It’s been almost 10 years since Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl released the original The Binding Of Isaac, evolving a quickly-assembled game jam game into one of the heralds of a new style of indie gaming: The roguelike. Since its original release, Isaac has devoured thousands upon thousands of hours of human attention, received a full remake (ditching Flash in the process) with 2014's Rebirth, and received a number of expansions that have massively expanded out its still-compelling base gameplay. The whole decade-long process culminated last week, when McMillen and Nicalis, Inc. released The Binding Of Isaac: Repentance, an immense (and allegedly final) expansion to the game’s story of naked babies crawling around in basements, trying to cry so hard that they kill their moms. (Yup.)
Even for veterans of the franchise, Repentance—adapted, at least in part, from the popular fan-made mod Antibirth—is full of new material, secrets, and weapons for players to stumble across as they make their way through its new levels. To celebrate its arrival, The A.V. Club will be going live at 2 p.m. Central on Twitch today to take a run through some of the weirdness, taking new character Bethany through the game’s new Downpour chapter (and beyond) in order to see some of what Repentance has to offer.
If you’re unfamiliar with Isaac, you’re in luck, because there’s never been a better time to embrace the game’s deceptively tricky depths. But also, be warned: This is a game that loves its poop and fart jokes. (And also incredibly in-depth systems that pioneer whole new understandings of progression systems in gaming. But mostly the poop and fart jokes thing.)
You can check out The A.V. Club Twitch channel at Twitch.tv/AVClubTwitch.
3 Comments
The A.V. Club (a reflex) is (verb)ing The Binding Of (a biblical name): (a sacrament).
I’m curious what y’all think of the changes in this one? I was initially a little bummed cuz most of the best items got patched but after playing a bit (haven’t seen everything yet cuz I was playing on ps4 before and started from scratch on PC) I really appreciate all the balance changes. It feels a lot more consistent now, like I rarely feel like an item is disappointing because pretty much all the weaker items have been buffed. The new chapters and bosses and music are all rad too imo altho again I haven’t seen nearly everything yet 😛 I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten a write up on kotaku or polygon yet, I thought it woulda been kind of a big deal but maybe thats just cuz im obsessed with this game
I remember how the original flash version of Binding of Isaac was highlighted in the old Sawbuck Gamer feature. It pushed me over the edge to get back into gaming after a decade long haitus. I
miss Sawbuck Gamer. It was a great place to highlight little-known
gems, and seemed to always feature a few freebies for the cash-strapped.
There’s so much being put out and being lost in the shuffle. We need as
many ways as possible to shine more light in all the great games being
passed over because of obscurity.Oh yeah, and Binding of Isaac is pretty good too. It was getting bloated with Afterbirth+, but I’d lie if I didn’t love every bite-sized update they included post-humously.