Edmund McMillen is making the most of 2018, starting off the year with a fresh new Q&A. And while he spent a good chunk of the time discussing The Binding of Isaac‘s future plans, he also detailed his own personal plans post-separation with Team Meat.
First off, it may entirely be news to you that McMillen is no longer working with Team Meat. McMillen had worked to create Team Meat with Tommy Refenes — a studio that would later publish Super Meat Boy and the upcoming Super Meat Boy: Forever. However, in an interview with publication Eurogamer last year, Refenes mentioned in an off-hand remark that McMillen was no longer working with Team Meat or on any of their projects.
McMillen confirms that statement in the beginning of his Q&A, simply saying he is “no longer part of the team” and that “Tommy and [McMillen] are now working independently.”
However, that isn’t remotely close to the end of McMillen, who already had an independent flair. Over the past year, we have heard a lot of his recently released project The End is Nigh, regardless of the fact that it nearly appeared out of thin air. In fact, from the game’s original announcement to its release last month, The End is Nigh only had a six-month promotional lead. McMillen specifically addressed why there was so little promotion regarding it:
The End is Nigh is probably my most personal project to date, it spawned from a very difficult time in my life where i questioned the point of continuing to make games and if my heart was really in it anymore. it was simply something i really needed to do in order to find myself again and in the end its the one thing that kept me from retiring.
working on that game with Tyler was amazingly cathartic and it became a giant personal achievement.
Tyler and i didn’t talk much about the games development publicly because we weren’t sure it was going to actually see the light of day. I’ve started many projects that have become stone walled by outside sources or just vapor ware and i didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up (including mine) with this one.. so we just kept our mouths shut and popped out a game in 7 months. i honestly like this style of dev a lot more, but in hindsight it would have probably been a much more popular game if we had hyped it up for a few months before release.
Speaking further about The End is Nigh, McMillen made it a point to note the game is coming to PS and “maybe more consoles in the future.” Also, he cleared up confusion about his project ouroboros which he mentioned “kind of became The End is Nigh.”
Anyone following McMillen knows his next game is The Legend of Bum-bo which is a cross between Puzzle Quest and The Binding of Isaac. And while the game just recently got a delay, a lot more good news is coming for the game in the coming months.
Last but not least, McMillen gave a hint on what his next project is — and it is a blast from the past. Apparently Edmund McMillen’s previously revealed eugenics-based game Mew-Genics is back from the dead. It would appear that McMillen got the property in his divorce settlement with Team Meat. Specifically, this is what he has to say about the project:
Tyler [Glaiel] and I are currently prototyping some stuff for it and if all goes well I’m 99% sure that little monster will once again become my obsession. Mewgenics was always my oddball dream project and probably the game I’m questioned about the most these days. Mewgenics is being remade from the ground up so don’t expect to see much for a year or two.
As mentioned above, The End is Nigh is currently available for PC and Nintendo Switch; The Legend of Bum-bo and Mew-Genics are in active development, but not slated for any other console specifically. You can check out the (old) Mew-Genics trailer below: