The Binding of Isaac: New Update Teased

You could say that I’m a fan of The Binding of Isaac series.

I’ve played it…

A little bit.

And it’s okay.

And with the addition of Afterbirth+’s built-in mod creation tools, I had assumed that this would be the last title update I would ever see to the game series. After all, with Afterbirth+ giving the community the power to create custom content for the game at-will, what would be the point in the developer coming in to improve upon that?

Unless the plan was to entirely release a sequel-style new game on top of the other version, any of the larger updates that used to be the end-all for the Isacc games would seem like nothing more than small expansions ever since the game received full mod support, which has allowed dedicated teams of community coders to create massive additions and expansions that are released over the steam workshop for nothing at all.

But according to an update from series creator Edward McMillen, was wrong. In this update, McMillen told Polygon that he’s never done with Isacc, and perhaps the recent lack of news or content updates was due to the production and subsequent release of the Isaac-themed card game, a massive Kickstarter hit.

Last night, publisher Nicalis tweeted a short teaser for a project called The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. It’s unclear at the time whether this announcement will be a fully-fledged sequel or another expansion. Check out the teaser and the tweet below:

pic.twitter.com/m8Kqnufacr

— Nicalis, Inc. (@nicalis) August 30, 2018

As you can see, the video itself is not very revealing: A title card with a knife through it is nothing new (and not even anything particularly shocking) when it comes to the Isaac series, so it looks like fans will have to wait until Pax 2018 to get any solid details on what’s going on with the new title.

However, that hasn’t stopped them from kicking up into the good old rumor mill…

The newly showcased logo bears large similarities to a project known as The Binding of Isaac: Antibirth, which was a fan-made total conversion mod that added large amount of content and options to the game, complete with plenty of well-balanced new characters, floors, and bosses. For a fan-made mod, the quality of the content was high enough that most aspects blended seamlessly with the main game, and it was clear that a large amount of time had been placed into this project.

This mod was released before official mod support for The Binding of Isaac was released, so the process to create this mod was likely much more difficult than the process of current modders.

McMillen previously discussed adding AntiBirth’s content as an official expansion to the game, but the idea never came to fruition. However, the AntiBirth team did later update and add most of their content to the official modding page once mod support was added, so it is unlikely that this new title will be mostly comprised of the AntiBirth content.

McMillen also released another tweet, saying “7 Years later… And it’s the year of Isaac!”.

And while this again does not confirm or deny any kink of details regarding the new content, it seems to imply that whatever this new content will introduce will be a significant update to the game. Maybe it is a new title. We’re not sure.

I’m just hoping it doesn’t switch over to a 3D graphical style. There might be a lot of things Isacc could do with, but 3D graphics aren’t one of them.