The Binding of Isaac Creator Claims He Created the Game to Gain Enough Experience for His True Magnum Opus, Mewgenics

In a recent interview with NoClip, Edmund McMillen, the man behind the widely acclaimed The Binding of Isaac, stated that he created the game to gain enough experience before he work on his magnum opus.

The magnum opus in question is Mewgenics, an upcoming cat breeding roguelike RPG where you breed cats, level up your team, fight epic bosses, and more.

Following the success of Super Meat Boy, McMillen alongside Tommy Refenes proceeded to work on their next project. That time, Mewgenics was originally called Mew-Genics when it was announced back in 2012.

However, just two years after its announcement, the project got cancelled and McMillen decided to leave the studio. In 2018, he secured the rights to the IP and even changed the name to Mewgenics.

The development of the game restarted, this time, in collaboration with Tyler Glaiel who McMillen worked with on other projects.

Gaining Experience While Working on the Project

Throughout the course of the game’s development, McMillen also worked with Florian Himsl to create the now widely known The Binding of Isaac. However, as the interview suggests, McMillen revealed that the reason he worked on the game was to gain experience to develop Mewgenics.

After the release of Super Meat Boy, Tommy went on for a vacation. During that time, McMillen was thinking of creating another game.

“I want to do a prototype of another basic roguelike to get my feet in the water for this big roguelike that me and Tommy were gonna do,” said McMillen in the interview. He then went on to contact Florian and ask him “Hey, you want to make this randomly generated game that just kind of reuses the Legend of Zelda dungeon structure?”

Florian said yes, and three months later, The Binding of Isaac was released.

Unfortunately, the idea behind Mew-Genics was shelved, thus resulting in the project being cancelled. “I think it was just too risky for Tommy, and he did not want to work on it. So, I remember finding out through somebody else that the game was cancelled.” recalls McMillen.

With McMillen finally securing the rights of Mewgenics from Team Meat, he restarted development and partnered with Glaiel to work on the project. At its current state, Mewgenics have more than 200 hours of playtime, 200+ enemies, 800+ unique items, and a bunch of exciting features players can look forward to.

You can watch the full interview below:

Mewgenics was originally scheduled for a 2025 release, but McMillen believes that releasing the game in either November or December will cause it to compete with AAA holiday releases. Besides, the extra months would allow them to further polish the game.

Mewgenics will release on PC this February 10, 2026.