Achieve!

Less than a week away from the release of The Binding of Isaac, currently adding the final music and sound edits as we test achievements and get the game ready for its steam release on the 28th.

When i started SMB dev i had a very negative standpoint when it came to achievements, they really felt like worthless tacked on extras that usually forced the player to do boring or counterintuitive things to gain digital badges, and in a lot of games out there that's exactly what they are. During the final development months of SMB we were forced to sit down and come up with 12 xbla achievements, but even with a game like smb adding achievements that were more then "check point awards" was tough. i feel like the only legit achievement we added was the Iron boy achievement, an achievement that asked the player to go above and beyond to gain something extra, it went with the hardcore theme of the game and worked so well on xbla we decided to add 11 more of them in the Steam version.

Achievements can be fun if designed in a way that asks more of the player, but in a game like Isaac, achievements can also be used as a progression check list as well as extra reward, so today i'm going to go over the "visible" Isaac achievements and explain why we did them the way we did.

Ill try not to go into great detail on each as to not spoil too much, but the over 40 Isaac achievements fall into a few different categories. 

Basic Progression achievements: (colored by chapter, 6)

As i explained in my last post, Isaac doesnt play like a "normal" linear game, its a game that was designed to be played over and over with different content and outcomes. So to do achievements designed around progression we did these

Each of the 3 starting chapters (Basement, Caves, Depths) has 2 basic progression achievements, completing said chapter for the 1st time as well as killing all 4 of the starting bosses in each chapter as well. Each achievement also rewards you with unlockable content, as you might assume from the images the content ranges from, new weapons, usable items, level effecting hats and even a lil pet! These are the most basic achievements in the game, and probably the easiest to get when starting out.

Item achievements: (grey, 12+)

everyone of the 13+ item achievements obviously rewards the player with a new item that is shuffled into their next play sessions making the game richer in content. how you get these items is a bit mysterious, some are unlocked by doing specific things that are hinted at in the achievement descriptions, some are rewarded by unlocking alt characters, some are unlocked by getting item combos and others are unlocked by simply playing the game as you would normally.  

Character achievements:(white, 3+)

Basic achievements that are attained by unlocking alt. characters!

Mystery achievements: (purple, 5)

these are a secret to everyone!

Game Completion achievements: (red, 8+)

Probably the game's key achievements, these guys are rewarded by completing the game 1-10 times. each one either unlocks an item, character, boss or changes the full game. these are the key achievements for all die hards.

Extreme achievements!: (gold, 4+)

Bonus achievements rewarded for finishing the game with alt characters and 100%ing the game, these rewards come in the form of very powerful familiars and even things that change how your starting characters play! 

REAL achievements: (colored by chapter, 4)

The equivalent of Iron man runs in SMB, these hardcore achievements are meant for the freaks out there who like a real challenge! 

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And thats the basic run down of achievements and rewards.

If the game takes off and the fans start salivating for more achievements, we have a few planned for updates in the future... speaking of future plans.

Many of you following me on twitter have probably read that it was very hard for me to stop adding new content to Isaac during the last month of dev, last week i had to completely cut off the content to assure we would hit or launch date on the 28th, of course the moment i did that i came up with a ton of amazing ideas that i felt NEEDED to be in the game! I dont want to promise anything right now, because god knows mentioning stuff like this is an easy way to shoot yourself in the foot by doing tons of extra work for nothing (see the 6months of extra dev time on the promised super meat world + level editor) BUT...

IF Isaac does well on steam and aquires a fan base that really wants more game, i will be for sure doing a FREE update this Halloween :)... those of you who though the game was dark...well, it will get darker.

ok back to testing!

BYE!

Progression?

This post is filled with minor spoilers.. just sayin.

Progression:

How the hell do you add a feeling of progress when your game is randomly generated? this was a huge hurdle of mine when starting Isaac and something i was very unsure of as the game started to unfold.

i had a few examples i knew worked, Spelunky had a sense of progression by playing the game to cash in on short cuts that would push beginners through the full game by adding "starting points". Desktop Dungeons added progression by unlocking alternate characters that play differently to mix things up and allow you to continue with a new character if the game grew stale.

I liked both of these designs but the one Spelunky used didnt fit with Isaac's leveling progression and Desktop's design didnt fit well due to the lack of character customization i had without using items.

The design i settled on actually turned out to be more of a combination of alt characters from DD and the unlocking weapon system used in Super Crate Box, formed to fit Isaacs gameplay.

What i mean by that is this, the more you play Isaac the more random elements are shuffled into the game, Items, enemies, rooms, characters, bosses, endings and even chapters are unlocked as you play the game.

These unlockables are triggered by many different things, some are based on achievements others based on luck, but the most common simply happen by playing the game as you normally would. 

Basicly the more you play the game, the more rich the content becomes. this formula gives the illusion of the game feeling endless and lets it unfold organically as you play. Not only does this let me add a sense of progress as you play and get better it also lets me control the difficulty of the game.

Difficulty: 

Difficulty progression is another aspect i mulled over for a long time when starting Isaac's design. I wanted the game to be a challenge, but much like Super Meat Boy i also wanted to be able to add content that helps those having trouble (unlockable characters) and rewards better players with more challenge (dark world). With Isaac i came at this in a very similar way but applied it with unlockable content.

Users who play the "basic" game and are struggling will be rewarded with new items (shuffled into the game) that will aid in their gameplay sessions making the game a bit easier for them, but players who play well will be rewarded with more of a challenge in the form of harder bosses, extra chapters and raised over all dificulty depending on how well they continuously play. That said, regardless of how you play you will still eventually unlock the "helper" content even if you're dominating the game.

Its hard to go into detail about exactly how these things unlock and what they are without spoiling the fun, but there are over 60 unlockables that range from an extended game, 10+ new bosses, difficulty spikes with extra reward and loads of new unique items.

Oh also characters,

Characters: 

Isaac is one of 4 main playable characters (or classes) that become available as you play the game, these classes mirror the 4 core classes in DnD, Fighter, Thief, Cleric and Wizard. 

Isaac: The Fighter

an average character unlocked from the start.

HP: 3  Dam: 2  Range: 2  Speed: 2

Starting Item: None

Starting pickup item: Bomb

Cain: The Thief

Unlocked by acquiring 55+ pennies in one play through 

HP: 2  Dam: 2  Range: 1  Speed: 3

Starting Item: Lucky Foot (passive item that raises luck)

Starting pickup item: Key

Maggy: The Cleric

Unlocked by getting 7+ container hearts in one play through

HP: 4  Dam: 2  Range: 2  Speed: 1

Starting Item: Yum Heart (Usable item that regenerates health. recharge: 6)

Starting pickup item: None

Judas: The Wizard

Unlocked by ??????

HP: 1  Dam: 4  Range: 2  Speed: 2

Starting Item: Book of Belial (Usable item that raises damage. recharge: 6)

Starting pickup item: Penny

Unlocking these characters will also unlock their special item in the main game and shuffle them into your gameplay sessions regardless of who you play as.

The goal of alt characters is to allow the player to start as a slightly more defined "class" to hopefully complement their play style as well as change up how one might play the game. 

There are also unique "familiars" that are unlocked by completing the full game with each character as a bonus reward. 

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Well i hope that cleared up a bit of the mystery on why replaying the game is actually rewarding in more ways than one, and how i dealt with difficulty progression within a roguelike formula. 

Im super excited to get this thing out, very very happy with it right now and really enjoyed working with Florian(nsfw) and Danny a lot, special thanks also go out to Tommy who not only has play tested the hell out of isaac but also wrote the achievement code for us and Danielle whos been obsessively playing for the past 2 months and is in the process of making some very awesome limited edition Isaac plush for our launch on the 28th!

and for those of you who missed the last post...

The Binding of Isaac is coming out on the 28th of Sept. Only on Steam.

It launched on both Mac and Pc, and will sell for $5 bucks!

Questions will be answered in the comments below.

-Edmund

Binding of Isaac release date!

New Music!

The release of The Binding of Isaac is getting close, currently my days are once again spent glued to my chair crunching away on the final edits, tweaks, balanced and achievements so its perfect for launch later this month.

Along side Florian and myself, Danny Baranowsky has been slaving away on some pretty amazing works of his own. Im sure most reading this blog are familiar with his work, but if you somehow missed it he did all the music for Super Meat Boy, Canabalt, Spewer, Grey matter and also remade all the music in Cave story for the 3ds.

As usual Danny has been very fun to work with, his music is also a big motivator for me creatively when i design, we communicate well on a creative level and i think it shows in the way the music complements the game.

With Super Meat Boy Danny was riding on a very heart pounding retro "video gamey" theme for most of the games tracks, with Isaac is kind of the opposite, especially when it comes to the mood. The music in Isaac is dark, strange, haunting and at times a bit disturbing. hes married the games theme with the music perfectly, hearing the choirboy singing in the bg of one of the games main tracks still gives me goose bumps when i hear it.. but enough gushing about Danny, we all know hes awesome.

Here is the next free track Danny posted today, The final boss music of the game, Thine Wrath.

http://dbsoundworks.bandcamp.com/track/thine-wrath

Obviously a lot more upbeat than the 1st ch1 track Danny posted a few weeks ago (http://dbsoundworks.bandcamp.com/album/the-binding-of-isaac-soundtrack).

Much like SMB, Danny will also be releasing a full soundtrack, this sound track will featured just over 12 tracks and be sold on Steam as well as Bandcamp.

Well time to get back to work, im going to try to buy myself enough time tomorrow to do a new game play post and also announce our release date!

i also made this icon today!

Till next time...

The Binding of Isaac Gameplay explained

So, I've obviously been seriously neglecting this dev blog due to crunch time with The Binding of Isaac, but things are currently slowing down due to the game being basically finished minus some more testing and polish so i thought it would be a great time to do my 1st in depth blog post about the design of Isaac.

For the past month we have been heavily testing Isaac with other devs, the response is extremely positive and the majority of testers are fully hooked, but there is one core issue.

The 1st time people play they don't understand that the game was meant to be played multiple times with different results.

I've tried to push the title "Roguelike" around a lot to get across how the game plays, but I'm now realizing that a majority have no clue what that means, they see something that looks like a zelda shooter and right away assume it's going to be a linear experience and then become frustrated by their 1st death when they respawn back at start.

So here is my attempt at explaining the game :) I think I'll call it...

Randomly Generated Content! it's good for you!

The goal with Isaac was simple, I wanted to design a game that would feel totally fresh and new every time you play it. Now on paper this might seem very hard to do, but by pulling from the roguelike formula I was able to do this pretty easily.

On the surface the first thing most people will notice after playing once and dying is that the maps are generated randomly.

Every map consists of 4 core rooms, and between 5-20 non-core rooms.

The 4 core rooms are:

Treasure Room: where you will always find an item

Boss Room: where you fight the boss end exit the map

Shop: where you can buy items

Secret Room: its a secret!

The 4 core rooms will ALWAYS appear in a map, they are the foundation of the games "leveling" system and should be looked at as the goals of each level. Even though these rooms always appear, their contents, enemies, look, design and any "surprises" within them are randomly picked from a slew of alternates.

The non-core rooms are randomly selected from a pre-designed group of 1000+ rooms that are arranged by difficulty and chapter. the majority of these rooms consist of small arena battles that make the bulk of the game play, but they are also peppered with bonus rooms with mini puzzles, prizes, traps and a few surprises here and there.

Aside from these rooms there are also a set of context sensitive rooms:

The Arcade: A room filled with mini games that cost coins (only appears when you have enough money)

The Challenge Room: Fight off waves of enemies for a prize. (only appears when you play well)

Mini boss room: a mini boss appears!

Mystery Room1: it's a secret!

Mystery Room2: it's a secret!

These uncommon rooms are meant to spice up game play and add small alternate goals and or extra risk/reward aspects to the game. as per usual the contents of each of these rooms is always different.

On the surface this is basically the foundation of the games design, but if we go another layer deeper we can see that the contents within the randomly generated core content also have random elements inside of them.

Now, we know that the rooms are chosen randomly from a very large set of rooms I designed, but the contents within each of those rooms also have random elements.

Enemies:

There are well over 50 enemies in Isaac, but each of these enemies have minor random elements:

For example we have this guy, the Mulligan.

Most of the time he looks like the 1st guy, runs away from you if he sees you, has a small % chance of blowing up and shooting bullets out and spawns 2-4 randomly chosen flies when he is killed.

But there is also a smaller % chance he will appear as the 2nd guy, the Mulligoon.

Mulligoons act the same as their brothers accept they always explode into a spray of bullets when they die and also leave a "troll bomb" behind that blows up.

On top of these there is an even smaller % chance that a Mulligan will appear as a "Special" Mulligan and possibly look like the 3rd guy.

Special enemies will be randomly colored, slightly larger then their brothers, do more damage and have more health.

Special enemies will also drop "pickups" when they are killed as an extra reward for the risk of fighting a stronger enemy.

Pickups:

Whenever you clear a room, kill a special enemy or open a chest there is a good % chance pickup items will be spawned.

Core pickup items consist of:

Pennies: you buy items, play games and donate these to hobos.

Hearts: you fill up your life with these

Bombs: you blow up rocks, doors, walls and enemies with these

Keys: you unlock shops, treasure rooms, locked chests and other special things with these.

Less common are the one use pickup items:

Tarot Cards: randomly picked from the 18 cards that exist in the game. each card has a different effect.

Pills: randomly picked from around 12 different effects, both negative and positive. every new game changes what color pill has what effect(much like scrolls and potions in roguelikes.

On top of these, there is also a small % chance that the core pickups will become these:

Nickle: 5 pennies!

Half Heart: :(

Soul Heart: acts as armor

Double bomb: 2 bombs

Troll Bomb: :(

there is also an even smaller % chance that rooms, enemies and the like will generate chests, there are 2 types of chests

Basic chest: Generates 2-5 pickup items, can also appear in mini puzzle rooms

Locked Golden chest: Generates 2-8 pickup items, can also generate "special items"

Special items:

Special items are the core of the games "leveling system". Similar to Zeldas leveling system (if you can call it that) Isaacs growth focuses on finding items that stack together, raise your stats, change how you play and how your character appears in game.

There are over 110 special items in the game that fit into these categories.

Usable items:

these items all have different effects when you use them and recharge by completing rooms. items have different charge rates depending on the power of the item, you can only hold one Usable item at a time.

Weapon items:

these items change your shots adding properties like homing, poison, knock back, boomarang etc. They might also totally change your attack to something very different.

Stat padding items:

these items raise your range, damage, rate of fire, speed and HP (adding container hearts)

Passive items:

these wild card items will effect many aspects of gameplay without having to do anything, they range from gaining the ability to see through walls, to the ability to fly.

Familiars:

these items act as "Options" (like in Gradius), following the player+shooting, blocking, finding/generating pickups or just running around killing stuff.

The majority of special items are found in treasure rooms but, less common items are also found exclusively in other rooms:

-The Shop has a set of exclusive shop items that usually aid ease of level traversing

-The secret room has a set of more odd and rare items inside it

-The Boss room has a set of stat padding items to make sure your character's stats always get raised.

There are also small sets of very rare items exclusive to other "things" but i wont spoil them.

and finally...

Bosses:

As mentioned before, every map in the game will feature a boss room where you face off against one of 20+ bosses, killing the boss will get you a stat padding item and open the trap door to the next level.

Like everything else in the game, bosses are also randomly chosen and have random elements within them.

Every time a map is generated, it picks a boss from a set of 4-5 bosses for that chapter set. each chapter consists of 2 levels, if it's the 2nd level of the chapter the boss that is picked gets slightly buffed HP wise to balance difficulty.

The bosses level is randomly chosen from 8 different arena layouts, sometimes appearing with "helpers" or small mobs. Like enemies, Bosses can also appear as alternate special bosses with modded stats, attacks and visual changes always keeping you on your toes.

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All in all the stacking of these elements along with extra "special happenings" and other undescribed extras makes this formula of random generation create a game that is so different each time you play it that the penalty of having to start over from scratch really becomes a reward, because every time you start a new game the adventure feels totally fresh and mysterious.

There is another huge element to all of this that rewards players even more, but ill hold off on explaining that till the next post.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments.

The Binding of Isaac will be launching on Steam (Pc/Mac) in the next 2 weeks.

-Edmund

The Binding of Isaac, coming to Steam!

As some of you guessed, The Binding of Isaac will be launching on Valve's Steam service in August (not sept.).

We haven't settled on a price yet, but it definitely wont put much of a strain on your wallets.

ok, so details about the game.

Isaac is a roguelike shooter based on the dungeon structure of Zelda (nes). At its core it controls like Smash TV / Robotron in a randomly generated semi RPG world filled with powerups items and special abilities.

There is not a traditional leveling system in Isaac, instead we used an item system. Every level will have a treasure room, shop, boss and other secret/special rooms that might contain unique items. Special items come in 4 sets, Usable items, Special Weapon upgrades, Passive upgrades and stat boosters. 90% of items in the game stack, so as you progress your character will change into a monstrous powerhouse not only in stats and abilities but also in appearance.

There are currently over 70 special items in Isaac, not counting pickup items.

Aside from these core items, Isaac uses its pickup items as resources in what i call micro puzzles. the core resources in the game are Coins, Bombs, Keys, Hearts, cards and pills each of these pickups can be used in different ways to acquire special items, gain access to shops and hidden areas, kill enemies and also affect gameplay in many other ways.

The game currently has 6 "dungeons" spanning 3 chapters, 6 bosses, 36 enemy types, 4 unlockable characters and tons of dynamic happenings.

in the end we hope to top out at 8 dungeons with 10+ bosses and 42 enemy types.. we have our work cut out for us for our aug. launch.

As mentioned before Danny B will be doing the music, so you can expect an EP's worth of new Danny Awesomeness as well, we are also featuring Jordan on sound effects (he did the sounds for smb and donkey kong country wii)!

anyway, its exciting to finally announce all this. Florian just made it so neutral flys are attracted to piles of shit and if they eat too much of the shit they get fat and become bloated flys that poop blood at you... im very happy with this game so far.

here are some beta screen shots!









Till next time!

I dropped a bean back there..

In a recent interview with IGN about SMB and indie dev i was asked about The Binding of Isaac and spilled a bean or 2 about the inspiration behind the game.

you can read all about it Here

The article is for the most part correct, accept for the release date of sept. We actually hope to release the game much sooner and will release that info once we solidify exactly how and where we are going to release it.

Also i believe the part where i said "i hope people dont get offended" should probably read "I hope peopel dont get TOO offended"

Anyway yeah, back to work!