Bringing rogue-like style gameplay back to fruition, The Binding of Isaac brings this tried and true RPG formula to an accessible format. With the title referencing the popular biblical story, this game features dark humor, religious references, and familiar gameplay mechanics. The Binding of Isaac has much to live up to after the developer’s success with Super Meat Boy, and it’s very safe to say that they succeeded.





The story is kept to a simple intro. You play as Isaac, a carefree kid living a carefree life until Isaac’s mom hears a message from God telling her to kill Isaac. She obeys, forcing Isaac to go on the run in the basement starting his journey, which involves him traversing through basements, caves, dungeons, and some pretty grotesque places, while fighting a variety of wretches and monsters along the way. The developer’s should be praised for creating a strong characterization Isaac and his mom using short cutscenes and the gameplay itself.





The gameplay is reminiscent to The Legend of Zelda on the NES. You start off with a basic “tear” attack, which takes down enemies at a considerable range, but with several hits. As you clear rooms, you’ll get a random drop of bombs, health, items, and coins(which are used to purchase items at shops) to increase your chances of succeeding. The item drops and rooms are all randomly generated, and the variety of items included in the game causes each playthrough to be significantly different. The items in the game include equippables, pills, tarot cards, and rare demon items that require you to sacrifice some of your health. There are so many items in the game, that you’ll have some difficulty remembering what some items do what, as the pills are only marked by their color, and some items are indistinguishable from others. Eventually you’ll play this game enough that it won’t be as big of a deal, but it would have been helpful to include some form of item description.



