The Binding of Isaac is a 2011 roguelike action-adventure game designed by independent developers Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. It was initially released for Microsoft Windows, then ported to OS X and Linux. The game's title and plot are inspired by the Biblical story of the Binding of Isaac. In the game, Isaac's mother receives a message from God demanding the life of her son as proof of her faith, and Isaac, fearing for his life, flees into the monster-filled basement of their home where he must fight to survive. Players control Isaac or one of the 6 other unlockable characters through a procedurally generated dungeon in a roguelike manner, fashioned after those of The Legend of Zelda, defeating monsters in real-time combat while collecting items and power-ups to defeat bosses and eventually Isaac's mother.
The game was the result of a week-long game jam between McMillen and Himsl to develop a The Legend of Zelda-inspired roguelike that allowed McMillen to showcase his feelings about both positive and negative aspects of religion, which he had come to discover from conflicts between his Catholic and born again Christian family members while growing up. McMillen had considered the title a risk, but one he could take after the financial success of Super Meat Boy, and released it without much fanfare to Steam in September 2011, not expecting many sales. The game soon gained popularity, partially as a result of various Let's Play videos showcasing the title. McMillen and Himsl released an expansion called "Wrath of the Lamb" in May 2012, but were limited from further expansion due to limitations with the Flash platform. They had started working with Nintendo in 2012 to release a 3DS version, but Nintendo later backed out of the deal, citing controversy over the game's religious themes.
Developer Nicalis worked with McMillen in 2014 to complete a remake of the game, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, adding features McMillen had planned that exceeded Flash's capabilities, as well as to improve the game's graphics and enable ports for other systems beyond personal computers, including PlayStation 4 and Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and the Nintendo Switch. This remake has commonly been cited as one of the best roguelike games of all time.
McMillen later worked with James Id to develop The Legend of Bum-bo, which serves as a prequel to The Binding of Isaac.
The Binding of Isaac has been well-received, with critics praising the game's roguelike nature to encourage repeated playthroughs. By July 2014, McMillen reported over 3 million copies had been sold. The game has been said to contribute to renewed interest in the roguelike genre from both players and developers.
Gameplay
The Binding of Isaac is a top-down dungeon crawler game, presented using two-dimensional sprites, in which the player controls Isaac or other unlockable characters as they explore the dungeons located in Isaac's basement. The characters differ in speed, amount of health, amount of damage they deal, and other attributes. The game's mechanics and presentation is similar to the dungeons of The Legend of Zelda, while incorporating random, procedurally-generated levels in the manner of a roguelike game. On each floor of the basement dungeon, the player must fight monsters in a room before continuing onto the next room. This is most commonly done by the character's tears as bullets in the style of a twin-stick shooter, but the player can also use a limited supply of bombs to damage enemies and clear out parts of the room. Other methods of defeating enemies become possible as the character gains power-ups, items that are automatically worn by the player-character when picked up that can alter the character's core attributes, such as increasing health or the strength of each tear, or cause additional side effects, such as for allowing charged tear shots to be fired after holding down a controller button for a short while, or a means to fire tears behind the character. Power-ups include passive items that improve the character's attributes automatically, active power-ups that can be used once before they are recharged by completing additional rooms in the dungeon, and single-use power-ups such as pills or Tarot cards that confer a one-time benefit when used, such as regaining full health, or increasing or decreasing all attributes of the character. The effect of power-ups stack, so that the player may come into highly-beneficial power-up combinations.
Once a room is cleared of monsters, it will remain clear, allowing the player to re-trace their way through the level, though once they move onto the next level, they cannot return. Along the way, the player can collect money to buy power-ups from shopkeepers, keys to unlock special treasure rooms, and new weapons and power-ups to strengthen their chances against the enemies. The player's health is tracked by a number of hearts; if the character loses all his hearts, the game ends in permadeath and the player must start over from a freshly-generated dungeon. Each floor of the dungeon includes a boss which the player must defeat before continuing to the next level. On the sixth of eight floors, the player fights Isaac's mother; after defeating her, Isaac crawls into her womb. Later levels are significantly harder, culminating in a fight against the heart of Isaac's mother on the eighth floor. An optional ninth floor, Sheol, contains the boss Satan. Winning the game with certain characters or by certain conditions unlocks new power-ups that might appear in the dungeon or the ability to use one of the other characters. The game tracks the various power-ups that the player has found over time which can be reviewed from the game's menus.
Plot
The Binding of Isaacs plot is very loosely inspired by the biblical story of the same name. Isaac, a child, and his mother live in a small house on a hill, happily keeping to themselves, with Isaac drawing pictures and playing with his toys, and his mother watching Christian broadcasts on television.
One day, Isaac's mother hears "a voice from above," which she believes is that of God Himself. The voice states that her son, Isaac, is "corrupted with sin and needs to be saved." It asks her to remove all evil from Isaac, and his mother agrees, taking away his toys, drawings, and even his clothes. The voice speaks to Isaac's mother for a second time, stating that Isaac must be cut off from all that is evil in the world. Once again, his mother agrees and locks Isaac inside his room. For the last time, the voice speaks to Isaac's mother. It states that she has done well, but it still questions her devotion and tells her to sacrifice her son. She agrees, grabs a butcher's knife from the kitchen, and walks to Isaac's room, preparing to sacrifice him. Isaac, watching through a sizable crack in his door, starts to panic. He finds a trapdoor hidden under his rug and jumps in, just as his mother bursts through his bedroom door. It is then assumed that the start of every new run is just after Isaac jumps down into the trapdoor.
Until The Binding of Isaac: Repentance expansion in the remake, there is no clear conclusion, or even consistent narrative, to the story past this point. The original game features 13 possible endings, one after each major boss fight. The first ten endings serve as introductions to unlocked items and mechanics, while the final three suggest meaningful evidence to understanding the conclusion (although this is not revealed until a new game and three DLCs later).
During the game's cutscenes through two levels, or floors, Isaac is shown curled up in a ball, crying. His thoughts are visible, ranging from rejection from his mother and humiliation from his peers to a scenario involving his death.
Development and release The Binding of Isaac was developed following the release of Super Meat Boy, which McMillen considered a significant risk and a large time effort. When Super Meat Boy was released to both critical praise and strong sales, he felt that he no longer had to worry about the consequences of taking risks with his finances supported by its sales. He also considered he could take further risk with the concept. He had been planning to work with Tommy Refenes, the co-developer of Super Meat Boy, on their next game, Mewgenics, but as Refenes had taken some time off, McMillen looked to develop something he considered to be "low stress" with minimal expectations such as an Adobe Flash game.
The Binding of Isaacs main concept was the result of a weeklong game jam that McMillen had with Florian Himsl; at the time, his co-contributor on Super Meat Boy, Tommy Refenes, was on vacation. The concept McMillen had was two-fold: to develop a roguelike title based on the first The Legend of Zelda game's dungeon structure, and to develop a game that addressed McMillen's thoughts on religion. McMillen had been inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer of the original Zelda games. McMillen saw the potential of the procedural generation aspect of roguelikes including in Spelunky and Desktop Dungeons, and considered that working on procedural generation would help towards development of his planned game Mewgenics. McMillen compares Isaac's controls to the game Smash TV.
Random rooms were created for each floor of the dungeon by selecting ten to twenty rooms from a pre-built library of 200 layouts, adding in the monsters, items, and other features, and then including fixed rooms that would be found on each floor, such as a boss room and treasure room. In expanding the gameplay, McMillen used the structure of Zeldas dungeons to design how the player would progress through the game. In a typical Zelda dungeon, according to McMillen, the player acquires a new item that helps them to progress farther in the game; he took the same inspiration to assure that each level in Isaac included at least one item and one bonus item on defeating the boss that would boost the character's attributes. McMillen also wanted to encourage players to experiment to learn how things work within Isaac, mirroring how Miyamoto had done with the original Zelda game. He designed the level progression to become more difficult with the player's progression in the game, as well as additional content that became available after beating the game as to make it feel like the game was long. McMillen designed four of the selectable characters based on the main classes of Dungeons & Dragons—fighter, thief, cleric and wizard.