most exciting part. From the surface it looks like a simple mod that adds items and enemies and such... until you get knee-deep in it. That's when it hits you. I'm curious on what everyone will think about Repentance. I hope it'll inspire and encourage fans to make fan art. I love and appreciate everything you guys make, thank you!

Vinh: Oh yeah, it's hard not to feel like we're not adding enough, since the part of the community we interact with the most has already experienced all of Antibirth.

Nikola: It feels the same to me because the end of development happened around the same time of year too. I remember when we were approaching the end of antibirth I would be constantly writing down how much stuff we have left to do and how much time we had left 'cus I like organizing stuff like that and knowing how much a project has progressed. But I think doing that only made the others more needlessly stressed.

I guess you could say I'm equally as worried if we're gonna finish this on time as I was back then. I'm really looking forward to watching all the streamers play repentance, those videos are always pretty good in the first couple of weeks of release when everything is new. I also look forward to seeing how people will adapt to the changes when it comes to regular and high level play. And of course, here's hoping that there's tiny little secrets in the game that are discovered months after release.

If you have one thing to say to people reading about the game, what is it?
Vinh: If you can eat pork, look up "saucisson" and try to get your hands on some, it's one of the tastiest things France has to offer!

SAG: If you see something like a character, a monster, or something that looks either more cuter or more anime than usual, it's probably my fault. I hope you'll like it anyway!

Nikola: Brie…


What do you recommend to a budding artist, programmer designer who wants to get into pro development? Knowing know what you know, what would you tell them to prepare or what to study, how to get ready?
Nikola: What you'll hear from me isn't anything you can't otherwise get from just asking Ed. Just make lots of small projects about small things that interest you, that way you make more mistakes, you learn more, and your games become better for it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, just make them now and get it over with.

Vinh: If you want to get into programming, don't be afraid to copy, a lot. You'll learn a ton from copying or modifying existing code if you put in the effort to understand it, and you'll get results a lot faster than if you tried to make something from scratch. Modding in general is a great way to learn new things because you already have a base that works, so you can easily make changes, see what happens and learn from it.

Also don't underestimate the usefulness of math, some basic vector math, algebra and calculus can get you a long way, there are a lot of problems in game development that can be solved in a very elegant manner if you understand the math behind them.

I like to think programming and math go very well together because the former helps you understand how useful the latter is. If you want to get into game design, just play games, a lot of them. If there's a game you like, try to understand why you like it, and when you design your own game, try to capture that same feeling. If there's something you don't like in a game, try to understand why, and remember it as an example of what not to do.

SAG: SLEEP. I cannot stress this enough. Think of sleep as a core part for doing tasks. I often joke about not getting enough sleep and end up realizing that's true like 70% of the time... Sleep does wonders for the brain and helps you concentrate on the time you spend doing things. Without that sleep you don't have the energy to have a clear and focused mind, and that's no good. Like, at all.

If you have a heavy job that requires a lot of attention, think of sleep as part of your job. Your boss and your brain (mostly your brain) will thank you for it.

Aside from bug fixes and tuning, what do you want to do after Repentance? Does the team have some ideas?
Vinh: If we're talking non-Isaac stuff, I'd love to work with Nik on one of his games, maybe the three of us could get back together and make something cool.

Nikola: After Repentance releases, I'm hoping we can add some new stuff.

SAG: After Repentance I will sleep for 5000 years. ...joking aside, I hope we'll be able to make more post release content for Repentance, but other than that, I'm uncertain about my future. Someday I'd like to make a game to dump all this weird character lore I've been writing in my off-time. But that's for another time...

Vinh: Sleep sounds nice though...

_

It's been no secret that the original The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth dev team at Nicalis has been working closely with Edmund for over eight years. Since that time the team has developed two DLCs and now for Repentance we're working with three new talented members who help little Isaac continue to grow.

You probably already have seen names like Jeremy, John, Simon, Adrian and Matt from the credits--and we'll interview them at a later time--but this week we want to introduce you to three of our newest members of the Isaac dev team. On the internet you might know them as _Kilburn (lead designer), LeatherIceCreme (designer) and NotYourSagittarius (artist). We've gathered together to get a better understand of their background and what they're doing to make the last DLC to your favorite video game.

Before we start, the trio have a ton of interest things to share so we're going to break this interview into multiple parts. We'll be sharing some pre-production dev screen shots and art so this is your #nospoilers warning.

You made proceed!

OK, now it's your turn, as we talked about we want to give little glimpse into the people who are making their favorite game. Can you each tell us a little bit about yourselves?
_Kilburn (Vinh): I was born in the south of France from Vietnamese parents, my dad was a software engineer so we always had a PC at home for as long as I can remember, I was playing all kinds of DOS games as a kid. It didn't take long for me to realize I wanted to make games well actually, I was more interested in modifying them, adding stuff on top of them one of the games I played the most as a kid was Worms, I'd always dream about all the weird items and weapons I would add to the game if I could mess with its code in some way, it's probably the one game that really made me want to become a game dev.

I only got into programming much later though, when I entered high school, at the time I had very limited access to my PC since you know... strict Asian parents so my main source of entertainment was a graphing calculator. I spent most of my free time trying to figure out how to get games onto it, and eventually I started making my own, nothing amazing obviously but it was something to pass the time that's where most of my knowledge of Lua and C++ comes from, actually then when

When I entered college I got into this game called Garry's Mod, which wasn't so much of a game rather than an engine made to be modded, I made all kinds of small projects on it, including an attempt at a perfect replica of Team Fortress 2 which I eventually dropped after a year or two, I think still, I learned a lot from it, how a lot of game mechanics are implemented and how game engines work in general, and since I was studying IT in college at the time I got to apply a lot of what I'd learned as well

So, yeah, long story short, got my masters degree in IT, had a brief programming gig at a petrol company, then Rebirth came out, stuff happened and now here we are.

LeatherIceCreme (Nikola): My name is Nikola, I live in Serbia (not Siberia), I'm known on the internet as LeatherIceCream. My Isaac obsession started with me making animations of the Duke of Flies and "Isaac of Isaac: Reisaac" on youtube before becoming the room/enemy designer for Anitbirth. And today I'm still doing that but for the official game.

I'm pretty glad about this turn of events as I really like Isaac and I also really like making video games. As a kid I would draw levels of my favorite PC games in a notebook treating it as a pseudo-level editor, so to this day I really like making levels/rooms. And because I like making levels I also like making enemies to put in them, so I'm very glad I get to do some of that for Repentance. I've made a few standalone games already, so I've had experience with my craft from there.

I fell into making content for the actual Isaac game back before Rebirth was released in 2014. There was a mod for the original flash Isaac was called "The Community Remix Mod", I asked to join their dev team as soon as they released a trailer, and I contributed a couple of items to it. Shortly after Rebirth was release, I was invited to become a developer for the Rebirth port of that mod as well, which eventually became Antibirth. Some of the items from Community Remix that I made up even made it to Antibirth. I'm really not an "items idea guy" at heart, I'm more comfortable with the aspects related to level design rather than game progression.

NotYourSagittarius (SAG): Hi, I'm the main sprite artist of the three of us. I live farther from the other members so my sleep schedule has always been a little topsy turvy. I'm fine with it though! My discovery of Isaac happened when I saw the original flash game on Steam. I had some extra money on hand so I thought why not, I bought it for gits and shiggles. I got hooked a tiny bit but then it snowballed and now Isaac shows up the moment I pick up something to draw with.

I met Vinh and Nikola later on when Rebirth came out. We all had great ambitions to make this thing called Antibirth. I came up with the crazy idea of adding alternate floors for each chapter and I thought it was just a pipe dream. But it's a thing now, and that's badass, because you can achieve anything if you put your heart into it. And Antibirth was nothing but heart. Then Repentance happened. I was overjoyed. Our little monster is now official.

Aside from Repentance, I also have an artistic background and I draw things on the side. How long I've been drawing I don't exactly remember. I just know that I've taken it a little more seriously early in my high school days. I attended college quite a while back, and I still do! Except in this unusual time everything is handled online, which hasn't been easy on the mind lol. I'm currently enrolled in an animation program.

BACKSTORY TIME.

When I was younger was often home alone doing my silly little tasks, like drawing on my sketchbooks and listening to music very loudly in my room. I had a bit of a strange upbringing - my mom insisted I should get a career in medicine like her one day, but now she and the other members in my family support the potential I have in art and I am very thankful for them. I'm gonna try my best to repay them back. Normally I live in the Philippines, but once the whole pandemic passes by, I'm planning to move to Canada when the time comes. Who knows, maybe I could meet up with some online friends I know that live there!

What is it that drew each of you towards Isaac?
Vinh: An old friend of mine! I remember playing Super Meat Boy and thinking it wasn't really my kind of game, so when Isaac came out and I saw the same art style, it didn't really catch my attention either, until one of my friends threw the game at me and basically forced me to play it so he could watch. Then when I started getting into it I couldn't put it back down anymore. I've always had a thing for games that offer a large variety of weapons or items that let you play the game in different ways (hence Worms), so there was no way I could resist this.

I could have walked right past this game without noticing it if that friend wasn't as pushy as he was. The theme really spoke to me as well, Isaac is a pretty familiar name since I was raised a Christian, and my mother is quite conservative as well (though thankfully she's never tried to stab me with a knife!). And while I wasn't too fond of the art style at first, it eventually grew on me and I came to really appreciate its simplicity.

Nikola: Back in 2011 I saw a no commentary gameplay video of the original flash version of Isaac. The first item they picked up was Boom! and it gave Isaac a fuse on his head. I didn't know of the whole items appearing on Isaac's sprite thing in Isaac so I thought he always had a burning fuse on his head and it was metaphorical, as I knew Isaac's themes were quite depressing. I really liked the fact that the game looked like a flash game I'd play online for free, but the gameplay and art style were so great that it was elevated to a "real game", and it taught me that those things makes a game special.

It was strangely inspiring to me, as I've been making small flash animations (and sometimes games) for years before finding Isaac. It was also the first piece of media that really got me interested in drawing gory and gross stuff. And the use of religious elements for items really peeked my interest too 'cus not a lot of games did stuff to that extent back then.

SAG: Oh boy, where do I start. My younger self had an interest in dark themes and Isaac fit the bill perfectly, despite looking all cutesy and funny. I had a sketchbook filled with Isaac drawings but I don't remember where I left it. I think it's best I don't find it. Initially, I never found an interest in this game. I remember seeing the trailer and had zero clue what it was. It was on sale one day so I bought it for no reason. I can't really imagine what would happen if I never picked it up that day...

For me, it's the weird style of Isaac that drew me to it. There's something absurd about a round and happy creature carried by flies.

What did you think when we announced Rebirth and the artstyle, music and gameplay was changed?
Vinh: I was so excited for it! I'd just completed Wrath of the Lamb when it was revealed and couldn't wait to experience more Isaac. The switch to a pixel art style was a bit jarring at first but it grew on me pretty quickly and I completely stopped thinking about it once the first few screenshots came out. Of course I was looking forward to all the new items the most and I remember taking apart every single one of Edmund's blog posts, looking for new items and trying to figure out what they did and how they worked.

I also remember being really excited for all the new synergies the game would bring and any eventual new characters.

SAG: This was very interesting because the idea of Isaac getting a remake felt unreal. I remember seeing some pictures on Ed's blog and it looked promising!

I remember when Man VS Game was playing it at PAX and I was so excited to see all the new little things like Fatties and new room sizes. Needless to say I've never been so hyped about a smiling poop that whistles. I found the change to pixel art a bit strange but seeing how there's so many lovely and creative ways people are playing with the artstyle now, I think it's for the better! I can't imagine Antibirth being done in the original's artstyle...

Nikola: I did find the change in art style to pixel art weird at first, I was very fond of the flash Isaac art style as well as music, but Rebirth did grow on me quickly once I started playing it. Although I did have very high hopes for the attention to detail in rebirth art, as Ed's blog posts at the time really got me excited for the brand new game and it's improvements. I remember believing that the level of detail was going to be so high that in one of Edmund's early Q&As I asked him if the same enemy types will look slightly different depending on what area they appear in. So I'm glad that Antibirth/Repentance has that high attention to detail thanks to Vinh really liking that kinda stuff. Either way, I was incredibly excited for the game thanks to all those old blog posts.

The team’s art has very quickly been able to integrate into the art style from the original team.
SAG: I'd say it took quite a bit of time to fully grasp the artstyle. There's some very simple rules to follow but are difficult to master. Anti-aliasing and line thickness, for example, are simple concepts that can make or break a design.

I'd say the trickiest part aesthetic-wise is trying to come up with a design that looks like something Ed would draw. I would sometimes study what Ed drew in the past and try to integrate some of his design elements along with a dash of my own style when I make sprites. Size of dash varies from 'too scary' to 'too anime'.




Technical wise, I'd say the toughest part is doing floor art or anything that requires lots of shades in general. Floor art is the most beautiful part of the game but it's also the hardest and least documented - many people struggle with it as a result. Someday I'd like to make an in-depth tutorial on how floor art works. I can't guarantee it but it's something I'd like to try. As for what software I use? Paint Tool SAI. It's the same program I use for drawing and it wasn't designed for pixel art but I use it anyway. Gotta stick with what you're familiar with or so they say...

What is the design methodology when designing rooms?
Nikola: I find it comfortable enough to make about 20-30 rooms per hour (that includes testing and tweaking each room multiple times). What tool you use is a matter of preference honestly, you just have to use what you're the most comfortable with, as I am definitely a creature of habit. The way I make rooms heavily relies on what new enemies/obstacles Vinh gives me to play around with. I try to make some basic rooms of varying difficulties with the new entities, then I make a bunch of rooms pairing those up with complimenting enemies. Sometimes I might even think up with interesting ways that new mechanic reacts to other mechanics to make the occasional interesting rooms.


A lot of the new content in Repentance is meant to be harder than the base game, so for many of the rooms I try to put the enemies far apart from each other. This way players with busted item combos don't clear the room as soon as they enter it. I also try to avoid putting spikes or other dangerous obstacles 2 tiles in front of a door, as to avoid players accidentally getting hurt when backtracking and not paying attention.

How did you find working with the Isaac code base so far?
Vinh: Oh I'll need to go back a few years for this one. When I got Real Platinum God in Rebirth, I immediately started taking the game apart to really understand how it works (is that okay to talk about?). This was my chance to add all the items I had in mind so how could I resist? It took me almost half a year to gain near full understanding of the engine, from there we started more and more items, then moved onto more ambitious things like enemies and levels, then we got a tiny bit carried away and Antibirth happened.

After spending a couple years working with the Isaac engine unofficially, working on the Forgotten Booster and Repentance was basically like being in familiar territory and nothing really changed. I wouldn't be able to tell you how I make enemies and items, all I know is that I usually have a vague idea of what something in the game should do, then I type some code and it eventually does what I want. I can assure you I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time and Nik can probably confirm this, he's witnessed it for himself.


Sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to get something that really feels right. The Forgotten is probably my second proudest achievement and I'm so glad he got a positive reception. He ended up quite different from his initial design, the soul was originally pink and didn't have a chain but we ended up making it blue once we decided it would be more interesting if it could only get soul hearts, and the chain was added to give an incentive to switch back and forth instead of staying as the soul and ditching the skeleton. My one proudest achievement? You'll have to wait until release for that one!

Are there room designs from Rebirth, Afterbirth or Afterbirth+ that you really enjoyed and tried to emulate?
Nikola: For the sake of consistency I do try to look at Ed's previous rooms as a guide. To me it's almost like the older the rooms are the more "pure" they are to me, and I sometimes look at them for inspiration. I also like to sometimes reference old rooms from previous DLCs, mostly to draw parallels between the "Base path" rooms and the "Alternative path" rooms. As for what to look forward to: I play this game every day and I'm no pro. I'm the closest thing to a casual player on the team, and I like to play the game a little bit "relaxed". So when something I did in a room bothers me a bit too much or I think it could have been more fair, I tweak it accordingly.

You've been doing pixel art for a few years now.
SAG: I've been doing pixel art since Rebirth came out. I found it an interesting subject to get my feet wet in. Eventually I branched out to other games that utilize pixel art like Nuclear Throne and to some extent, Enter The Gungeon. Making mods for other games is a fun challenge that really tests how well you can imitate their unique artstyles. In a similar way with Antibirth becoming official, there are those that push their skills to the absolute limit, and get their creations recognized enough to be put in the official game. Check out TF2 for example! They have a powerful community filled to the brim with boundless creativity.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Last week I interviewed The Binding of Isaac: Repentance Sound Team, Ridiculon. In it, Jon Evans and Matthias Bossi discussed the motivations and inspiration for the music you've been listening to since 2014 as well as the new soundtrack you'll experience later this year. Definitely read it if you have a moment.

In the dev interview Matthias and Jon spoke of a very special track titled River of Despare. We're debuting that here today for you to get a tiny feel of what you'll experience in the final game.

According to Matthias, "The River of Despare, it's a distance cousin of Sodden Hollow. Expect dank, liquidy and a slow drum groove. What you're going to hear is more of an ambient feeling of sudden hallow and what was spawned a lot of the Isaac soundtrack."

River of Despare on Soundcloud

Edmundo worked VERY closely with the Ridiculon to reach what is probably the pinnacle--the realization of that track in some form or another existing in the last six year. In the last dev update Jon and Matthias alluded to the fact that it's Matthias' favorite song that they've ever written for the Isaac canon. The reason? It's that melody, very sad and haunting. And it's constantly developing from the theremin (look it up).

Matthias describes the song as an unending theme--although it ends eventually. What you should not expect is a typical verse-chorus arrangement like a pop song. To Ridiculon they want you to think you're coming back, BUT YOU'RE NOT. Each time the theme gets turned on its head and the chorus and melody expanded further. Matthias says it's very much like something from Ennio Morricone--LOVE that man's work. Definitely look up Mr. Morricone. So it has that spaghetti western feel, like a once-upon-a-time feel.

Ridiculon and Edmund have dug deep into their souls and what we get us something that feels like the end of a story. Matthias says he doesn't know what it is about it exactly, but it's like the sad cowboy theme, "Jon plays beautifully through a Leslie speaker cabinet. If you haven't heard of one of these, they're a large speaker cabinet with built-in rotation. The speaker inside literally spins as fast or as slow as you want. So the sound becomes circular and warm. You can hear the sound swirling in space.

That combined with me playing one of my favorite drumsets. Those are my 'Isaac' drums that I only bring out for the slow ambient jams. They might as well be 55 gallon oil drums with the tops sawed off. You can't play them fast, you just have to hit them like a caveman and let them hit out. That's another win for the song."