The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth News

Hey there, I'm SnakeBlock! I've been silently creeping around in the shadows, so you might not have heard too much about me. I suppose the secret's out now though - I'm doing art for Repentance! Pretty cool, huh?
Sag's still the lead artist - I've mostly been helpin out with art on the side, but I still have a fair few things to show. So, let's get right into it! Let's see here...


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Well, I've made plenty of foes for Isaac to encounter on his journey, so let's start off with a few of those.


SLOG



A very simple enemy for the Dank Depths, this ocular menace is a type of Guts that leaves behind sticky slowing creep, and likes to charge directly at Isaac if he lines up with it.



They can be surprisingly tricky to deal with when there's a bunch of em sliding around at once. Tread carefully!


PLANETOID



This strange floating growth appears in Chapter 4, and has a whole solar system of tears orbiting around it at all times! They occasionally fart and send their tears further outwards to make Isaac's life just a bit harder. You could say it's an enemy version of the Tiny Planet item...



They're real invasive personal space-wise, so they can be pretty difficult to maneuver around. Best to dispatch of them quick.



I've made plenty more freaks for Isaac to meet in the final game, and I've enjoyed every second of it. I hope you guys will enjoy coming across and fighting em just as much!
Moving on...



Like Sag, I've also been working on puttin a fresh coat of paint on various bosses in the game (and even a fair few of the regular baddies) to make them look closer to how they did in Flash. So, in a similar vein to Sag's blogpost (which you should check out if you haven't already), I'll be showcasing more of those changes here!

Here's a lil collage I made of some of the resprites I've done:



And here's a few of em in action:



This isn't everything - there'll be more glowups to see in the final game, so keep your eyes peeled!! Do note that everything here's subject to change, however.

Enemies and bosses aside, I've also given some environmental stuff a bit of a makeover. Specifically, the rocks and other obstacles that make up every room will have a different appearance on every floor, to better match the areas thematically (and look more varied in general).
Here's a few examples from the Caves:


the Flooded Caves:


and the Depths:




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Alright, the shadows are calling, so I suppose that's it for the blogpost! Huge huge huge thanks to Vinh and Ed for this opportunity, this was pretty fun to write and I hope it's given you guys your fill of Repentance stuff for the week. Toodles!





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well hello there... Edmund here, lurking down in the unknow depths below! and im here to sell you stuff!

don't tell anyone, but we got this super secret exclusive isaac club where if you sign up and confirm your email... you gain access to exclusive deals from our special group i like to call the naked boys!



want access to something like this? what about some isaac action figures? or even a boss statue? well its all coming soon! and if you sign up and join my nudist camp you will have first dibs! SO DO IT!

xoxo
-Dr. Creepy

Hey-ho Isaac fans, it's your old pal again Nikola Antibirthovic. As you know, I am the lead room creator for repentance and also creator of the Rainmaker. Today we're talking about some new enemies you'll be seeing in the upcoming dead horse beating (that's what DLC stands for).
I know one thing and that's enemies, so sit down, grab some orange juice and look at the gifs of these new monsters.


--Bulbs--



Let's get the biggest bastard out of the way first, the Bulbs. These are enemies you most commonly see in item rooms and other special rooms. Their movement is twitchy, they're hard to hit, and worst of all they take away your active item charge instead of your health.



The good news is that these guys are not variants of existing enemies, so I have to place them in levels manually rather than some fly enemy being randomly replaced with these guys. A while ago I saw a mod that makes every character start with the D6, sounds like that'll be stressful with these guys around for every single run.


--Grudges--

Now that Ed teased the Mausoleum track last week I suppose the cat's out of the bag. Yes it's true, the new mausoleum floor exists, please keep calm and contain your excitement.
The grudges are brand new traps that you can find on this floor, they come after Isaac much like the Slides you see in the Depths sometimes. There are a couple differences of course, like how they stay where they are after they hit a rock and can even press buttons to solve puzzles.



Oh yeah, and they can turn enemies into a bloody paste.



It's a great addition to the mausoleum floor and all we had to do was rob Derek Yu blind.



--Level 2 Willos--

After watching a bunch of videos of people playing the antibirth mod, we've discovered that people really hate the willo enemies from downpour.



Obviously the correct solution here is to also make level 2 versions of them for Repentance!



The good news is that these ghostly flies orbit monsters rather than you, making them actually less dangerous than you'd expect. They still shoot at you, effectively making these guys orbiting Horfs. They also have this neat behavior where if their host dies they move on to another enemy to orbit around.



What a great detail! I'm sure whoever added that little feature lost sleep over it!



--Holy Mulligan--

Last time everyone's reception to the new four souls enemies in repentance was overwhelmingly positive. Everybody was on the streets parading the return of holy eyes in Repentance. People pulled over random strangers on the road to talk about their holy bonies, it was nuts.
Anyway, we're going to show off one more as a little bonus. It's the Holy Mulligan!





As you can see it's a cathedral mulligan that spawns little angel babies out of it's head. That's pretty cool, he seems happy enough about it.


Okay, Ed's telling me to get me off his computer already, so that's my cue to end the post here. I hope everyone enjoyed those gifs and I hope the rest of the repentance team gets some rest soon. As for me, I'm going back to my wooden hut to make some more rooms, Goodnight.


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BONUS ADVERTISEMENT (yay!)



are you aware that the binding of isaac is also a multiplayer card game!? well its true! but sadly it has been sold out for the past year... but dont worry! we will be reprinting it along with adding a HUGE expansion to it with loads of repentance themes! and with every kickstarter we do, there will be TONS of exclusive merch!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
(this could be you!!!!)

sign up here to be notified of the upcoming Isaac events and limited promos and also gain 2 exclusive bonus cards when you back the kickstarter!

SIGN UP HERE!

see you next week
-Edmund

Its new track time! "Walls of Denial" is the track for the 3rd alternate floor in repentance called... The Mausoleum! what's inside these mausoleum walls you ask? NOTHING! NOTHING AT ALL I TELLS YA!

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yum yum gimme some! am i right? well i am, and you will be getting some of this yum yum in only like 7 more weeks! 7 fucking weeks! anyway im keeping this post repentance light mostly because i have some additional extra special binding of isaac mega news!


for those of you that missed the mega kickstarter 2 years ago, Four Souls is a binding of isaac card game for 2-4+ players ( though soon to be 1-4+ ). It plays kind of like a game of MTG commander but you draft your build out of 3 giant decks of cards oozing with themes and mechanics from the video game... and its quite neato if i don't say so myself!

Not a week goes by without tons of people on twitter asking how to get their hands on the game, or isaac figures and plushes.. well it was all from that damn kickstarter and i hope when we do it again in a few months you guys will be there.

look at all that stuff!

for now though, if you sign up early we will also send you 2 exclusive promo cards that you can only get via early sign up! ( signing up costs nothing, but if you sign up and back the kickstarter you get these bonus cards for free! ).



Even if you aren't into the card game, just signing up and backing the entry tier will enable to you to get your hands on some of this crazy shit up there! so do it!



-Edmund

In OG isaac, items were designed to combo together on a basic level without hard coding, this worked well enough for most tear effects, visuals, and stat based combinations... but when adding in an oddball tear effect like brimstone or moms knife, the effect would just override your existing tears.

In rebirth i wanted to make sure the items that would overwrite existing tear combinations could fully combo with other items, it took a lot of hard coding but we ended up with really neat stuff like, homing brimstone and quad shot moms knife.

fast forward to repentance... at this point there are so many possible item combos its impossible to keep up, but Vinh was up to the challenge and spent more hours than i feel comfortable posting here on a TON more custom combo effects.

now not only do these effects combo how they should logically, a lot of them add totally new visuals and mechanics to the game that should catch even the most jaded isaac pros off guard.

the following are a few neat ones for your viewing pleasure.















and since i got you here

were you aware that there is official BINDING OF ISAAC MERCH!? ITS TRUE!



over the past few years we have made tons of badass isaac items, most are sold out but a few remain in the Nicalis Store.

this year we will be greatly expanding on this merch via an upcoming kickstarter for Four Souls: Requiem ( the binding of isaac card game some of you own ) for those unaware of it, here is how it plays...

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this kickstarter will launch in June and should be quite a wild ride.. so make sure youre following me on twitter to get updates and take part in polls / QAs so we can make sure this kickstarter features everything you guys want when it comes to amazing isaac swag.

till next week!
-Edmund

First and foremost, Repentance is now up for preorder on steam!!! GO GET IT!

NOTE: Repentance requires all previous DLCs to work! ... so we did you a favor! To celebrate the preorder announcement we put all previous isaac DLCs and the core game on sale for 50% off!!!

Get the full collection HERE! (this includes the repentance preorder)
or if you are waiting to see how things go but still want the DLCs at 50% off, get them HERE!

but if that wasn't confusing enough.. i bring you THE BLUE KING COLLECTION!

The Blue King Collection is a bundle of ALL OF MY WORK that was just released on steam in one very discounted bundle! this bundle includes 8 of my games + 3 dlcs and you even get the ultra cheap basement collection that features over 7 more of my games from the flash days! that's 15+ games for less than the cost of 9 Tall, Cinnamon Dolce Latte's from Starbucks!

but i hear you screaming... NO ONE CARES! BRING ON THE NUDE BOY! WE WANT MORE CHILD ABUSE! WE WANT POOP! WE WANT BLOOD! and i agree.. on to the GIFS!



and what do we have here? some kinda mine cart ride to hell? and those poor children on that ride appear to have their heads cut at the jaw.. SHOCKING!



oh and look at this! on this episode of "preteen mom" a little demon girl appears to be showing off her 4 kids to a few angry neighbors who simply do not approve of her lifestyle choices!



and finally we end with this dapper young chap who appears to be firing small rockets so hard he's shitting out little turds that seem quite impressed with his ability to murder.

now lets cap this post off with a little QA! ( answers pulled from twitter )

Q: how many visual and mechanical changes have been made to the game?
A: we honestly haven't been keeping track but 100s of changes have been made over the years, a lot of the old stuff will feel fresh and new and a great deal of the art will look more vibrant, varied and more squishy. its really impossible to list it and it's still actively happening.

Q: will there be new challenges in Repentance?
A: yes! there are currently 7 new challenges.

Q: is there true co-op ( 2 isaacs ) and can i play online?
A: Isaac will feature true co-op and support up to 4 players, it wont have traditional online functionality but you can def try it out online with steam's "remote play together".

Q: is repentance just the antibirth mod ported over ?
A: no, repentance is the antibirth mod + a ton more content + super secrets + ultra secrets + poop physics. really though it takes the mod and expands on it greatly, ties it into the games story and adds a lot more content over the top that i cant talk about without spoiling too much...

Q: will you be porting more mods officially into the game?
A: no, we have no plans in doing anything like that.

Q: will you be making some of the new repentance characters into plushes and figures like you did in previous kickstarters?
A: for those of you who missed it, we have released official azazel, isaac, Lost and Guppy XL plush dolls via our kickstarter as well as a series of small figurines. we will def be making more of both for the next kickstarter but sadly no, none of the planned characters will be created due to us polling people on what characters they would purchase. next on our Plush list is Lilith and Bumbo, then possibly Keeper and Blue baby. but ill do a post about this when we get closer to the next kickstarter.

Q: i hear you are planning on updating the keeper so he's "more fun", how are you doing this?
A: yes the keeper will get an update, 2 actually.. they wont be ground breaking but they will fix a lot of issues people have with him that feel "unfun". he was designed to be a challenge character like the lost and blue baby.. but yeah, he's getting tweaked.

Q: do you feel like repentance is the definitive DLC to isaac? and does the the game feel complete to you now?
A: yes, isaac feels "done" to me now, in fact it feels like a sequel has been pushed inside Rebirth in a very nontraditional way, a great deal of mechanics and ideas i was saving for a sequel were added to Repentance and its hard for me not to think of it as a new release, kinda like how spelunky 2 built off existing areas and mechanics but didnt reinvent the wheel.. repentance to me feels like a slightly lesser version of that idea, its like isaac 1.9 and i think it closes the book thematically and storywise finally.. so yeah lets call it complete!

GO PREORDER IT!

-Edmund