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
This is the pre-production version, so the art, rules and mechanics may be subject to change over the next couple of months. Therefore please treat this as a first thoughts piece, based on version of the game that we were provided with. We have not been paid for the preview. We also do not provide a full play by play explanation of the game, so not all mechanics may be mentioned in the preview. So what have I done? I really don't know. I have a rule about reviews that I keep to myself which is very simple. Any designer that contacts me and says 'Well, it's like chess but..' I normally respond with a quiet thank you and then a polite decline. I want people to sell me the game because of what it is, not because they claim to have improved a game that is so in it's own category some people wouldn't even necessarily put it down as a board game. No, making the horsey jump an extra space isn't going to cut it, and no I like the prawns the way they are I thank you