Isaac

The child at the centre of The Binding of Isaac, who flees his mother into the basement.

Isaac is the young boy the player controls in The Binding of Isaac, the 2011 roguelike by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. The game's plot borrows very loosely from the biblical story of the same name. Isaac lives with his mother in a small house on a hill, drawing pictures and playing with his toys, until his mother comes to believe God wants him sacrificed. Fearing for his life, he escapes into the monster-filled basement of their home and has to fight his way through it.

Lore & Background

According to the game's story, Isaac's mother hears what she takes to be the voice of God, telling her that her son is corrupted with sin and must be saved. She first strips him of his toys, drawings and even his clothes, then shuts him in his room to cut him off from evil. When the voice finally asks her to sacrifice him, she takes a butcher's knife from the kitchen and heads for his room. Watching through a crack in his door, Isaac panics, finds a trapdoor hidden under his rug and jumps through it just as she bursts in. Every new run is taken to start just after that jump. The original game had no single conclusion: it has 13 endings, one after each major boss fight, and a clear end to the story only arrived with the Repentance expansion of the remake.

Reader's Guide

Isaac is the starting character; six more characters can be unlocked in the original game. Runs take place in a procedurally generated dungeon laid out like The Legend of Zelda, with real-time combat. Isaac attacks mainly by firing his tears like a twin-stick shooter, and can also use a limited supply of bombs to hurt enemies and clear parts of a room. Items he picks up are worn automatically and can change his core attributes, such as health or the strength of each tear. On the sixth of eight floors he fights his mother, and the later floors end with a fight against her heart on the eighth floor; an optional ninth floor, Sheol, holds the boss Satan.

What players say: Player verdict on The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth — Rotten Tweets