The Binding of Isaac [4] – Wrath of the Lamb

This one deserves a separate post.

Ladies and gentlemen, a few days ago, the expansion for Binding of Isaac was released!

Binding of Isaac - The Widow Screen

The Widow is one of the new bosses. She’s fast, but low on health.

I bought it the instant the steam add popped up on my screen and I have yet to regret it. The expansion adds so much new content to the game, it completely refreshes the experience. I’ve been playing a couple of rounds per day since release and I enjoyed every single one of them. There’s heaps of new items, a new, alternative final zone, several new room types, new enemies, which behave in a vastly different way compared to the old ones and a whole new item type – the trinkets.

The trinkets are passive items which can drop from enemies, chests and various other places. They give various passive bonuses, some similar and some different to the already existing items. You can only carry a single trinket with you, unless you find a special item which grants you an extra slot. The bonuses they give vary to a great extent. You can get poison tears (or any other projectiles), a magnet-like effect, a change to get unlimited keys for a level, etc.

Other than that, the whole game layout has changed. Instead of a linear path, you can now get alternative versions of each zone, depending on your performance and luck. These alternative versions are harder, but offer better rewards than the regular ones. Also, instead of two levels per zone, you can get lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it, and get a single, extra large zone level instead. This single level has double the special rooms as well as two bosses at the end of it.

Another addition is the challenge mode, which lets you play the game under certain special conditions. This means you usually start the game with some pretty sweet item, like flight or the super meat boy, but at the cost of not having access to treasure rooms.

Overall, Wrath of the Lamb is an awesome expansion worth it’s price dozens of times over. The only downside to it were some of the starting bugs, which got fixed after a couple of days and shouldn’t be a problem now.