Everything began with an unloved game jam prompt. In August 2012, fresh off The Binding of Isaac's enormous success, Edmund McMillen took part in Ludum Dare 24. The theme for that competition's entries was put to the vote until, after five rounds, the organisers were left with a top 20. "Plus one joke theme," according to the now-deprecated webpage: "1,000 kittens."

This theme came dead last in public voting. McMillen took it as his inspiration regardless, and together with Team Meat co-founder Tommy Refenes began prototyping a game that featured not just 1,000 cats but – according to an early marketing tagline – 12 sextillion of them. "I just love the idea of going infinite," McMillen says. This number was achieved using a method McMillen had developed with his previous game, using Flash to add multiple layers of ‘animation clips' to augment the character's look. "I really liked how he'd change visually as you went," he says of Isaac. "And that was the initial spark. I could make a cat-like shape with a bunch of different clips for arms, legs, bodies, heads, whatever – randomise them. We could simulate those as DNA, and then you could have the cats breed and spit out all these different combinations."

It was a simple idea, but one McMillen found himself "pretty obsessed with". Dig up his blog posts from the time, and the enthusiasm is evident. "It's been very hard to keep this one a secret," he wrote in the announcement post for Mew-Genics, as it was then known.

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