We still don’t know when the game will be reaching computers and PlayStation systems, but Edmund McMillen recently took to his personal Tumblr to dole out some details regarding The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth, the in-development remake of his endlessly replayable 2011 project. The cheeky FAQ he posted included frothing-at-the-mouth questions like “why are you breaking the game i love so much you asshole!?” and “Are you going to fix all those damn bugs?! you shit ass asshole!” (Erratic punctuation/capitalization original.)
McMillen answered those questions and more, revealing that the new version will sport much more than just a retro-styled facelift. “Not only is rebirth a fully remodeled and revamped and greatly improved version of isaac + [the 2012 expansion] wrath of the lamb,” McMillen writes, “but it will also feature so much content that the game will almost be doubled in terms of new enemies, items, characters, endings, secrets, rooms, chapters, challenges and a shit load of very new and unexpected additions.” Touching on specifics, the FAQ says that more than 150 new items will be added to the pool of weird magic doodads that make up the heart of Isaac’s brutal, randomized dungeon crawling. McMillen also mentions that Rebirth will include offline cooperative play, so you and a friend can bond over naked children shooting tears at bugs and piles of poop.
The main item of note in the original Rebirth announcement was an apparent move to a very different art style, this time modeled after retro games instead of McMillen’s signature cartoon Flash-game motif. Answering the question “Why did you change the art style for rebirth!? (ps i hate it!)” McMillen admits that the he intended the original Isaac to look like a retro game all along but didn’t have the time to make it that way. “i wasnt ever happy with it and hadnt planned on the game being so successful so i just got the job done so i could finish the game… aka the art was lazy and to me, just an eyesore,” he writes. And although McMillen originally intended the game to look like it was made for the NES, Rebirth is modeled after Game Boy Advance games—slightly more detailed than the 16-bit graphics of the Super NES, he says. It’s a shame it won’t be modeled on that disturbing puppet-based Rebirth trailer instead (see below). The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth is slated for release this year on Steam, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita.