The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth hits PS4 next week

Hello, Binding of Isaac fans! I’ve got some awesome news. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth is just about ready to launch on PS4. In fact, it’s going to be out on 10th May.

If you haven’t heard, Afterbirth is the extremely extensive add-on for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth delivering 100+ hours of gameplay. Features include:

• A new final area and final boss for the main game.
• The new Greed Mode
• Daily Runs to compete for high scores and best times
• 1,000+ new room designs
• A new playable character, Lilith, mother of demons
• Eight new bosses
• Four new alternate chapters with specific enemy types, visual themes, and surprises
• 25 new enemies
• 120 new items (bringing the total past 525)
• A massively updated weapon combo system
• New alternate soundtrack
• 10 totally new and awesome challenges
• Tons of new secret transformations
• Loads of new Trophies

But enough with the lists. Here are the awesome details on some of Afterbirth’s new content.

Greed Mode

Greed Mode is a totally new game mode in. It mainly involves fighting off waves of randomly chosen sets of enemies that spawn around the room. These waves ramp in difficulty and continue to stack on top of one another until you hit wave eight, press the stop button, or die.

The more waves you string together without hitting the stop button, the higher the cash bonus. If you’re able to do it without taking damage there is another bonus in it for you. After wave eight you get a breather to cash in your winnings and the button mysteriously changes to a skull!

Pressing said skull will start the “boss waves,” an easy wave (on par with a basic boss from that chapter) and a med wave (usually an easy level boss with a small mob). You get a lot more time to kill these waves, but depending on how fast you are there is a high chance that the second boss will spawn in alongside the first. But you can always sacrifice half a heart to stop the next wave from spawning if things are looking dire.

Once these boss waves are finished, the exit door will unbar and you will be able to progress to the next level… or you can take a chance with the “nightmare boss wave” in order to unlock the devil room door.

A single room in greed mode is 100% new, cursed rooms yield totally new surprises, secret rooms have bigger payoffs, and the content of devil rooms aren’t exactly what you are used to. In fact, all the pools in Greed Mode are totally new and have been heavily modded to fit Greed Mode perfectly.

All in all, Greed Mode will feel like a totally new experience that will not only yield tons of rewards for completing it with each character, but also features a very unique ending that should have you coming back for more for quite a while.

Daily Runs

For those of you who have used “seeds” in Rebirth, the short answer is Daily Runs are daily seeds that are universal to everyone playing that day.

Every day, Afterbirth will generate a new “run” for everyone who owns the game to play. But what makes Daily Run different than seeds is that Daily Runs will be identical for everyone in every way.

It doesn’t matter what you have or haven’t unlocked, Daily Runs don’t play by the rules! Everyone is on an equal playing field here! Doesn’t matter what you have or haven’t unlocked. If you wanna go for Mega Satan from the get-go, then go for it!

Beyond all runs being universal, Daily Runs will choose a specific character for you to play as — and everyone is forced to play as him/her/them that day. This includes The Lost. But don’t worry, those will be rare days. That said, nothing can be acquired or unlocked in daily runs. Much like seeds, Daily Runs do not yield any progress rewards so it’s best to play the main game more if you want game progress.

The great part about Daily Runs is that we’ve linked Afterbirth with leaderboards dedicated to Daily Runs. So you can see how well you did in terms of score, time, or both!

New enemies

Afterbirth features loads of new enemies and bosses and even some alternates to existing ones.

Little Horn, for example, is a new and much welcome “stubby” demon boss. Not only does this guy break the mold with his AI, but he also has more attacks than normal bosses. Easily one of the most fun boss fights thus far.

Afterbirth will feature five new champions! Champions in Isaac are twice as large, do a full heart of damage, have twice the life, and usually drop something special when they die.

New items

There will be new cards, pills, runes, bombs, hearts, chests, and even a few new item types you will run into and/or unlock via one of the 10 new challenges.

• Diplopia – A new one-use item that does something pretty interesting: it doubles items and pickups. Not all items are ones you want two of, but I’m sure some of you can think of more than a few that would be nuts to have two of.
• The Friend Ball will insta-kill any non-boss enemy, trapping them inside the ball. Then you can release the trapped enemy, now charmed to fight alongside you for the duration of the room!
• Dead Eye is a fan-suggested item that raises damage with each consecutive hit and causes your tears to become red glowing balls of death if you play well.

Alternate levels

Some of the more interesting features of Afterbirth’s main game are the alternate chapters. As many of you know the game currently features alternate chapters for each existing level set (i.e. the basement’s counterpart is the cellar). Each alternate chapter has its own set of levels, themes, and enemies that are semi-exclusive to it.

We wanted to add more stuff like this without muddying things up by actually making a full third alternate for each existing chapter set. In Afterbirth, each chapter set will feature a variant that will go over the top of whatever theme you are currently playing, so regardless of if you are in the cellar or basement, there is a small percentage chance that whatever level you are in will become a new Afterbirth alternate.

Aside from how different this looks, The Burning Basement also features many different changes. There is a high percent chance that many different enemies will become “flaming alternates.” All new level alternates will feature modded stats and new attacks; there is a small percent chance that rocks will become fire pits. These seem like minor changes, but in a lot of ways these new levels will act as “champion” variations of levels, making things slightly harder but also raising the possibility of more reward. Each new alternate will also feature new music, visuals, and effects.

And that’s all I’m telling you for now. Thanks for reading!

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