Edmund McMillen, the designer of Legend of Bum-Bo, has announced that Legend of Bum-Bo free DLC releasing next year for the roguelike title.
In a Steam news post, McMillen explained what exactly happened that took the DLC so long to arrive, and it's quite a doozy. To start, the launch was a mess, and the lead programmer 'James' worked to fix bugs and update the game after he had already been through months of crunching. They then decided to create a "free mini dlc to make up for our launch issues", and then after that, there were months of silence.
What is Bum-Bo? Well, according to the developers it's "a puzzle based deck building rogue-like prequel to The Binding of Isaac... Made of cardboard!" which is rather inventive. It got decent reviews and a 7.5/10 on TechRaptor, so it's not like it was a bad game from the get-go. Just one that needed more polish and love.
McMillen apologized for the lack of transparency and "seemingly abandoning the project", but their reasons seem... pretty reasonable. After the final Bum-Bo update, James fell into a "deep depression" and couldn't continue working on the project. McMillen, having suffered from depression in the past, understood this, but this also meant that work couldn't be completed on the DLC as James was the lead programmer. Eventually, McMillen decided to go with a small development team to finish the project and to also port the game on console.
Then for McMillen, he had his second daughter being born, suffered through the California wildfires, and he had to sell his house and is now set up in a "small rental" with his family. Pretty rocky, eh?
Good news though, as the DLC is now finally back on track, and it will include a few new alt bosses, new items, and a few new features that were on players most-wanted lists. There's also a new character called Bum-Bo the Lost, of which a more in-depth post will be made about the character closer to release.
What do you think of Legend of Bum-Bo free DLC? Have you played Bum-Bo yet? Let us know in the comments!
