The Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac

Steam - World - Title card.

Developer Edmund McMillen Publisher Florian Himsl, Edmund McMillen Published 2011-00-28 Platforms Macintosh, Windows Genres Action, Rogue-like, Shooter Themes Horror, Religion, Religious fiction Series The Binding of Isaac Distribution Commercial

The Binding of Isaac is a rogue-like shooter developed by Edmund McMillen and published by Florian Himsl and Edmund McMillen for Macintosh and Windows on 2011-09-28. The game is heavily inspired by the dungeons of The Legend of Zelda, randomly generating levels and filling them with enemies and power-ups from a massive collection of possibilities.

The story begins with Isaac's ultra-religious mother hearing voices from her god telling her to murder her son Isaac (like from the story from the Book of Genesis). Isaac hides in the dangerous basement fighting off monsters and becomes more powerful before encountering his mother who he must kill before she kills him.

Personal

Own?	Yes, on Steam.
Won?	Yes, the basic ending.
Finished	2013-12-19.

I own this game on Steam and have beaten the initial Isaac ending.

Review

4	4	5	4	8

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game has a vast array of items to collect.
• There is wide variety in the enemies as well.
• The theme, while macabre and gross, is very well conducted.

Bad

• While the game isn't too easy, which is good, it's a bit too hard. It took me around 30 tries before I could finally beat the most basic version of the game, and not because my skill increased that much, but because I got lucky with the items I found.
• In the later levels a lot of chests and bonuses are surrounded by pits, but items that allow you to move over pits are rarely generated, so, unless you get lucky, you will miss out on all these upgrades.
• Initially I liked the idea of the pills being randomly assigned new effects from a large pool each play-through, but the possibility of being crippled seems to make them too undesirable to gamble with.

Ugly

• The game offers no explanation for any of the items you collect forcing you to have to manually keep track of the function of the hundreds of items (or use a hint document). This is especially frustrating when you have to choose between an item you're familiar with, with a potentially worse item, or, even worse, two completely random items. A better system would be to have all but a few locked from the beginning, then, after the player becomes comfortable with them, randomly add a new one, then, after they player finds and uses that, add another, and so forth.

Media

Videos

Longplay.

Representation

Strong female character?	Pass	Heroines include Eve, Magdalene,
Bechdel test?	Fail	No women speak to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Every character appears to be white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Expansion

An expansion called The Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb was released on 2012-05-29 which adds new items, chapters, enemies, rooms, music, a new game mode, and a new playable character.

Links

         

• bindingofisaac.wikia.com - The Binding of Isaac Wiki.