5/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of The Binding of Isaac.

System: PC Started: March 2013 Ended: December 2013 Flashback Review When I first discovered The Binding of Isaac, it was after watching the Indie Game: The Movie documentary and looking up multiple developers that starred in it. I came across the developer, Edmund McMillen, who also worked on Super Meat Boy, and discovered Binding of Isaac. Looking into the game to see what it is about sold me enough to get this indie title. Eventually, The Binding of Isaac grew so popular that there is even an emoji of Isaac on Twitch.com, at the time when it was a game streaming website before the Twitch Thots and IRL (In Real Life) streamers entered the scene. When I first booted up the game at a college library with my laptop while waiting for my next class, I could never put this game down regarding the high difficulty and repetitive playthroughs. I was sometimes late for my classes because of it. While other gamers and classmates at my school were playing Dark Souls, League of Legends, and Dota II, my main game at the time was The Binding of Isaac, making it my favorite roguelike indie game. You play as a naked blob-looking character named Isaac, who is evading his crazy, abusive, televangelist-fanatic mother by jumping into a trap door, and inside contains hideous creatures, flies, fecal matter, and characters named after the seven deadly sins. The further down you go, the more nightmarish the creatures you face, and the dungeons become more grotesque. During the transition to the next stage, you even get to know Isaac’s dark and sad background. The interesting horror plot that involves religion and the Bible, as well as encountering monsters from random rooms were the reason I was hooked on playing this game. The gameplay is simple by having a huge influence on Zelda, but with a Twin-Stick Shooter setup of using Isaac’s Tears to disintegrate baddies and finding loot and power-ups, it marks one of the most addicting games I have ever played. The music in this game is so catchy that I usually hum to the tune of the first level of the dungeon even to this day. I know most people are not fans of roguelike games such as Darkest Dungeon, Hades, Rogue Legacy, and Enter the Gungeon. I get their reasons for the permadeath gameplay after putting so much time into a game that you made progress, and it can piss people off. Binding Isaac can be difficult, and it depends on what power-ups you get during your playthrough, so it's really all about luck and identifying enemy patterns until you become extremely good at this game. My main problem with The Binding of Isaac was its lack of story, regardless of the great plot at the beginning of the game. You have to beat this game 13 times, and that includes the Wrath of the Lambs DLC. Each ending you only unlock rewards you with extra stuff, including unlockable characters. The 13th ending felt like a complete one. However, it felt underwhelming and ambiguous. The Binding of Isaac is still, to this day, my favorite Indie game. If you want to get into the indie gaming scene of the 2010s, The Binding of Isaac would be your first choice. There have been so many updated versions and expansions, like The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, that it's difficult to know what version to start off with for first-time players. At least Rebirth went from flash animation to actual pixel art, so I think it's a good idea to play the recent version of the remake, but if you are curious to know what the vanilla version looks and plays like, you could play the original just to set the idea that indie developers can start any type of engine, including Adobe Flash.