The Binding of Isaac: Repentance Dev Team Interview Pt. 2

Welcome back!

Thanks for return to The Binding of Isaac: Repentance devblog. I’m your host.

Last week we interviewed some of the newest members of The Binding of Isaac team (and in the future we’ll interview some of the oldies, too). Vinh, Nik and SAG really opened up and gave some awesome insights into what they were doing before Isaac and what they’re working on now. So we made the decision to divide the interview into two parts so you could get to know them better.

This second part of the interview delves further into the development of the game, the background and some of their process in the making-of.

I really hope you like, we’ll continue to talk to more members of the Isaac team here so if you haven’t already added the game to your wishlist, please do so.

For now, let’s continue where we left off

You're working also closely with the original Rebirth development team on Repentance, which has benefitted the development of the latter significantly. Vinh: It's pretty crazy to walk in the Rebirth team's footsteps and see how they did things. It's one thing to try to make sense out of the garbled output of a disassembler, but to actually see the code the way it was originally written, and to work with the people who originally wrote it, that's something else entirely.

I'd say my coding style has changed a lot from trying to stay consistent with the code base, I've definitely picked up a few handy optimization tricks here and there and my code is a lot more readable now, I can't even read my own code from Antibirth anymore!

How are you able to nail the style and also resolve your design aesthetic and the needs for the Isaac world? SAG: Edmund offers very thoughtful information on when something doesn't look right. It's also quite easy to follow! Most of the time I run a design to Vinh and get some feedback from him and Ed to see if something fits. I'm happy with my designs as a result because getting feedback from the big man himself makes it easier to understand how an enemy or boss looks, what it uses to attack, and other things like that.

There have been some stylistic changes to certain monsters that I initially was sad to see go, but now these changes have grown on me and I love and appreciate them now. As for design aesthetic sometimes I imagine a separate Isaac world in my head filled with possible monsters. It helps me narrow down a certain design and then I take some of Ed's elements to make it fit. Will you ever see this separate Isaac world in my head? Maybe, if have the motivation to...

When I was designing the bosses early on, my plan was that "This boss belongs in a room this size" and placing that boss in a room smaller than intended doesn't seem to yield the desired result of increasing the challenge. Nikola: Yeah, that's pretty much it. Some bosses aren't that bad in small rooms, but if you had a boss that spawned a bunch of troll bombs in a tight room all you could do is pray. While that's pretty fitting for the game's themes, I didn't really have fun in those rooms. Besides, in the much later floors, some of the bosses come back as regular enemies, so I think in that case it's fine.

Are there any limitations for