Triachnid, and the Edmund McMillen I Don't Know

Watching Mewgenics take the world by storm shouldn't surprise me, in a lot of ways it mirrors the exact phenomenon that was The Binding of Isaac in every single one of its iterations, all of which I basically grew up with. Edmun ''doing it again'' isn't uncharted territory for me, but it is still impressive to see happen all over again for such a different kind of game, and especially after watching so many of the guy's projects failing to leave a mark in that same way, tho that's like asking the Titanic to sink twice (tho it LITERALLY just happened with Mewgenics as I just said but I digress).

What didn't surprise me tho, is to see part of the conversation loop to McMillen's… sensibilities. It was bound to happen, for every new release brings a mixture of interesting transgressiveness towards Christianity and the humor of a man that seems to refuse to grow up from an era that represented its prime but now it’s long gone, all sprinkled with the kind of decision making of a guy either too stubborn to change directions or that lives under a rock. Talking about these things was expected, these things being there to begin with was expected, they are Edmund McMillen’s brand in a way, their signature, it is what they are, what he is…right?

I do not know the man, I am not in his head, nor do I feel the same kind of admiration I once felt for him, but I thought that I had a good understanding of his character through his works. He’s pee and poo internet humor personified, but in that resilience to remain in those younger days, it processes a mixture of feelings and experiences that are inseparable from the persona behind the code. A mind with immense talent for design tied to childhood experiences, producing something thematically interesting out of them sometimes, but few of those feel like a product of someone willing to examinate that past, or why did they feel the way they felt, the only thing that mattered was to make something fun to play and that faces with shit, that’s the Edmund McMillen I thought I knew, that’s the only Edmund McMillen there is.

After Triachnid, I’m not sure I can hold on to that claim.

It is still a clear result from the beginning Flash era, both in the context of its developer and the scene as a whole; an avenue for control experimentation, short gimmicks that could run in a browser without breaking but that could hook anyone with the novelty and style alone. On a vacuum, it fits like a glove, and it a physics platformer like this wouldn’t be worth paying much mind beyond appreciating the effort of accomplishing this sort of physics… but that’s not all there’s to it.

There’s an immediately apparent lack of… well, of Edmund himself, something probably way easier to say in retrospect than it was at the time, but I can’t understate how… quiet this feels, and I really mean that in a good way.


Triachnid is slow, almost meditative in essence and vulnerable in form. It somehow manages to find a way to blend the crass Newgrounds view of the world and nature with the gimmicky factor and comes out the other side feeling… sincere. I felt a game that wanted me to be careful, think before I move, not because of tight platformer but because of the character’s state, a response out of not wanting them to see them get hurt. It actively seeks that response through tactility, though the little expressions of the spider, through the exasperation of moving in the green sludge. Playing this, you get the feeling of an Edmund that wanted to say something different, try his hand as something moodier, something less about himself, but that still had as much of himself, just in a different way. Something that gets all but confirmed when watching the game’s cut section of the Indie Movie (remember that?), which felt like being validated of my assumptions in all possible ways, even if Edmund’s way of placing into words what he wanted to accomplish are kinda eyebrow-raising at times.

There’s a part of me that forces me to admit that my fascination with Triachnid comes more from what it represents than with the game itself; there’s a reason I didn’t gave up at the section just before getting swallowed by the beast, and its that, for all the interesting things that it does and its moodiness, it can escape the fact that it’s a painful game to play in ways that go beyond the intended pains in the ass. I can take the spider’s built-in clumsiness and the slog of moving each individual leg EVERY day, but the amount of bugs present due to the engine’s imperfections, the instant deaths and random re-positioning (I got teleported out of nowhere THRICE), and the environmental clashes and glitches ruin the experience and vibe it’s actively trying to sell, and the annoyances of a system DESPERATE to try something cool but being stopped by these things is sad to see, but I’m also not gonna put my sanity for a fucking spider web that doesn’t function.

I very much did not like playing through Triachnid… but I’m still FASCINATED by it. In it, I see a different McMillen, a McMillen intrigued by the realm of possibilities, by atmosphere, by stories that move through the act of play… it’s the McMillen I can now see through something like The End is Nigh , the McMillen I wish could show himself more often.

I didn’t lie when I said I don’t feel any form of fan-level adoration for Edmund, this examination isn’t born from that, but I feel that there’s something incredibly fascinating to see in a guy that I stupidly thought I had solved, an artist whose limits I though I knew. A stupid kind of though, and being proved wrong is kind of re-assuring.

Something doesn’t need to be great or passable to captivate you, and for all its flaws, Triachnid is a wonderful window into a part of the brain of a guy I believed straight-forward in his thematic craftsmanship.

But I guess the beauty of art is that not even the sky is the limit for that kind of crap.

Recommended watch: Triachnid's cut section of the Indie Movie

Thank you so much for reaching this point.