The Binding of Isaac is almost a decade old now and developer Edmund McMillen isn't done with it yet. In 2014, it spawned a remake, Rebirth, and then an expansion, Afterbirth, which even got its own expansion, Afterbirth+. Now we're getting Repentance, due out at the end of the year.
McMillen has said he's never really finished with Isaac, but if this really is the conclusion of Isaac's nightmarish exploration of his hell-basement, it looks like it's going out with a bang. McMillen claims it's "basically a sequel at this point", and judging by the list of features, it's not a hollow boast.
Amid the additions are more than 25 new bosses, more than 100 new enemies and more than 700 items in total, with around 130 of them being new. A new quest, chapters and final boss also means that you'll lead Isaac through more than 5,000 new room designs, each assuredly gruesome and nauseating.
It's based on the huge Antibirth mod, with McMillen bringing in the mod team to build on it, turning it into an official expansion. Repentance is shaping up to be quite a bit larger than Antibirth, but the original mod still introduced thousands of new rooms, nearly 100 items and even featured an original soundtrack.
Last year, McMillen said he wouldn't be working with Nicalis, which published Rebirth and handled the console ports of The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, on future projects. Nicalis founder Tyrone Rodriguez was accused of pressuring employees to drink, using racial slurs and exploitative behaviour, leading McMillen to look elsewhere for the ports of The Legend of Bum-bo and console versions of the upcoming Mewgenics.
Repentance has been in the works since 2018, however, when Nicalis announced it with a wee teaser, and McMillen said it would release as originally planned, with the company still publishing it.
There's a Steam page up now, but we'll have to wait for the full expansion details. The page teases new features, quality of life improvements and tonnes of secrets. McMillen says we can expect blog updates to start appearing regularly from the second half of October, with the launch planned for December 31. I can't think of a better way of ending 2020 than fighting monsters while I'm up to my knees in shit.
