RPS Feature Good but not great
You can’t walljump. For me, this is what defines The End Is Nigh [official site], the hardcore platformer from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel. McMillen’s last co-created platformer was Super Meat Boy, a game that made simply moving left and right a kinetic joy. The End Is Nigh is by comparison a slower but no less difficult game. Read the rest of this entry »
The End Is Nigh [official site], the murderous new platformer from the co-creator of Super Meat Boy and the creator of Closure, is now out. It’s a bit Super Meaty, a bit Gishy, and definitely a bit of a git. As you might expect, it’s a game with a whole lot of being killed by spikes, traps, fluids, autoguns, monsters, and all that platforming rabble. If the summer heat is getting to you, perhaps consider playing this as tearing your hair out will surely help cool your dome. Read the rest of this entry »
Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen and Closure dev Tyler Glaiel have shown off more of After announcing The End Is Nigh [official site] last week, the deadly new platformer they announced last week. As you might expect, the new gameplay video is full of spikes, pits, jumping up and sliding down walls, quick deaths, quick restarts, and odd-lookin’ sad creatures. Unlike most games announced around E3, this one is coming soon — in just under one month — so have a look, tired eyes. Read the rest of this entry »
Edmund McMillen, the co-creator of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, has announced a deadly new platformer. The End Is Nigh [official site] is its name, and coming out in July is its game. It’s a collaboration with Closure creator Tyler Glaiel and no, it’s Øuroboros, another platformer those two had been working on. The End Is Nigh is a “sprawling adventure platformer” past the end of the world about a blobby lad named Ash who certainly will die a lot. Have a peek in the announcement trailer: Read the rest of this entry »
Yet more items have dropped into mom’s basement with the second ‘booster pack’ for The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth † [official site]. Out now, it rolls more player-made mods into the official roster. Some of them are handy, like Jumper Cables recharging your active item as you kill enemies, while others appeal to vanity, like more graphics for bomb combos and a dresser table reshuffling your appearance-changing items. And huzzah, the update has also reworked Angel Rooms to be less useless! Read the rest of this entry »
Rad roguelikelike The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ [official site] has launched its first ‘Booster Pack’, a collection of player-made mods now made official and rolled into the game. The first batch plucked from the Steam Workshop (and slightly tweaked) are mostly new items and trinkets, along with odds and ends like extra hairstyles for Eden and optional charge bars for Brimstone attacks. They’re simply part of Isaac now, nothing to download separately or activate, appearing in all parts of Isaac. This is only the start, as new Booster Packs are due to follow “monthly(ish)”. Read the rest of this entry »
A much-needed patch has arrived for the new Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site] expansion, Afterbirth+, to fix bugs and balance problems. Yes, this does address some of the irritants that Adam raised in his review. Those flipping nuisance enemy-summoning portals are less common, for one, and the Sister Vis boss battle is less of a chore. I’ve already put a fair few hours into Afterbirth+ myself and welcome these changes. Some parts of Afterbirth+ made Isaac simply worse, so I’m glad it’s being worked on. More patches are in the pipeline too. Read the rest of this entry »
The second expansion for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site], the world’s premiere roguelikelike shooter about crying babies, launched last night. Afterbirth+ whacks in new items and enemies and levels and another character and all that but, perhaps more importantly, brings official mod support. Given the wonders players made with unofficial tools – have you seen the Antibirth mod? – I’m mighty excited by what might happen now. Read the rest of this entry »
The second The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site] expansion, Afterbirth+, now has a release date: January 3rd. It’ll give the roguelikelike dungeon crawler a new chapter, a new character, new items, new enemies, and that other typical expansion stuff, but also bring official mod support. Afterbirth+ was expected to launch by the end of this year but hey, I’m sure the holiday season can provide you with enough tears, torment, inner demons, and family confrontations to tide you over for another three days. Read the rest of this entry »
Tearjerking expansion The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ [official site] will add new items and enemies and bosses and all that to the baby simulator, I’m sure you know, and bring official mod support too. We’ve known that for yonks! Here’s a neat twist: some of the best mods will be officially added to the game in updates. Read the rest of this entry »
For months, Isaac-Binding Super Meatman Edmund McMillen has been slowly revealing progress on his next games: a puzzle-RPG Isaac spin-off named The Legend of Bum-bo, made with James Id; and some sort of shooty platformer, made with Tyler Glaiel, by the name of… er… oh! That second game now has a name, Øuroboros, which will make it a lot easier to talk about [though that Ø will be a fiddly one all right -ed.]. He’s also now described the game in an extended simile of road-mash gut-pash, which I’ll sure you’ll find highly informative.
Receiving unwanted items is always a bummer in a roguelikelike where every drop counts, so I’m glad to hear that my favourite roguelikelike is getting a powerful new solution to that. The second expansion to The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site], Afterbirth †, will add a new character with the power to receive powerful bonuses for destroying items. His name’s Apollyon (or Abaddon, as you might better know him) and, as the destroyer and king of the locusts, his starting item will be the mighty Void.
RPS Feature 2015's best expansion!
What is the best expansion pack of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today’s door is…
Ace roguelikelike cry ’em up The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site] expanded only last month with Afterbirth (it’s fab!), but word’s already arrived of another add-on in the works. This will be a small affair in some ways, with new bosses and items and transformations and all that, but also a whole lot bigger: it’ll add mod tools. Tentatively named Afterbirth †, the DLC is due in 2016.
In the week or so after the release of The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth [official site], many members of the Isaac community were up in arms. Datamining – digging through the code for behind the scenes information – had revealed less new content than the pre-release build-up and Steam store page seemed to promise. There was talk of gated content that would only release when updates arrived, there were accusations of lying and betrayal; the Isaac subreddit was saltier than the Dead Sea. And then, over the weekend, the game crept out into the real world and everything got a little weird…
RPS Feature Born Again
Four years after its original release, The Binding of Isaac [official site] is still one of the games I’m most likely to turn to given a spare fifteen minutes (or couple of hours). The recent release of Afterbirth, a DLC/expansion/semi-sequel has rekindled my love, and I’ve spent most evenings since locked in a basement of shit, blood and tears. Whether you want to classify it as an expansion or an entirely new game, it’s one of my favourite things released this year.
I quit. For the next three or so months, I have better things to do than write about video games: I shall be playing the one and only game, the game of games, the game’s game, The Binding of Issac: Rebirth [official site]. The roguelikelike shooter’s expansion ‘Afterbirth’ has just come out on Steam, adding a new character, hundreds of new items, enemies, bosses, areas, room layouts, and so on. Oh, plus a whole new mode, and something no day of my life will be complete without: daily runs.
I had expected this week would bring a trailer announcing a release date for the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site] expansion Afterbirth but no, sadly not.
Instead, co-creator Edmund McMillen has finally revealed the mysterious new mode he’s been teasing. Named Greed Mode, it’s a mob/boss rush-ish survival challenge mode which relies heavily on shops to give lots of options in how you build your baby.
Guess Who? may not have the awe and admiration of the tabletop gaming world, but I maintain that the clacking of a card being ruled out and flipped down is one of gaming’s most delightful sounds and sensations. Fingered [official site] is also about peering at suspects and whittling them down based on their appearance, though given that it’s about police ID lineups and Edmund McMillen (him off Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac) is involved, it’s obviously a little darker.
Having been announced only last week, Fingered was released this week at the friendly price of £1.59. I’ve played a bit and, sure, it’s fun.
Part of the torment of tracking the upcoming ‘Afterbirth’ expansion for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth [official site] is seeing its changes and additions and crying “I DIED SO MANY TIMES BECAUSE I NEEDED THAT.” I get bitter about Isaac losses. Case in point: the shot-bouncifying Rubber Cement will combo with beam weapons like Brimstone and Technology to reflect shots everywhere, and I can think of at least three times it might have saved me after I foolishly picked up cruddy Technology.
Edmund McMillen’s latest dev blog post shows off this and a few other combos coming in Afterbirth, along with a new boss. (Warning: GIFs ahoy (WebMs, really, unless your browser doesn’t like ’em).)
