The Binding of Isaac

Okay so I recently started playing this game and dare I say it is one of the best games I've played in a long while. It came out two years ago and I feel stupid for not playing it earlier. There's a story as to what you're trying to do in the beginning:

Your name is Isaac and your mom is crazy. She hears the words of God and God says that Isaac is corrupted and must be saved. She starts by taking away her toys. In order to further save him, she locks Isaac in his room. God called her again, and finally tells Isaac's mother that in order to prove her love to God, she must kill Isaac. Right about as she's about to kill him, he finds a trapdoor underneath his rug. It leads to the basement.

There are two levels of each floor: (basement, caves, and depths). There are multiple rooms and each floor contains a treasure room (guaranteed to have an active or passive ability) and an item room (spend $ in order to get consumables and other items). There's also a secret room on every floor that you need to bomb into in order to claim your loot.

Your main attack is your tears (lol), and in order to beat the game for the first time, you must clear all six floors where you finally confront the final boss (I'll give you a couple of guesses as to who it is). All of the main bosses are based off of Isaac's nightmares, and there's even multiple shout outs to Super Meat Boy.

The number of Biblical references in this game are also astounding. The minibosses (who can spawn in any room) are the Seven Deadly Sins, and the other available characters are also references to it as well. The Tarot cards give you positive effects such as temporary invincibility to spawning multiple bombs across the room, and if you're feeling lucky, pills can give you the boost you need (or give you explosive [literally!] diarrhea).

And of course, there are always surprises lurking around every corner (and after you beat the game as well!). This game takes a lot of patience and runs on the Troll Engine, so you will probably need a few runs before you get the hang of it.

It's only 4.99 in the steam store, so you should definitely get it if you can!
--There's also a DLC which costs 2.99. If you've got the $ then I'd highly recommend it :3

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(basement, caves, and depths)

It's, uh, clear you haven't gotten too far in this game, lol

A lot of the fun of this game is (at least later on) experimenting with all of the hilariously broken shit you can work with. There are quite a few items that more or less guarantee winning the game (for example, an item found in the secret room called Epic Fetus... I'll let you get it and figure out what it does) and there is little more satisfying than running through the game with a thousand damage upgrades and razing everything to the ground in seconds.

Ultimately, the game is rather heavily damage-based - a run's potential increases substantially with just one or two damage ups. It's no surprise that Judas (one of the characters you can unlock) is my favorite by far - he has a stupidly high damage multiplier, making him more powerful and runs more entertaining.

One of my favorite mechanics in the game is the deal with the devil - occasionally, upon beating a boss (especially if you lose no red hearts to enemies or to the boss... there are a couple of more random mechanics that also increase its appearance chance), a "Devil Room" can pop up. Here, you have a chance to take a variety of items, some mediocre and some extremely powerful, at the cost of health. Early in a run, this allows you to make a decision that makes your game far more exciting. You become a glass cannon in exchange for making your run that much stronger. The feeling of running around, dodging bullets on one meager hit is akin to setting up a belly drum linoone correctly and hoping that your opponent has no way to counter it.

The other way that Binding of Isaac is fun is, more or less, what makes any roguelike fun - the ability to pick up a new item for the first 6 floors. Every time you open those golden doors to the treasure room, you never know what you'll get out of it - you might get something as useless as The Poop (an item that will spawn one pile of poop per room... you can imagine this isn't too great) or something as cool as Spoon Bender (which makes your shots home in on enemies). Some of the combinations are really fun to mess around with, too - My Reflection is a useless item on its own, but see what happens when you pair it with Cupid's Arrow!

This game borrows really heavily from Zelda 1 (hell, look at the screenshots and tell me they don't look like dungeons) but manages to make a game I find frustrating and uninteresting into one that's really diverse and one that I really enjoy.

Last comment: if you decide to use the wiki for help with mechanics, don't take what it says too literally.. it's really misinformed about almost every mechanic in the game. If you want really, really accurate info, go here.
 
Oh I beat the full thing multiple times but I didn't want to spoil TOO much :(

And yes I agree if you can find the Small Rock (from the off-color rocks with an X on them) and can get The Pact or The Mark early on they really come in handy during the long run. Food items give you more total health (though Lard will slow you down!) and yeah it does borrow a lot from Zelda.

One of my favorite combinations is Book of Revelations + Battery. Being able to charge a rather slow-charging item quickly works wonders, and whenever I've gotten the pair I've beaten Mom (both times ;) ). It pretty much will add an extra heart every other room, and with a damage up or two, you'll pretty much be nigh invincible. Stack that with Halo of Flies and the cube of meat....
 
So the controversy about this game is because... it's anti-christian and playfully satanic or...?
 
Great game, I love the randomness of it and the Zelda-like feel. My friend's actually killed himself with the devil pacts because he was like "oh it costs 1 heart and I have 1 heart so I have enough" and the proceeds to die.

The thing I hate is because it's coded in Flash (I believe), it'll randomly lag on some computers and cause input and gameplay lag, screwing up a run that's several floors down.
 
Best < 2$ I've ever spent; holy damn this game is fun. If you're reading this and you haven't bought this game, go buy it now. I've gotten 140+ hours out of it thanks to the ridiculous replay value that comes from every playthrough being a completely different experience. There's not a whole lot more satisfying than crawling through the game hanging on by a twig only to get an amazing item to destroy everything with.

Also, these things are the devil:

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So the controversy about this game is because... it's anti-christian and playfully satanic or...?

To call it anti-christian would be pretty wrong, really. Hell, if my fairly religious friend was able to enjoy the game after playing it on one random weekend and tell me stories of how OP Cain is, you'd probably get a kick out of it too... Play the game and see for yourself! (I'd imagine you'd enjoy it, too... After all, it's Zelda 1 in modern clothes. See how many enemy parallels you can find!)

As for the controversy, it's not all that easy to identify; it's somewhere between the toilet humor and the kind of creepy / disgusting nature of the bosses / enemies... To put it bluntly, it's not a game that you should play with your kids.

If you want, read Edmund's "postmortem" about it on Gamasutra. He elaborates a bit on this topic.
 
I played this game for 1 day straight when I bought it! here are my stats :S

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I didn't pace myself when playing the game so I'm kinda exhausted by it. I remember some of the challenges being such a bitch to get through
 
Quite possibly my favorite PC game. It's a really huge shame that it was built in flash, as the game completely stopped functioning for me and I cannot find ANYWHERE that provides support for the game (I tried contacting the developers and got no response).

I'm extremely excited for Rebirth, although re-unlocking the D6 again is going to suck majorly
 
Oh man there's so much on this game I absolutely love. After spending literally £3 for the game + Wrath of the Lamb expansion, this game has given me the best value of money on any game I've ever played. After almost 800 hours playing this game and have unlocked all achievements for it am I getting bored of it? Absolutely not. Still to this day, BoI provides so much entertainment and is my go-to game when I get bored, the sheer randomness and uniqueness of each run really make it a game worth playing again and again and again and again.

Half of the enjoyment is the exploration and discovering of the floors, and items and finding out what each does, how they synergise with other items. Anyone who is thinking of getting this be aware, that this is a tough game to play and will only get tougher, but the satisfaction of winning makes the journey and experience worth the difficulty. One of the few games that can probably make someone rage because of luck MORE than competitive Pokemon.
 
The game looks fantastic! Can't I download it free? I lack a credit card and my parents will never pay for a game like this :/
 
The game looks fantastic! Can't I download it free? I lack a credit card and my parents will never pay for a game like this :/

No, you have to buy it (if the dev gave it out for free, he wouldn't make any money and then he'd be too poor to make games). I think you can buy Steam gift cards in various places, though. That sounds like something that probably exists.



On another note, I would strongly advise new players against reading the wiki or the aforementioned mechanics page for this game. Doing that takes a good-sized chunk of the fun out of the game.
 
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