In a post on the official blog, The Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen has announced that the game’s latest expansion pack, Afterbirth+, will incorporate the best community mods into the base game.
Afterbirth+, an expansion for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, not only adds a number of officially-designed new items, enemies, bosses, and a new ending, but the expansion also includes brand new modding tools which McMillen wants to let the community use to continue creating content for the game.
While finding and installing mods is often left up to the user or through integrated platforms like Steam Workshop, McMillen is taken a more hands-on approach with Afterbirth+. Once a month, he plans to release a new update for the game that contains what he feels is the best mod – whether that’s a new item, a new challenge, a new enemy, or any other community-created aspect. These mods can then be fully playable in the base game without needing to seek them out.
McMillen plans to hand-pick his favourite mods by browsing the creations on Reddit, with the possibility of deciding what to include left up to a Twitter poll. He also explores the reasons behind his decision to include mods officially:
“This is a feature im really looking foward to, i feel like ive personally scraped the barrel when it comes to item design and feel quite depleted, but im positive that there are a ton of cool ideas out there that are so left field that they MUST be added to the main game. so once this thing releases, its time to prove your worth! COME ON DESIGNERS! MAKE IT WORK!”
McMillen also offers a piece of advice for budding Binding of Isaac modders:
“...When designing enemies with the AB+ tools, try your best to design enemy alts.. they can be totally new enemies but adding new enemies at this point is only realistic if they run as alts to existing enemies due to not being able to also design 100s of new rooms that feature said enemies, so keep that in mind when modding”
The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ is set to release sometime before the end of this year.
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