The grand daddy of the modern roguelite, BoI was originally a flash game by Edmund McMillen which evolved into a PC port, then into this version running on a properly coded engine.
The basic concept is that you play baby Isaac whose Christian mother thinks god is telling her to kill her son to prove her devotion, but Isaac escapes into the basement. What follows is a surreal and nightmarish descent through increasingly gory and disgusting locales fighting equally deformed and gross horrors within. It's a relic from an edgier time on the internet and has a lot of dark humour from blood laser vagina enemies to a playable dead baby.
The gameplay is an homage to the classic Legend of Zelda dungeons and starts out very punishing as you can literally only cry at enemies with pathetic tear drop bullets. Once you master the basics though and begin to unravel Isaac's many secrets you'll gradually unlock the game's knowledge gates that gives you the edge on each run - but even with the edge the game is still heavily RNG dependent.
The game boasts an enormous variety of power ups that alter how your tears function but there are famous 'run killer' items that will make the game unplayable. You have to learn to avoid them purely by trial and error and it makes the game very punishing for no reason so you may find yourself pulling up the wiki any time you encounter new items just to be careful if you don't want to waste your progress.
Under the gross humour/themes, punishing trial and error gameplay, and heavy RNG there's a very solid, addicting, and inspired roguelike that set many trends in the genre and prove why this game is still going 8 years after it was remastered. At this point though there's a lot to have missed and the game is so gigantic and random that even with my 750~ hours of play has garnered only 206 of the 637 achievements (including DLC).
A titan of the genre for sure, but old-fashioned, tedious, and exclusionary in it's execution. Points for sheer originality and trend setting, but points off for spiteful design choices and lack of accessibility.
The basic concept is that you play baby Isaac whose Christian mother thinks god is telling her to kill her son to prove her devotion, but Isaac escapes into the basement. What follows is a surreal and nightmarish descent through increasingly gory and disgusting locales fighting equally deformed and gross horrors within. It's a relic from an edgier time on the internet and has a lot of dark humour from blood laser vagina enemies to a playable dead baby.
The gameplay is an homage to the classic Legend of Zelda dungeons and starts out very punishing as you can literally only cry at enemies with pathetic tear drop bullets. Once you master the basics though and begin to unravel Isaac's many secrets you'll gradually unlock the game's knowledge gates that gives you the edge on each run - but even with the edge the game is still heavily RNG dependent.
The game boasts an enormous variety of power ups that alter how your tears function but there are famous 'run killer' items that will make the game unplayable. You have to learn to avoid them purely by trial and error and it makes the game very punishing for no reason so you may find yourself pulling up the wiki any time you encounter new items just to be careful if you don't want to waste your progress.
Under the gross humour/themes, punishing trial and error gameplay, and heavy RNG there's a very solid, addicting, and inspired roguelike that set many trends in the genre and prove why this game is still going 8 years after it was remastered. At this point though there's a lot to have missed and the game is so gigantic and random that even with my 750~ hours of play has garnered only 206 of the 637 achievements (including DLC).
A titan of the genre for sure, but old-fashioned, tedious, and exclusionary in it's execution. Points for sheer originality and trend setting, but points off for spiteful design choices and lack of accessibility.