The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/afterbirth/Repentance+. Game’s been out for 11 years and in that time it received a lot of updates. So many updates that it had to change names several times. This game is a big elephant and I would need a couple of minutes how to approach it and tell you about my 2000 hours experience with this game. 

Let’s start with a plot. First we have a tragic story about young Isaac. His mother went cuckoo with religion and locked Isaac in his room. The madness deepened, at this point mother started to hear voice in her head telling her that her son is corrupt and full of sins. Mother took all Isaac’s toy, and then his clothes and then she attempted to take his life. There are many endings to this game that will unlock with each new final boss killed. The true end however is locked behind several DLCs.

Alright, let’s dissect further. Let’s start with what modes can be played. 

Regular mode: Pick an Isaac and see if you beat the game.

Greed Mode: In this mode you need to down the big Greed’s shop and beat him. Instead of regular randomized rooms, the layout structure of levels in this mod is set. You have a big challenge room in the middle. Shop with infinite items to buy to the north. Free item room and locked item room to the east. Curse room and Angel/Devil deal room to the west. That leaves a spot on the south, that’s where you go after you're done with all the enemy waves to proceed to the next floor. There are 6 regular floors and Greed’s floor, that's where the final boss of this mode, Ultra Greed, awaits your arrival.

Challenge Mode: In this mode you don’t unlock achievements except for beating the challenge. There are a lot of them around 50 or so. Since it’s a challenge you’ll be burdened with a gimmick… most of the time, a couple of the challenges are quite easy. Others will make you do a lobotomy on yourself with an icepick.

Daily Challenge: Everybody gets the same dungeon, goal is to get a better score than everyone else. You can also play daily in co-op. 

Okay what’s next? Let’s talk about gameplay. How does the run go? You explore a dungeon of randomly generated rooms, beat a boss and go down a floor. You start with your tears as your weapon. You can change your tears with different items, there are so many possible combinations it will take forever to list them out. How do you change your tears? With items you can find in many places in the dungeon. What else can you do? You have bombs that you can use in many different ways; they are also upgradable with items. But mainly you use them to either attack your enemies, remove rocks with them or to blow up a wall to a secret room, or blow up a stone chest.  Isaacs also have other consumables. 

There are coins to buy things from a shop, donate them to a beggar, donate them to your bank machine, or to gamble in the arcade room, or play the 3 cups shuffle game, or attempt to fish an item from a crane game, or get a fortune from a fortune telling machine. 

Next one is key. Keys are used to open locked chests, open some locked doors, donate them to a key beggar, use it as weapon if you have a certain active item. 

There are also side consumables, there are 4 types of them: Pills, tarot cards (+ reverse tarot cards), playing cards, runes. They are 1 time use items (several time if you have a certain trinket or infinite if you have the appropriate active item) that produces a certain effect. 

Pills have stats, up and down effects as well as an amnesia effect, hurt HP effect, blurry the screen effect, teleportation to a random room effect, heal HP effect and spewing a ball of explosive ipecac effect. Once again negative effect can be removed with certain items.

Tarot cards: The STRENGTH card gives you a temporary 1 HP ups your attack and your body size for duration of 1 room. 

The HIEROPHANT cards spawns two soul (blue) hearts. 

The CHARIOT card produce a gamekid item effect which makes you shine like a rainbow. In this state you are immune to any damage (except for suicide effect from a Suicide King card of Plan C item) you also do contact damage to enemies for around 10 seconds. 

The MOON teleports you into a secret room. 

The SUN reveals the floor’s map and identifies all locations also completely heals your red HP. Removes curse of darkness.

The HIGH PRIESTESS summons mom’s foot on a nearby enemy. 

The EMPRESS gives you Whore of Babylon effect till you leave the room. 

The EMPEROR teleports you into boss room. 

The TOWER summons several bombs across the room.

 The FOOL teleports you back to the starting room. 

The MAGICIAN makes you tears home in on close enemies till you leave the room. 

The LOVERS spawns two red hearts. 

The JUSTICE spawns 1 type of coin 1type of heart 1type of key 1type of bomb. The HERMIT teleports you into shop room. 

The WHEEL OF FORTUNE spawns either a Slots machine or Fortune telling machine. 

The HANGED MAN gives you transcendence effect (flight) till you leave the room. 

The DEVIL gives you Book of Belial effect (Increase damage till you leave the room).

The TEMPERANCE spawns Blood donation machine.

The STARTS teleports you into treasure room.

The JUDGEMENT Spawns either a beggar or devil beggar or key beggar or bomb beggar or rotten beggar or battery bum.

The WORLD reveals the floor’s map and identifies all locations. Does not removes curses. 

The DEATH deals damage to all enemies in the room.

The Playing cards:

2 of clubs doubles your bombs or gives you 2 if you don’t have any.

2 of spades doubles your keys or gives you 2 if you don’t have any.

2 of diamonds double your money or give you 2 coins if you don’t have any.

2 of hearts heal half of your current red HP.

The Joker teleports you into devil or angel room.

Ace of Spades/Hearts/Clubs/Diamonds. Turns everything (Excepts pedestal items) into appropriate category of the card including locked chests and enemies.

The Chaos card. One shots any target it thrown at except for Delirium boss or The Beast. Kills a phase of a boss if boss has more than one. 

Suicide King. Kills you and spawn several pedestal items and consumables.

The Queen of hearts. Spawns 1-20 full red hearts.

The Huge growth. Increase Isaac’s size several times, increase damage and give you ability to crush obstacles till you leave the room.  

The Ancient recall. Spawns 3 random cards

The Era walk. Slows every enemy in the room increase Isaac’s speed and slows Isaac’s shot speed.

The Credit card. Any item you need to pay for will become free to pick including devil deal room or black market.

The Rules card. Gives you a useless hint. 

The “?” card. Copies effect of your current active item.

The Card against humanity. Feel entire room with breakable turds.

The Get out of jail for free card. Unlocks every locked door or remove 1 lock if door is double chained.

The Holy card. Gives you a shield that will stay with you till you get hit.

The Wild card. Copies the effect of previously used card/pill/rune /souls stone/active item.

Runes:

Hagalaz destroys every obstacle in the room.

Dagaz removes every curse on the floor.

Jera double every consumable and chests.

Ehwaz spawn a door down to the next floor. If used on certain tiles instead spawns door to a crawl space.

Ansuz reveals the map and identifies all locations. Does not remove the curse of the lost.

Perthro changes pedestal item into another pedestal item.

Berkano spawns couple of friendly spiders and flies.

Algiz provides you with 30 seconds shield.

Blank triggers a random rune effect has a chance to spawn 1 more blank rune.

Black rune deals damage to every enemy in a room, converts every consumables into a friendly fly or a spider absorbs pedestal items and turns them into +stats For Isaac.

You know we will be stuck here forever if I’m going to explain everything so let’s just glance of everything else. Characters they are all Isaacs with a slight different look/ stats/starting item. So let’s talk about unique one. 

Azazel demon looking Isaac that has flying ability and short brimstone beam as starting items. 

Lilith. Can’t shoot tears instead she uses familiars to attack for her. Starts with Succubus, Box of friends and Cambion conception. 

Blue baby. Can’t have red hearts.

Eden. Starts with 3 random items, randomized hearts and consumables. 

Jacob&Esau. Control two characters at the same time if one dies it’s a game over. You need to press and hold CTRL to order one of the twin to stay put.

The Forgotten. Skeleton with soul bound to it. Physical part can shoot tears but can hit and throw his bone club. Can only have bone hearts. The soul is chained to skeleton and cannot moves far away from it. Can only have soul and black hearts.

The Lost. Soul with no hearts dies from any hit. Can take 1 devil deal item for free rest will despawn.

There are also tainted/alternative version of every character.

Alright, the items. There are total of 719 items which proved you with all kinds of effects including bad ones I’ll leave them up for you to discover. Items can change your tear effect. Change your stats. Gives you different passive and active effects and may many MANY more.

 Not a little bit about bosses and room layouts. First 4 levels are consists of 2 floors each Or it could be a curse of labyrinth that combines both floors into big one with 2 boss rooms. Most of levels after will only have 1 floor. Each level has a boss to fight (with can be skipped with certain items or consumables). At first difficulty of the bosses gradually increased with each level. But with every new updates earlier floors started to have harder bosses. Okay there are also alternative versions of the levels and alternative path you can take but it will unlock later. Room layouts, I’ll talk about sizes and types of room. There are regular square room, small room (takes same amount of space as regular room), long room can be horizontal and vertical, big room (they are sized 2X2 or 2X1).Now about types. There are shops, treasure rooms, arcade rooms, curse rooms, secret rooms, red room, boss rooms, planetarium, vault room, bedroom, crawl space, black market, angel/devil room, challenge room, boss challenge room, mini boss room, sacrifice room, I’m Error room. 

Shop: Locked door have either a shop or a greed mini boss room. You can buy items in this room if you have enough coins. Or you can donate coins to a donation machine to upgrade shops for the future sessions. 

Treasure room: Locked room, contain one pedestal item or two pedestal item but one will disappear after you pick another or two pedestal items. In rare cases can contain bunch of consumables instead or bunch of turds.

Arcade room: locked by a coin lock. Can contain slots machine, fortune telling, machine, blood donation machine, beggars, 3 cups shuffle mini game, crane game. 

Curse room entering and exiting curse room costs half or full heart. Can contain red chests, beggars, enemies, pedestal items.

Secret rooms: locked by a fake wall that needs to be bombed. Can contain pedestal items, consumables, chests. There are usually 2 secret room on each floor, there are some facts that will help you to find a secret room. I’ll tell few. There is usually 1 in the room before a boss room and 1 near the beginning of the floor but that is not a guarantee.  Wall cannot be blocked destructible objects or gaps.

Red room: Those are usually out of bound and unreachable by any means other than red key or red shard. Red room can be any type of room apart from boss room. Red boss room appears only in the red key challenge. 

Boss room: Room that contains a boss, a trapdoor down and a possible angel/devil room. 

Planetarium: Room that contains pedestal item from a constellation pool of items. 

Vault room: Locked by two chained locks so requires 2 keys. Can contain consumables, chests, turds.

Bedroom: blocked by wooden planks, requires 2 bombs to unlock. Contains a bed (clean or pissed) vanity cabinet and doormat that will hide either a trap door or crawl space. You can tell by the type of bed in the room.

Crawl space can either appear by blowing up an obstacle or by using Ehwaz room on certain tiles. Can contain consumables, enemies, pedestal items. You can leave this room without fighting enemies. 

Black market. Each crawl space comes with a corridor to a black market it just most of times it’s blocked by a wall. Black market consists of trap door down to the next floor. Several pedestal items form a shop’s pool but they cost hearts instead of coins. Sometimes a greed mini boss can spawn in a black market.  

Angel room or Devil’s Deal room. Usually appears after you beat a boss starting from floor 2. There are ways to go to one on the first floor. You can see the percentage of chance in the info panel that can be toggled on or off in the options menu. To keep you chances don’t take red heart damage. To raise you chances blowup a shop keeper or a beggar or find a Book of Belial or donate couple of coins to a donation machine Devil’s Deal room can contain pedestal items from Devils Deal pool, enemies and consumables. You have to pay with your permanent HP for those pedestal items, there are ways to get them for free of course. Angel room can contain pedestal items from Angel Room pool and consumables also a statue of an Angel that you can blow up to fight an angel boss.

Challenge room/Boss challenge room. First can contains a chest or more. Upon unlocking a chest three ways of enemies spawns. You have to have either full red heart HP or have soul hearts for challenge room to be opened. Boss room contains a pedestal item and upon taking said item two waves of boss enemies will spawn. You can only enter a boss room if you have total of 1 heart container

Mini boss room. Contains 1 or 2 mortal sin bosses.

Sacrifice room. Contains a set of spikes in the center of the room. You need intentionally impale yourself on those spikes several times to get a reward for it you can also increase your chance of Angel Room that way. Beware angel boss will spawn after couple of times and another one after another couple of pricks. The end reward is being send to Dark Room floor.

I’m error room. Can contain many things but will always include a glitched shop keeper. 

All right it’s too big to describe everything. If I continue it will be a full guide book and not a review. So as the last thing I’ll tell you that Co-op mode was finally added so you can play with random people form the internet. 10 out of 10 must buy must complete.