A Cry For Help - Edmund McMillen Collection

Edmund McMillen is either celebrating ten years of independent game development, or planning to mysteriously disappear. Either way, the result is the creation of a CD containing everything artistic he's made over the last decade, from games like Aether, Meatboy and Triachnid to the doodles in his sketchbooks. We like Edmund McMillen lots, so this seems like a rather good thing.

The CD, brilliantly called This Is A Cry For Help - Celebrating 10 Years Of Artistic Independence, is a teeny $10, and available via NewsGrounds or a special edition with handdrawn extras and stickers from his Etsy shop. McMillen explains,

"I've spent the past 10 years of my life trying my best to stay independent and work on personal projects I felt had meaning to me and what I was trying to express as an artist. All my work has a personal cathartic theme. I don't censor my ideas even if they contradict my personal views and I think that's something very important when it comes to making art. Thanks for buying the CD, I hope you enjoy my work."

On there you'll find 17 games (including Gish [lost levels], Aether, Meat Boy, The C Word, Cereus Peashy, Blood Car!, Guppy, and Blash Miner), along with 450 pages of his comics, over 300 pages of sketches, and a ton of Flash games and animations. Blimey.

Which is all a bit fab, really. McMillen is heralded by many in the PC indie scene as an inspiration, and his often disturbing games get plenty of recognition. Gish is certainly his most famous release, won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at 2005's IGF Awards, and the disc contains a collection of "lost levels" from the game.

He's obviously having a bit of fun with his music choice for the trailers, too. For instance, his GameTrailers censored trailer features Kaada's "Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time", with the closing reprise of "Bye bye" over and over.

Then in the uncensored version, the music is Hush by Tool, in which we're reminded, "Fuck yourself, fuck yourself, you piece of shit."

So, be warned that there's plenty of appearances by ladybits and manwinkies before you buy, and as you'll see in the trailers, a large amount of gloopy blood fun. This anthology also makes one other rather interesting point: it's possible to have ten year collections of internet obscurities. Ten years!