Edmund Charles McMillen was born on March 2, 1980. He is an American video game designer and artist. He is known for creating Adobe Flash games with unusual art styles. His works include the 2010 platformer game Super Meat Boy, the 2011 roguelite game The Binding of Isaac, its 2014 remake The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and the 2026 turn-based roguelite game Mewgenics.
Early life
McMillen was born on March 2, 1980, to a family of "born-again Christians" of Mexican descent. He has lived in Watsonville, Santa Cruz County, California, all his life and attended Soquel High School. He enjoys drawing, and his favorite subject is monsters. McMillen spent much of his childhood with his grandmother, who he says was the biggest source of support for his creative work. Later in life, he received a box from his grandmother that contained all of his childhood drawings. Many of these drawings are shown when you unlock The Box in one of his games, "Aether," which is part of The Basement Collection. His childhood experiences are shown in many of his games, especially "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth." In an interview with Indie Game: The Movie, he explained that his family often faced problems with drug and alcohol addictions.
Career
Edmund McMillen began his graphic work with independent comics. He later focused more on video games, but he created a series of comics featuring Meat Boy, the main character from the video game Super Meat Boy, to help promote the game. His most famous games are Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy, which were released for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 4. Other games he created include Gish, Aether, The Binding of Isaac, and Coil. Gish won Game Tunnel's 2004 Adventure Game of the Year and Indie Game of the Year. Coil was nominated for the Innovation Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. McMillen was the original artist and animator for Braid, but later work by David Hellman replaced his designs. Braid won the Innovation Award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival and received several awards in 2008, including GameSpot's Best Platformer and Best Original Downloadable Console Game, and the 12th Annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Awards Casual Game of the Year. Aether was a 2009 IndieCade finalist and received an honorable mention.
McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes formed Team Meat, an independent game company, with the goal of avoiding third-party publishers. Their first game, Super Meat Boy, was released on October 20, 2010, for Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade, and on November 30, 2010, for Steam. A planned release for the Nintendo Wii was canceled due to file size limits on the WiiWare Channel. A retail version of the game was released on April 5, 2011. Due to Sony's initial lack of interest, Team Meat signed a contract that prevented the game from being released for PlayStation 3. McMillen and Refenes said in a brief statement, "We feel like we did it right the first time," after the success of Super Meat Boy. Their work on Super Meat Boy was featured in the film Indie Game: The Movie.
In a 2017 interview, Refenes said McMillen was no longer part of Team Meat and would not help develop the sequel, Super Meat Boy Forever. McMillen confirmed this in a blog post. Forever was released in late 2020 for various platforms.
The Binding of Isaac is an indie roguelike game designed by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. It was first released in 2011 for Microsoft Windows and later ported to OS X and Linux. The game's title and story are inspired by the biblical tale of the Binding of Isaac. In the game, Isaac's mother receives a message from God asking for her son's life as a test of faith, and Isaac escapes into a monster-filled basement to survive. Players control Isaac or one of 33 other characters through a randomly generated dungeon, fighting monsters in real-time combat and collecting items to defeat bosses and Isaac's mother.
The game was created during a one-week game jam to develop a The Legend of Zelda-inspired roguelike. McMillen wanted to share his thoughts on religion, influenced by conflicts between his Catholic and born-again Christian family members. He released the game on Steam in 2011 with little promotion, expecting few sales. However, the game gained popularity through Let's Play videos. An expansion, Wrath of the Lamb, was released in 2012, but further expansions were limited by Flash platform restrictions. Nintendo initially planned a 3DS version but later canceled the deal due to the game's religious themes.
In 2014, developer Nicalis helped McMillen create a remake, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, which added features beyond Flash's limits, improved graphics, and enabled ports to PlayStation 4, Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, 3DS, and Switch. The game received three expansions: Afterbirth (2015), Afterbirth+ (2017), and Repentance (2021).
In 2016, McMillen announced a prequel to The Binding of Isaac titled The Legend of Bum-bo, developed with James Interactive. The game took four years to create without a working prototype and was released on Steam in 2019 with mixed reviews. It was later ported to iOS, Epic Games Store, GOG.com, Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S in 2022.
The End Is Nigh is a platform adventure game developed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel. It was released on July 12, 2017, for Windows via Steam, and later for macOS, Linux, and Nintendo Switch. Ports for PlayStation 4 and Vita were in development. The game is described as a spiritual successor to Super Meat Boy.
Themes in the game were inspired by McMillen's personal and professional experiences, such as threatened lawsuits, his wife's pregnancy, and agoraphobia, which he called the "darkest" time in his career. He considered whether to continue making games, and these thoughts influenced the game's content. McMillen said The End Is Nigh contrasts Super Meat Boy's theme of challenging oneself for a purpose by making players question if the game's challenges are worth the effort. He described the game as "constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never drops" and the protagonist's struggles as "a life falling apart."