While certainly not the only roguelike or roguelite ever made,The Binding of Isaacis undoubtedlyone of the most influential games in the genre, both in the current era of gaming and overall.
From humble origins as a Newgrounds Flash game, boththe original and its Rebirth remake have become iron-clad staples in nearly every Steam librarythanks to their carefully-tuned dungeon crawling mechanics and darkly enduring appeal.
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 10 Best Items, Ranked
Trying to figure out what to unlock and break your next run with? These are the best items in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
Perhaps it would be presumptuous of us to say that Binding of Isaac inspired a large portion of quality roguelikes and roguelites today.
Even so,we can’t help but draw comparisons, mostly positive ones. Isaac walked so many, many more games could run right into our hearts, usually brandishing sharp weapons and firearms.
10Enter The Gungeon
Synergize For Success
Enter the Gungeon
When it comes to games like Binding of Isaac, one of the most commonly cited examples is another power player in the roguelite scene,Enter the Gungeon.
Both games have a lot of similarities, not the least of which being their heavy emphasis on bullet-based projectile combat and multiple modifying pickups.
Perhaps the biggest shared quality between Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon, though, is their greater emphasis on weapon and item synergy.
In both games, the items you pick up and the weapons you use can interact in all kinds of strange ways, some beneficial, some… less so.
The only difference is that synergies in Isaac are discovered largely through unofficial experimentation, while Gungeon’s synergies are hard-coded into the game.
There are certainly items and weapons that can have minor interactions, but there are also many that trigger deliberate special effects when collected together.
If you like experimenting with weird combinations in Isaac but want something a little more clearly-defined, you’ll like Enter the Gungeon.
Dysfunctional Family Dynamics
The “dysfunctional” relationship between Isaac and his mother, to put it mildly, is referenced regularly throughout Binding of Isaac, but doesn’t go much further beyond set dressing and ending tidbits.
If you want a roguelite game that getsa little deeper into dysfunctional, occasionally murderous family relationships, that’sHades’ bread and butter. Both the game and the god, we mean.
Like Binding of Isaac, Hades has fast-paced roguelite combat broken up into segmented rooms, though unlike in Isaac, you can’t backtrack to conquered rooms in Hades.
There is plenty of pickup and weapon experimentation, but with a much greater frequency, as Olympian Boons are given to you after clearing normal rooms instead of in designated treasure rooms.
To return to our original point, though, Hades puts a much greater emphasis on its story, which is a big reason it won all those awards.
Since the Olympians can’t die, it’s a little more reasonable for them to work through their issues with violence than Isaac’s mother bearing down on him with a butcher knife.
8Wizard Of Legend
If You’re Casting Spells Anyway…
Wizard Of Legend
Many items in Binding of Isaac, particularly in some of its later updates, draw inspiration from historical depictions of magic and witchcraft.
Of course, this kind of magic is usually of the “horrible blood sacrifice” or “selling your soul to the Devil” variety. If you’d prefer a roguelite with a more benign magical slant, try Wizard of Legend.
Wizard of Legend is another highly modular roguelite, though instead of creating slight spins on the same kind of attack like you do in Isaac, you instead swap your attacks out altogether.
Bothbefore and during a run, you can uncover new cards containing different magic attacks with different elemental affinities.
There are incremental stat upgrades and circumstantial abilities you can find during a run as well, and combined with your unique Arcana setup, you could end up with a build that’s very distinctly yours by design rather than completely by chance.
7Vampire Survivors
More Bullet, Less Hell
Vampire Survivors
The Binding of Isaac is often given the secondary categorization of a bullet hell game. This is, obviously, due to the large quantities of projectiles flying around at any given moment from both you and your enemies.
If you’d prefer to tip that scale a little more toward your favor,Vampire Survivorscan be a pleasant palate cleanser.
Vampire Survivors could be likened to Isaac with a lot of the more complex elements stripped out, leavingpure arena-based projectile combat, and only for you.
Endless waves of enemies gradually converge on your position, with only a select few possessing ranged attacks. If you make a habit of taking on challenge rooms in Isaac, it’s a familiar feeling.
While Vampire Survivors is a much simpler game, you can still see shades of Isaac’s formula, such as tinkering with item and weapon combinations andunlocking new charactersand items through mildly abstract means.
6Cult Of The Lamb
Sinfully Delightful
Cult of the Lamb
One of the most well-known elements of The Binding of Isaac is the more than a few toes it dips intothe realms of religion and Satanic imagery.
It’s not exactly pleasant, but it makes for a cool aesthetic, and a fun contrast to all the poop jokes. If Satanic imagery and poop jokes are what you’re after, there’s plenty of both inCult of the Lamb.
During its roguelite action segments, Cult of the Lamb is very similar to Isaac, albeit switching out projectiles for more melee-focused combat.
There’s randomly generated rooms you can freely travel between,multiple levels with their own unique characteristics and hazards, and plenty of ungodly monsterslaunching out bodily fluids.
Where Isaac’s combat is for its own sake, though, Cult of the Lamb’s is for building and bettering your titular cult.
With resources harvested and followers recruited from your crusades, you may build up your very own demonic cult commune.
Isaac is afraid he’s an incarnation of the Antichrist, but the Lamb ain’t afraid at all; he knows what he’s about.
5Crypt Of The NecroDancer
Dungeoneering With A Beat
Crypt of the NecroDancer
When you get sucked into a really good Binding of Isaac run, you start to move to an invisible rhythm. you’re able to see the trajectories of enemy shots, know exactly when you need to trigger your items, and just generally go all Ultra Instinct on it.
If you think you’re good at following this invisible rhythm, maybe you’ll have a chance at following the real rhythm inCrypt of the NecroDancer.
NecroDancer follows Isaac’s framework of randomly-generated, instanced dungeons populated with several pools of unique monsters, pickups, traps, and so on.
10 Best Rhythm Games On Steam
Never a dull note.
Where in Isaac you may freely move at your own pace, in NecroDancer you move to the beat of its soundtrack.Everything from movement to attacking needs to happen on the beatif you want it to be even remotely effective.
NecroDancer is arguably a much moredifficult and demanding gamethan Binding of Isaac, and can be a little tricky to wrap your head around, even if you have a lot of experience in the latter. If you can do it, though, it’s pretty darn satisfying.
4Nuclear Throne
Get Gross With it
Nuclear Throne
In any given Binding of Isaac run, Isaac is probably going to end up looking pretty demented by the end of it, thanks to the unpleasant visual effects caused by picking up new items.
If you’re not opposed to a little bit of casual body horror, then you might as well go the full nuclear mutant route in Nuclear Throne.
In Nuclear Throne,besides new weapons and items, radiation is your most vital of resources.
Radiation functions like experience, and as you accumulate it, you’ll receive a random swath of mutations to choose from. Mutating your character in strange new ways not only makes you look weirder, but it can fundamentally change how your character handles and survives.
It’s a very similar kind of game flow to finding a new item in Binding of Isaac, but it occurs at more regular intervals.
You always know exactly when a new mutation is going to happen, and if things end up going a way you don’t like, you’ll know how long you’ll have to endure before you can get something new.
3Neon Abyss
Flipped On Its Side
Neon Abyss
Most of the games we’ve highlighted have beentop-down experiences, but that’s hardly the only genre that works with the roguelite formula. Case in point, Neon Abyss.
Admittedly, this game takesmore cues from Enter the Gungeon than Isaac, but as we’ve established, Gungeon itself takes cues from Isaac, so it still counts.
Neon Abyss swaps out the top-down controls of its contemporaries with a side-scrolling platformer setup while still maintaining the room-based dungeon framework.
Like in Gungeon and Isaac, collecting certain items and weapons will unlock new synergies, affecting how your projectiles fly, how your character moves, and so on.
One other big similarity Neon Abyss has with Isaac in particular is its greater emphasis on pets.
You can find and hatch various eggs, which will release friendly critters that follow you around and provide passive buffs. Though, unlike with Isaac’s little buddies, the longer you keep a pet alive in this game, the more powerful it can become.
2Children Of Morta
A More Pleasant Family Story
Children of Morta
If you’ve had your fill of less-than-pleasant familial interactions from Binding of Isaac and want something a little more wholesome, you may enjoyChildren of Morta.
It still involves a young child who probably shouldn’t be fighting for their life, but at least the whole family’s in on it this time.
Rather than creating a build from randomly-chosen buffs and items accumulated throughout a run like in Isaac,Children of Morta is more about familiarizing yourself with a list of different playstyles,one for each playable character.
Once you understand what makes each character tick, then you can make slight adjustments to their stats and kits over the course of a run with swappable upgrades and a traditional leveling system.
Much like Hades, Children of Morta also places a greater emphasis on its story than Isaac, being a generally more hopeful and heroic tale of a magical family’s ancient duty rather than a disturbed mother tormenting her only child.
1Streets Of Rogue
The City Is Alive
Streets of Rogue
The Binding of Isaac and its contemporaries typically have a unifying factor in the form of enclosed, dungeon-centric maps. Whether you’re in a basement, a cave, or the pits of Hell, there’s only one direction to go.
What if these worlds were much more open, though? Well, then you’d haveStreets of Rogue.
Rather than a single dungeon to shoot your way through, Streets of Rogue has a more open-ended approach to its roguelite design.
You choose one of a multitude of characters with different skills and specialtiesand tackle your mission objectives pretty much any way you think you can get away with.
There’s still plenty of top-down shooting and character upgrades, but it doesn’t necessarily have to start with that. If that’s what you’re into, pick a Soldier and go to town, but don’t feel limited to stick with what Isaac taught you.
The Binding of Isaac: 10 Items That Will Ruin Any Run
The Binding of Isaac can be challenging enough without getting an item that crushes your synergies. These are some of the worst.
