The Binding of Isaac is a hugely successful videogame, and thanks to two extremely lucrative crowdfunding efforts that netted around $8 million, you could argue that its a highly successful card game as well. The videogame fits almost too perfectly into begin turned into cardboard, with its roguelike genetics being suited to the randomness of dungeon crawler, variable bonuses and and player powers sitting well within the tabletop realm. There's around eighty thousand people who have some kind of variation of the tabletop game. So surely its extremely good because well funded games are always amazing, aren't they. I'm approaching this as someone who is away from the hype canoe sailing down the river rapids of marketing and excitement and so this is probably going to be dull in comparison. I'm also someone who is a fan of the game, and has spent many an hour running around randomly generated dungeons of blood and filth. For those unfamiliar with the videogame, you play
First of all a huge apology. I've had Merv sit on my shelf for far too long, and while it's bright colours and enticing presentation was shouting at me to get it to the table, the number of times I've sat there with the board set out in front of me trying to make things click or even put things together, only to give in and put it all back in the box again. It wasn't even a Merv thing, it's a brain thing I think, and whether it is an age thing or just an intelligence thing, it still leaves me in the situation where Merv was sitting there undeservedly not played looking unhappy and brightly coloured. So sorry. I should have written this a long time ago, and so I'll try to make it up to you. Secondly, regarding how Merv looks, Ian O'Toole has created something that looks wonderful on the table. Bright colours and subtle colour palettes merge together on the table to make something that the boardgame Instagram crowd will buy just to be able to take pretty pic