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Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ Review

  • Developer: Nicalis, Inc., Edmund McMillen

  • Publisher: Nicalis, Inc.

  • Genres: Roguelike, Bullet-hell

  • Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PC, Xbox One

  • Release date: ​

    • Original game (PC): September 28th 2011

    • ...

    • BoI Afterbirth+ (Switch; North America): March 17th, 2017

    • BoI Afterbirth+ (Switch; Europe): September 7th, 2017

  • Playtime:

    • 20 hours (unlocked a handful of characters, completed a few challenges, reached one of the endings, etc.)

  • Reviewed on Nintendo Switch

  • Disclaimer: this is my review of the game as whole, that is, everything that is packaged into the The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ game on the Nintendo Switch. Not simply the expansion of the same name, not just the vanilla game, instead I am reviewing what I’ve experienced since first starting this game on my Switch.

The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ (referred to as BoI for the rest of the review) is, besides an excellent roguelike that nails most of the core aspects of the genre, a very divisive game presentation-wise. It deals with plenty of dark themes and the presentation couldn’t be more candid about it. While it has a somewhat cutesy art style, the things it portrays are clear as water and some people may not feel comfortable. Fortunately, I don’t feel like that and love this game to bits so let me tell you why I like this game so much.

Let me start by contextualizing the game: you start by being able to play as the titular character, Isaac. To run away from his mother who “has to” kill her own son to prove her devotion to “God”, Isaac runs away into their house’s basement. Unfortunately, as Isaac escapes his mother, he finds a labyrinth filled with hideous monsters and power-ups to help him survive. This labyrinth ends up being none other than the setting for the procedurally generated dungeons you, the player, explore and get lost in.

For the uninitiated, a roguelike is a game that mixes various elements to create a challenging game with tons and tons of things to learn. It will include things such as procedurally generated dungeon layouts, hundreds of items and power-ups, progress resets with player death and randomized loot drops that change with every playthrough. Thus, BoI is more than familiar with these concepts and is happy to throw them at you from the first moment you start playing. This means that, just like other roguelikes such as Diablo, Enter the Gungeon, Darkest Dungeon and so many others, BoI is incredibly difficult at first. The easiest bosses in the game are quite challenging to fight against the first time you encounter them and even just the normal enemies you find while exploring the first few dungeons pose a threat initially. But that’s precisely where the catch of this game lies. You see, in the roguelike and dungeon crawling world, BoI, like Enter the Gungeon, also throws into the mix the bullet-hell type of gameplay, that is, just like the name implies, the screen is filled with bullets and/or projectiles flying around. Besides, in BoI, there’s no option to roll through enemy attacks or destroy every bullet in the room, rather, you have to meticulously dodge each attack by learning the enemy attack patterns and getting out of the way. So, in this one, you can expect a learning curve that allows you to feel satisfaction in a relatively short time (of course it depends on player skill) with regular item/character/etc. unlocks, as you learn how to face each enemy better and better until completely mastering them.

Delving a bit more into the gameplay, its core is actually quite simple: you can fire your tears (yes your bullets are tears) up, down, left and right, you can move in any direction and, beyond that, there’s the possibility of dropping bombs found along the way and use the latest item you have picked up. Besides these, there’s the trinkets, other items that you pick up but just give you passive bonuses, keys, which you can hold as many as you can to unlock rooms and chests you come across and, lastly, coins, used to buy items and hearts from the store in each level. However, as you dig deeper into the gameplay, the complexity starts to show. What items do is uncertain most of the time so, besides what their name and brief description implies, you’re encouraged to try them out yourself or to try to understand their purpose by seeing how your stats change once you pick them up. There’s also the simple satisfaction of picking up new items just to see how they change your tears or your appearance altogether, in hopes of creating the most hideous version of Isaac someone has ever seen. Some items may be just a pile of feces (literally) and even turn you into one eventually, while others can turn your tears into scythes or electric beams and make you so overpowered that you can kill most enemies with a single attack. There’s a lot to experiment with, so much that each run you start will always be different from all others you’ve played and, to top it all off, what is available at first is just a percentage of the whole thing, so as you defeat new enemies, as you achieve certain requirements, new items will be unlocked and so your options once again multiply. In total, there are over 600 items in the game, so brace yourself to be surprised and amazed at the developers’ imagination and creativity.

On the topic of unlockables, it doesn’t include just items. In total, the game has 15 characters, with only Isaac being unlocked at first. They all feel and look distinct, with different initial stats and unique gameplay twists. Though be prepared because while it’s easy to unlock a couple of characters, the majority requires some serious dedication and skill to be unlocked. There are also a couple of dungeon layers that can’t be accessed at first. To reiterate, there are tons of things to unlock in the game so you can expect to play this game for a long time. It’s not that “the cool stuff is hidden behind unlocking requirements” rather, what you have at first is already plenty to get yourself lost in content, the unlockables just make this an even more substantial game to sink your teeth into.

Going back to the starting point of the review: the presentation and involved themes. BoI deals with a lot of uncomfortable points that, to put it lightly, might not be to the taste of everyone. To give you some examples, there are plenty of enemies that look straight up disgusting and some people might find the names of certain items and characters distasteful. The game itself deals with sensible topics, particularly a lot of biblical stuff, namely the Binding of Isaac story which loosely serves as inspiration for the game’s story, along with other devil-related subjects. The presentation and design itself is quite direct, which might end up shocking some people but, as I’ve said in the beginning, I am totally fine with all of these and I can’t judge if you are not. I enjoy the game in great part for how it is able to commit and work around these themes: instead of ending up as a childish attempt at basing itself off of these elements, it offers its own twists, which end up in a creative, candid and overall enjoyable take on such divisive topics.

Content-wise, not counting how long it would take you to unlock everything, the game has a lot to offer. Well, even if you’d just play as Isaac you could play hours and hours of BoI. Anyway, the main mode, that is, the “normal” roguelike mode, is the story mode version of this game. As you delve deeper into Isaac’s basement, the enemies and levels you find become more gruesome and, eventually, Isaac’s mom appears as a boss, which is just one of the many final bosses, depending on which chapter/area we are speaking of. There’s also a Hard Mode, which is just a harder version of the main mode just as it implies, and there’s also a Greed Mode. This is pretty much BoI’s take on an arena mode which pits you against waves of enemies across multiple floors. Aside from the “story” and Greed modes, there are also challenges and daily runs. Starting with the latter, daily runs are runs with specific characters and items that are made available online for every player every day, so that no matter how far into the game someone is, everyone stands on equal footing for these. After the attempt, players are put into two leaderboards, one that sorts players by achieved scored and one that sorts players based on how long their run was. The challenges section contains thirty-five challenges which are gradually unlocked by completing the few already available challenges or certain parts of the story. Each challenge is a unique run that forces you to play with a given character, set of items and rules, usually creating unfavorable and challenging situations such as receiving damage each time you pass through a door or playing pretty much in the dark from beginning to end. The objective in these challenges is to reach the end of the dungeon and collect the trophy that appears after defeating the last boss.

Before wrapping up, I’d like to mention a list of smaller features that contribute to improving the game further. There’s a bestiary, which is a catalogue of all the enemies you’ve come across and defeated, along with some individual statistics like how many times you’ve killed that monster. Similarly, there is also a catalog for the items you’ve come across so far. Still on the topic of statistics and the like, the game also keeps track of statistics about how you’ve been doing, such as the number of deaths and secrets unlocked so far. You can also see what secrets you have unlocked and rewatch cutscenes. Accessibility in controls is also an important point to mention. Basically, movement is assigned to the left joycon, you can use either the d-pad or the joystick, and the right joycon is responsible for shooting, which can be done with both the joystick or face buttons. The shoulder buttons are mapped to use items. One last thing I want to mention is the customization of the HUD. You can have the most minimalist HUD, showing only how many hearts, coins, keys and bombs you have left, along with your current position on the map, or you can individually choose if you want your stats and/or your run time and score to be visible along with the already mentioned elements. To sum this last part up, you have the option to either have a super detailed HUD where you have control about most of your build’s details, or you can have a minimalist HUD, showing just the bare minimum.

In conclusion, Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ is an incredible game. Ignoring how the game was originally and whatever content was added inbetween or what it went through to reach this point, this version of the game that includes everything released so far is brilliant. The roguelike and dungeon crawling elements are extremely addictive, and every time I lose I feel like starting my next run right away because before dying I learned something that will allow me to play better next time. Personally, the way the game is able to portray such divisive themes is super interesting, injecting its own personality into topics that have been analyzed and reworked across different types of media. While hard as nails, the game is able to provide a fair learning curve that allows the players to feel rewarded for their investment and skills. Last but not least, the game is packed with content, so if you decide to sink your teeth into it you will probably not play other games for quite a while. In short, even if roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, bullet-hell and the like are not usually your cup of tea, I can still recommend this game to most people, provided you’re fine with the topics that this game deals with.

On a personal note, the physical version is a real treat. As usual with the physical version of Nintendo Switch games, just staring at the game cover and finding out what its reverse cover looks like when you buy the game is super nice, but the physical release of Binding of Isaac actually comes with a mini paper manual, yes you read that right, a game that still comes with a manual in this day and age, along with two sheets of stickers. If you’re ever thinking of buying this game and see its physical edition on a store, please do yourself a favor and buy it right away.

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