Indie Focus: The Binding Of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac isn’t by any means a new game. In fact, it’s being remade – with PS4 and Vita versions – on a new engine, as Rebirth, for release very soon. I’ve owned the game since its initial release in 2011, but never got around to playing it until recently.

The truth is, I didn’t really enjoy The Binding of Isaac when I first tried to play it. I mean, I got it – the Zelda homages, the randomly generated rooms and the brilliant shooter gameplay, completed with a very unique and pronounced art style. This had a lot of the things needed in my eyes to be a good game.

But it’s disgusting. It’s one of the most vile games I’ve played. Surfaces splattered with blood, feces dropped from enemies, items including diseased syringes, or stem cells which makes you swell a fetus on the side of your head, increasing your power and heart containers in the process. It’s horrible, and at first I couldn’t get along with it on any particular level.

The real crux of Isaac for me was that I didn’t know how to play it. It’s hardly a complicated game, but when you combine all of the items you can retrieve with all the different combinations of maps and bosses, it could become confusing. But then, a few weeks ago, I finally decided to return.

It’s just a shooter. That’s all it is, and you go from room to room killing enemies before you get to the boss. There are power-ups in the form of items, or Zelda-like chests littered around, offering hearts, coins or bombs. These help you on your way through the game but – really – why would you need help if you can just blast through a room and then retry if you fall?

The roguelike structure is why. Any given room could mean death, due to insufficient supplies or particularly hard enemies, and in Isaac, death is permanent. You’ll have to go back to the first level and fight your way through again. But that’s okay, because it’s going to be different this time, and that’s what you want to do. You’re not doing the same thing, you’re playing twelve thousand variations of a brilliant game and finding new items continuously, with the DLC only adding more.

And that’s why The Binding of Isaac is so good – you’ll never have the same game twice. In one, you might become a bipedal demon with a charging laser beam who fights loads of spider enemies, while in the next game you could become a flying, spectral being, fighting worms and flies instead.

Eventually, you know what items are and which ones to pick up or leave behind, and you’ll learn exactly what to aim for on any given playthrough. It becomes systematic and tactical, only bettered by a randomised new item which you’ve never found before. Then, your tactics will adapt and you’ll be learning these new mechanics in no time. Once you’re over the strange premise and initial confusing, you’re in, and you’re never getting out.

I really mean that. I’ve played about twenty hours of the game in the past two weeks, and providing I have the time and the means (a laptop, anywhere), I’ll be playing it even more. The upcoming PS4 version brings co-operative play, a shedload of new items and more mechanics, which I can’t wait to discover, while the Vita version will make the game even more portable and accessible.

After then, I’m really worried that I’ll never be able to stop playing it.