Did you have a toy box as a kid? I did. The contents of which I can no longer remember, there was probably the microcosm of crumbs, almost definitely a tissue or two, as well as a distinct lack of dolls. There was also a distinct lack of being chased through the house by a religious, knife wielding nut-bar mother. I’m going to go out on a limb and say I had a relatively safe childhood.
Isaac, on the other hand, could not say the same.
Echoing the Biblical story of God’s test to Abraham, God appears to Isaac’s mother and informs her that to prove her loyalty to the Lord, she must kill her son. Locking him in his room and removing all his personal possessions and clothes, she prepares to sacrifice him, but he escapes into the basement where our game starts.
A brilliant blend of a twin-stick shooter, and a 2D top down dungeon crawler, our young protagonist must fight through randomly generated floors absolutely stuffed to the ceiling with messed up creatures.
With permadeath looming in every run, each item you collect could be the difference between life and death. Some items synergize really well. Others… not so much.
Most items you collect will also alter Isaac’s physical appearance. You could go from a sweet, bald, crying baby, to a hulking monstrosity wearing high heels and a wig shooting lasers from his eyes, or a flying cat spewing flies. Or you could end up crying a shower of bombs which explode into smaller bombs and not have the item that shrugs that damage off.
Did I mention the unlockables? You can’t play The Binding of Isaac and not unlock things.
Everything from crying on poop, beating a boss a certain number of times, donating money or dying in a very specific order will unlock new items, characters to play as, alternative bosses, new floors or difficulties; which makes the replay value of this game phenomenal. PHENOMENAL.
You could unlock multiple things in one run, or you could unlock nothing for a few runs. It all boils down to luck. And competence. A little bit of competence. The Binding of Isaac is not going to hold your hand.
I wouldn’t get to thinking that each run will be a cake walk though.
You will start each game with low damage, low health and you will have to survive until you have learned all the attack patterns and behaviours of the enemies. And if that isn’t daunting enough for you, sometimes the game will throw a random champion enemy into the mix. They may drop things on death or behave in a different way to their normal cousins. This also applies to the bosses.
Each floor is randomly generated at the beginning of each level. They will usually have one Treasure Room, and either a shop or arcade, a secret room or two (which may or may not contain a free item, free pick ups like Tarot Cards, coins, bombs, keys, pills or hearts; or a mini-boss) and a main boss. On later floors, the bosses may start to appear as mini-bosses. This game wants to kick you in the head every step of the way. Treasure Rooms and shops aren’t free to get into. You’ll need keys, and there’s no real guarantee the item will be good anyway! Secret rooms can be found by bombing the correct places… if you have bombs. Pills can boost your stats… but they’re unlabelled until you take each one. Oh, and some of them can mess you up by removing health, decreasing luck, or decreasing your tear shot frequency.
Easily one of the most frustratingly rewarding games, by the time you’ve battled through disembodied heads, dismembered legs and hands, foetuses, wombs, angels, and dead incarnations of yourself… You’re ready to do it all again.
No two runs are ever the same! The more things you unlock, the more you broaden the scope for making some really interesting synergies with items.
Challenges will test your mettle against the game with some more difficult scenarios. You start off with certain items, there are no Treasure Rooms and there is usually always a caveat.
Start off as Guppy (who you would usually transform into after collecting three pieces of your beloved pet cat throughout the floors), but have no ability to attack with tears. Your only mode of damaging enemies is by the hairball you have to swing behind you. Or maybe you like seeing how you can make Tarot Cards work in your favour. Or perhaps you just fancy getting your followers to do all the work, and have them do the damage for you.
Regardless of how you think you like playing, this game will bend you over if you let it. You have to clothesline it back into the table and make it do what you want. That’s not to say this isn’t an intended effect, because it is. It’s a brilliant game, but it can be soul destroyingly hard, so you can understand why some people may not have the patience for it. It’s supposed to be challenging. You’re not going to win every time you play. For example, see below.
I have died almost 500 times, but only followed about 15% of those through to the final conclusion. Sure I unlocked new things throughout the entire time, but my best streak so far, out of almost 500 runs is TWO.
I have this game on Steam, I’ve already put over 50 hours in on there. That is vastly overshadowed by the amount of time I have spent playing The Binding of Isaac on Xbox One. Yet my best is two?
Summary
Your mileage may vary; could be you’re the super-duper Regent of Games with excessively superior reflexes and strategic planning, but as I’ve said, this game wants to kick you in the head every step of the way. You keep coming back for more.
So draw your own conclusions. Why does this mother happen to have a menagerie of dead dismembered animals lying around in the basement? Why does she have a Josef Fritzl-type basement in the first place? Where can I get me some stuff to turn my tears into giant homing flaming technicolour balls of death? Or a huge dirty old bra to scare my enemies with? ̷L̷o̷o̷k̷ ̷i̷n̷ ̷t̷h̷e̷ ̷l̷a̷u̷n̷d̷r̷y̷ ̷p̷i̷l̷e̷.̷.̷.̷
If my mum had removed all my personal possessions and all I was left with to fend for myself with was crumbs and tissues… I’d be left for my younger and most definitely doomed sibling to find in the basement later.
Darkly devilish, unique and most of all, fun, revel in it’s almost heretical depravity, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is available now on the Xbox Store for less than $20.
Lauren contributed 14 articles to ICXM between 2014–2016, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push. They post on X as @Lulzaroonie.