Isaac: The Hardening!

First ill get a few small things out of the way. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth soundtrack went up on steam mid last week for preorder, Sadly steam doesnt support preorder downloads for soundtracks so the only way to listen to a few tracks early is to download via Ridulon's Bandcamp page. sooo what we did is put the steam soundtrack on a 33% off discount if you pick it up before it official releases with the game on nov. 4th.

also word on the street is if you set your price to 6.66 when you buy the album on their Bandcamp page, they will send you something… something evil….

Speaking of evil, im in the process of finishing up a screen print/tshirt design for the launch of the Rebirth album (and rebirth itself). im not sure when we will get around to printing shirts (or let alone reopening our shop) due to a current move… but rest assured this image will find its way onto something you can pay for!

and just in case you are totally out of the loop you can still preorder the game now on steam and get a 33% off discount if you own the original isaac. PREORDER NOW!

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but enough about all that… its time to get Harder!

a few of you know that early in rebirth dev i was toying with the idea of difficulty settings, some of you assumed this meant an easy mode and had a shit fit on the internets… well fit that shit back where it shat from, because there is no easy.. only hard!

a large new feature we added to Rebirth is “Hard Mode”. now i actually dont want to go into great detail on what makes it harder.. because i dont want to spoil too much and we are still technically balancing this aspect of the game. but i can say that some of the more glaring aspects are gaining no hearts from bosses and curses being extremely prominent.. you’d be surprised at how much just these aspects can effect difficulty drastically.. but trust me when i say there are a lot more aspects to hard mode that should make even the most seasoned lets player stain their panties.

we added hard mode to challenge all of you monsters that seem to be able to beat the game 100 times over without dying… (you know who you are) and also as just an extra challenge, once you’ve completed the normal difficulty.

a few notes on hard mode:

-Beating different goals in Hard mode will unlock new content not unlockable on Normal.

-Beating said goals in Hard mode will also unlock any unlocks that would be gained by beating Normal mode (so you can start on hard if you'd like)

-There will be achievements for Hard mode.

-Hard mode will have some visual hud/menu changes so you are always aware if you are playing on Hard. (or watching someone play on Hard)

i can already hear you guys screaming “but how the hell do we keep track of what we have beaten with what characters on what difficulty! RUINED IT! 24/7-4:30GLAZEIT4EVAR!”

well you can shut your filthy mouth! because rebirth will feature something the game had needed for ages… a character completion tracker!

TADA! (kind of, i had to censor some spoilers)

As you can see there are now icons that will appear for each character as you cycle through them showing what “end game goals” you have completed, i beat mom’s heart with Isaac, see upper left note.

(!spoilers for the original game!)

each character in the game has a set number of item unlocks when you beat certain points, kill mom, the heart, isaac, satan, chest, etc.

(/!spoilers for the original game!)

these “goals” are now visually tracked on the char. select by showing icons that represent each one. Beating the game on Hard will outline said icon to show you have 100%ed that “goal” for that character.

with 3 new characters and a lot more to see… this makes for a greatly expanded and much more time consuming experience, especially when you add the stuff you guys have no idea even exists yet…

… so much stuff!

next week isaac turns 3… what should he get for his birthday?