I really, REALLY wish I could give this game more stars. I.RULE's presentation is incredible! The concept is also extremely appealing to me, a massive fan of TBoI and PvZ. I was obsessed with this game from the moment it was announced on Twitter and I played the original Alpha release as soon as it dropped. I went through the content pretty quickly, and shortly after that I stopped playing because of one major problem that the game had: difficulty.

Back when the game was still very new, the endless gameplay loop of I.RULE got boring to me because the game didn't get more challenging as you looped through the zones. It was easy to get so strong that you couldn't lose, the game was easily solvable, and once I got good enough to solve it that just entirely erased my desire to continue playing.

Fast forward more than a year and the game has gotten many updates. I came back to play it again because I think the concept and style of this game is so perfect, and I was happy to discover that, along with other improvements, my main complaint about the original version has been addressed; the game gets much harder as you progress. Unfortunately, I actually think that there was an overcorrection.

After looping the first time the game quickly ramps up its difficulty, and that is my first criticism with the difficulty system. Clearing the first three zones on normal mode is trivial, it can easily be done without losing any of your chargers (PvZ lawn mowers). This makes the initial run through of the zones feel like a waste of time. Not a huge problem necessarily, but it is made much worse when that ends up being ~half the time spent on each run. I will usually lose runs my second time through zone 2 or 3. This is especially frustrating if your run lost because of reasons outside your control.

Each item and baby only shows up once per run. This means that if you can't afford an item when it shows up in the shop you will never have the chance to get it again. Shops also stop appearing after progressing far enough, so if you didn't get the chance to buy an essential item, there is no recourse. And if 2 critical babies (such as Twin Baby and Fistuloid) show up as options on the same choice, tough luck. Because RNG paired those options together in the same choice, your run will be crippled with no chance to recover later.

To be honest, I don't know how this problem could be solved in a way that would keep the spirit of Isaac intact. The Binding of Isaac is focused on providing the player with unique gameplay experiences each run. The only obvious remedy the the problems I described is to always allow the player to collect things they passed on sometime later in the run. But then, that would mean that every run would eventually end up being the same, with all items and babies collected and no distinct identity. It is a tough problem to solve. Overall I think it would have been better to either remove looping and balance the first loop to be harder, or to allow the confluence of every run to eventually happen and focus the game on score chasing. That being said, I can respect the decision the author made to try and merge the mechanical themes of both of I.RULE's inspirations while adding looping to give the game an distinct identity.

Because the gameplay of I.RULE is so much more restrictive than a free movement game like Isaac or Nuclear Throne, I can confidently say that many of my game overs, especially in hard mode, were unavoidable due to impossibly dense swarms of monsters. Normally I would refrain from making such a claim and assume I have a skill issue, but as someone who has completed all the levels in PvZ ECLISE and is a glutton for extremely difficult Plants vs Zombies gameplay, believe me when I say that sometimes your run will just end because the game decided to make it impossible to clear that level. Obviously, this must happen sooner or later; the game is endless with scaling difficulty. But the balance of that difficulty fluctuates wildly based on factors outside your control, most egregiously in hard mode, where you can quickly lose if not offered useful babies to add to your arsenal or useful items after the first boss.

After replaying it in 2024, I once again see that I.RULE still has the same crippling problem that I had with it in 2022, the difficulty doesn't keep me engaged. But despite all my yapping about this, I still think it is a very good game and appreciate it very much. The difficulty is only a major concern when playing this game for as a score chasing roguelike (or when playing hard mode), which is very unfortunate because it is obviously trying to be one. However, you would probably have a much better time just playing through normal mode a couple times and trying to achieve most of the unlocks. I would really love to see the difficulty better balanced in a future update, and also some more monsters because there isn't much variety, but everything else in the game is very polished. I would be remiss not to mention the impressive attention to detail put into the game. Stunning spritework and animations, very fitting original characters inspired by items from TBoI, thoughtful adaptations of items and trinkets from TBoI, fireflys being extinguished by ice, ice and fire babies being immune to freezing attacks, and more. It is clear that a lot of effort was put into this project. Please check out this game, it is very much worth worth your time.