At this point, I've played Rebirth on PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita for around 30 or 40 hours total. When a popular streamer or two come on, that number can jump by several thousand more. It's a Saturday afternoon after Christmas as I write this, and there are still 2,500 people watching others play Rebirth on Twitch. Though the community is now larger and can pick through the game's many secrets faster, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is still holding attention. Though the subject matter hasn't changed at all in Rebirth - it's just as dark and depressing as before - Nicalis has implemented a stylish 16-bit look that I suspect will pull people in a little easier. Now they can sprawl in multiple directions and hold many more enemies than was previously possible. For example, individual rooms are no longer limited to a single square. Rebirth not only fixes the limitation on amount of content from the game's original engine it also builds on the design possibilities therein. They build on the already strong core in interesting new ways, providing a number of approaches through the game that feels ever closer to infinite.
And despite new developer Nicalis taking over (with oversight by McMillen), these additions accurately capture the feel and spirit of the original game. Over a dozen new bosses, hundreds of new items, new playable characters - the list goes on and on.
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Between one expansion pack and some free updates, he said the game's engine was pushed to the absolute maximum amount of content it could possibly hold in its current state.Īs mentioned, that state was still enough to keep tons of people playing and watching the game for hundreds of hours. Originally developed in Flash, McMillen expressed constant frustration at the difficulty with adding new content to the game. The Binding of Isaac was an awesome, enthralling experience, but it was also hindered by its technology. When I discovered The Binding of Isaac back in 2013 - a year-and-a-half after its release - I ended up sinking over 100 hours into the game over the course of a few months.Īll of this explanation and praise for the original The Binding of Isaac may raise the very question I had when Rebirth was announced: Why do we need a remake? It even spawned a fan-created racing league for speedruns. This unpredictable nature made The Binding of Isaac the perfect game for streaming, and it became a huge hit on Twitch. You never know what you're going to find, and there are damn-near endless combinations. Every single run through the game is going to lead to different items (or combinations of items), which lends each playthrough a completely unique feeling. It's that element of randomization and (as such) variety that really made The Binding of Isaac become so well-loved. It also borrows from the rogue-like genre, with each death leading to a fresh restart in a randomized dungeon, with a new set of treasures to discover. It's a top-down dungeon crawler, sort of resembling the exploration and treasure-hunting of the original Legend of Zelda mixed with the multi-directional shooting of Smash TV.
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And it's all viewed through the lens of character designs seemingly pulled from an angry-yet-immature teenager's high school notebook, full of piss, blood and feces.įor all these potential turn-offs, The Binding of Isaac won its ever-growing audience from exactly the place you'd expect McMillen to thrive: the gameplay. It explores such weighty topics as child abuse, abortion and stunted religious upbringing. The Binding of Isaac is a weird game, full of unsettling themes and an art style that I would generously call unwelcoming. It's no surprise that it took some time to catch on. It eventually hit over one million sales - a number that may seem merely okay for a triple-A game but was absurd and unexpected for such a small, personal title. The Binding of Isaac wasn't an instant success, but it built a passionate, dedicated cult following over the course of years. McMillen has stated in many interviews that he wasn't even sure anyone would want to play this weird little game.Īs it turns out, a lot of people wanted to play it. As part of Team Meat, McMillen had just come off of the surprise hit Super Meat Boy The Binding of Isaac was intended to be a minor side project, a break before whatever Team Meat chose to do next. The original The Binding of Isaac released back in 2011 as a side project for developed Edmund McMillen.
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