Game Review: The Binding of Isaac

As I said in my LIMBO review, I just love indie games, that’s why when I saw The Binding of Isaac for sale on Steam, I immediatly bought it.


Don’t get me wrong, I already had tried the demo, I don’t buy games just because they’re indie.
The Binding of Isaac is a fast paced 2D adventure game, which will make you rage, since you’ll die a lot, and once you die you have to start again from the beginning.

The plot is based on a Bible story: Isaac is a kid who lives alone with his mother, a very religious person. His mother will eventually start hearing a voice which tells her to progressively limit Isaac’s liberty in order to prove her faith in God.
After Isaac has been locked in his room, the voice will ask his mother to sacrifice him. Isaac will quickly figure out the situation and jump into the basement through a hidden trapdoor in his room.
In the basement he will have to fight various monsters, shooting them his tears (Isaac will cry during the entire game).

The gameplay is very simple: move, shoot, plant bombs and use special objects, only 11 keys are used. Each dungeon is divided in rooms, you have to explore these rooms in order to find the final boss and fight him, once you kill a final boss, you go one level deeper in the basement; during the exploration you may find some powerups or special rooms, such as stores or arcade rooms, where you can trade coins found in game for more powerups or health.
Between one dungeon and another, you can see an animation of Isaac dreaming about sad events of his life, these animations will make the game even creepier.

As I said, this game will make you rage, the first time you’ll play it, you won’t probably last more than a few minutes. You have to be really fast on your keyboard in order to survive, since your enemies will get faster and stronger as the game proceeds, while you may be unlucky and stay weak for the entire game.
Again, speed is the key in this game, you’ll have to dodge multiple bullets, bombs and enemies at the same time, with no way to escape from the room until you kill them all (you could blow up a door, but when you come back, they’ll be there again).

The best part of this game is that you’ll never play the same game twice, dungeons are randomly generated, and bosses/powerups are also randomly placed (except for the final boss of the final level), so you’ll always feel like you’re playing the game for the first time: you can never tell what’s going to happen.
Like all indie games, it has an awesome soundtrack, the music doesn’t change much, but it is creepy enough to make the game even more mysterious.

You can play the Demo on Newgrounds, or get the full game from Steam.

Let me know if you liked the game, and if you want me to keep reviewing games, or you prefer me talking about dev stuff 🙂

– Freddy