Indie Game Review: The Binding Of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac is an independently developed action-RPG with roguelike elements that was developed by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. McMillen is perhaps more well known for being the brains behind Super Meat Boy, whilst Himsl has worked with McMillen on several of his other lesser-known projects such as Triachnid and Coil. As you would expect from the creator of Super Meat Boy, this is a twisted and dark game with a similar art direction, and plenty of style. Does it deliver in the gameplay department, though? Read on to find out. 

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Isaac is a child born into a world full of evils, and nobody knows this more than his devoutly religious mother. One day, while watching television, Isaac's mother hears the voice of God who tells her that her son has been corrupted by sin, and commands her to take away his possessions, lest he fall victim to undesired thoughts and influences. Being an unquestioning servant of God, she agrees. Soon after, she hears the voice of God again, this time demanding that he be locked away in his room for further protection against outside evils. Again, she obeys. She then hears the voice a third time, instructing her to prove her devotion to her God by taking Isaac's life. Without hesitation, she arms herself with a large kitchen knife and makes her way to his room. Seeing this, Isaac escapes through a hidden trapdoor in his room to the basement - a place brimming with horrific nightmares and abominations. It is within this dark world, set inside Isaac's basement and his mind, that he must battle legions of horrible creatures in order to find his salvation... or his doom.

The Binding of Isaac is played from an angled top-down perspective very similar to the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, one of my favourite games on the Super Nintendo. Indeed, the two games share many similarities in both design and art direction. Where the Binding of Isaac differs mainly, however, is that rather than being set in a large world with carefully designed dungeons, the whole game takes place in a dungeon that is randomly generated each time you play. This means that rather than placing a design emphasis on carefully arranged traps, labyrinths, and progressive dungeon design, the game has a focus on combat and character development.

A spoon-whipped Isaac drowns a swarm of flies with his tears. Just everyday stuff.

Combat in the Binding of Isaac is realized via a directional shooter engine. Isaac can fire in all four compass directions, and he can do so independently of his movement. This means, for example, that you can move right while shooting upward, and so on. You can also influence the trajectory of your attacks slightly by moving in the direction you'd like to arc them. Isaac's tears are his only weapon to begin with. An unconventional weapon for sure, but everything about this game is artistically inclined and they fit the theme of an infant battling horrors inside his own head. Indeed, most attacks in this game, be they yours or your enemies', come in the form of some bodily liquid. There's blood, there's tears, there's even urine. The Binding of Isaac is an unapologetically offensive game, but do not be fooled into thinking that it is merely a foray into immaturity. There is enough substance in this game to justify the choices made for its design. Everything comes together to paint a uniquely horrifying portrait of an undeveloped mind's struggle against a hostile world, in a manner that can only be called extraordinarily artistic.

Enemies are vast in number and design, and most are nightmarish or horrific considering the cartoonish art direction. You never know quite what enemy you're about to see next due to the random dungeon generation, but they range from flies and disgusting mutants, to horrible blood-squirting parasitic entities and tragic, exploding flesh-men that cough up flies and look and sound as if they live in constant torment. There's even enemies that look like walking torsos with vaginal openings that they hold open to spray you with toxic blood. Everything is nightmarish, disgusting, horrific, and twisted. They are exactly the sort of horrors that you would expect a tormented child to imagine, especially a child like Isaac. If you haven't realized by now, though, the Binding of Isaac is not a game for children. Even the loading screens, while mostly light-hearted, are depictions of Isaac being tormented and humiliated by his peers, giving further insight into why his perceptions of reality are so twisted and ground in nightmares.

Not all treasures are obtainable, depending on your build and luck with items. Here, I could get to the chest by using bombs to blow up the surrounding rocks, but I have no keys to unlock it with. Damn!

Each room in the dungeon has a unique layout and set of enemies that get progressively harder as you go. Some are full of rocks or pits in various shapes that act as obstacles, others contain items for you to find, while others are special room types like shops, challenge rooms, and casinos. In every level of the dungeon you'll also find one boss room and most of the time there will also be a mini-boss room too. The bosses and mini-bosses that you'll face in the Binding of Isaac are randomly decided, and due to how many bosses are in the game you'll never see them all in one play through. This keeps the game fresh, as not only do you constantly battle through room layouts and enemy combinations you've never seen before, but you never know which boss to expect at the end of it all. Since the bosses are all uniquely horrifying and all have unique attack patterns, I shall not spoil any of them in this review.

The list of items you can find in the game is absolutely huge, and all have a unique impact on your abilities or stats. There are some universal items, such as bombs that can be used to destroy rocks and enemies, keys that unlock special rooms, and tarot cards which all have different effects when used. More importantly, you can also get character-altering items that change your appearance, and sometimes drastically change the way you play. Among the many upgrades your character can receive are wings to help you fly over pits and floor-based hazards, spectral tears that go through obstacles, speed and damage boosts, rapid fire attacks, the ability to split your attacks into multiple projectiles, charge-up beams, orbiting shields, and "pets" that follow you and shoot whenever you do. This is only the surface of the ridiculous amount of power-ups and abilities available to you, and then you have different combinations of these upgrades which serve to change or enhance them even further.

A badly timed screenshot, as Isaac is flashing after taking damage and currently invisible. Still, floating heads!

The upgrades, along with the random dungeon generation, are what really serves to make this game different every time you play, and serve to give this game a real roguelike flavour. Some builds are next to impossible to finish the game with depending on which adversaries you end up facing, while other combinations of upgrades allow you to blitz through the entire game with ease. Most of the joy of this game is in discovery, in finding a new item that you've never seen before and finding out how it affects you only through trial and error. The game is unapologetically unhelpful - even in the collection screen where you can see every item you've ever picked up, there is no description of what each item does. Sometimes you will have an entire playthrough without knowing exactly what one of your items did to help you, such is the mystery of this game and the subtlety of their effect. Your memory (or perhaps the wiki, but I do not recommend spoiling any of the surprises of this game) is the only ally you will have in narrowing down which types of items are helpful to your playstyle or against specific types of enemies, and every decision you make could be a risk to your current build, as there are 'bad' items too. If you collect a 'bad' item, you might escape with just a stat reduction... or it could be much worse. Also, like all good roguelikes, death in this game is permanent, and you'll have to start again from the very beginning when it happens, allowing you to have yet another completely different playthrough with entirely new items. In my opinion, this makes every choice in every playthrough more meaningful and every reward more satisfying.

You're going to want to beat the game at least ten times, and if you do you still won't see all there is to see. Each time you beat the game you unlock a new ending (the first one is my personal favourite), but perhaps more importantly you also unlock more content. It starts out small, but in the end you unlock more bosses, minibosses, enemy variants, room types, items, and even entire levels, helping to ensure that each and every playthrough has new surprises and challenges. There are also playable characters to unlock, all with different strengths and weaknesses, although these are not all unlocked merely by beating the game. Be warned though, the more times you've completed the game, the more potential difficulty you face. This game almost punishes you for succeeding by demanding more from you each time, but there is no question that it rewards you with buckets of content in the process.

Certain powerups transform you into huge demons... or just uglier versions of yourself.

Lastly, but definitely not least, the music in the Binding of Isaac was composed by Danny Baranowsky of Super Meat Boy and Canabault fame, and is absolutely brilliant. A mixture of metal and electronica with some creepy lullaby thrown in for good measure, I can imagine no other way to compliment Isaac's journey into depravity and torment. The sound effects are also impressive and very suited to their material, ranging from tormented groans to disgusting squelches and splattering noises. The Binding of Isaac is an extremely well-realized artistic vision that assaults your senses and your sensibilities, and is not afraid to raise some moral eyebrows along the way. In my opinion, the game is all the better for it.