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The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth expansion release date is October 30th reveals new teaser

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The Binding of Isaac is up there with WoW when it comes to games I’m glad all my playtime can’t be tracked easily. Split over the original release and the recent Rebirth HDification/sequel, it’s taken an easy two hundred hours, I expect. It may be nothing to the Dota fans out there, but it does pretty well for a singleplayer game. To say I’m excited about the upcoming Afterbirth expansion would be an understatement on the scale of calling the game’s religious undertones “a bit freaky.” Now we have a release date along with final details on what the expansion entails and the spooky trailer below.

They should never, ever, ever make an FPS version of Isaac. Good lord. I’ll stick to Tower of Guns.

Here’s the list of what’s getting downloaded straight to your Isaadrive come Halloween:

  • Greed Mode: a whole new game mode with a heavy focus on risk/reward that is a completely new way to play featuring new endings and a final boss.
  • Expanded main game: a new final area has been added to the main game along with another new final boss and ending.
  • Daily Runs: compete for highscore / best time on the leader boards in these daily seeded runs.
  • 10 totally new and awesome challenges
  • 1000+ new rooms, as well as new tiny rooms, closets and giant arching hallways.
  • a totally new playable character, Lilith, mother of demons.
  • 120 new items! not counting tons of new pickups, chests, pills, bombs, cards etc. taking the item count up beyond 525!
  • 4 new alternate chapters with new chapter specific enemy types, visual themes, and surprises.
  • a new seed code combo page, as well as a butt ton of new seed codes that mod the game.
  • a greatly expanded soundtrack!
  • new room types like, trap rooms, double treasure rooms, and ultra rare closets!
  • a greatly expanded and updated hud system
  • tons of new secret transformations
  • 8 new bosses
  • 25+ new enemies
  • updated item combo system
  • far too many new achievements
  • 20 million new co-op babies

Of this, the daily runs are my most anticipated. Though it’s been a few months since I finished Isaac – by my own definition, beating each area with each character on normal, not counting the boss rush or The Lost – it’s exactly what I want to drag me back in. It was fairly weird that Rebirth didn’t launch with it as a feature, given how popular they proved for Spelunky and other roguelikes, but I’m glad it’s here now.

The devs are billing it closer to Rebirth 2 than a simple expansion, with the amount of new content adding “another 100+ hours” at least. Like Wrath of the Lamb did for the first version of the game, Afterbirth looks to improve upon all the best bits of Rebirth along with its pair of massive new features. Transformations are one of the coolest ways to break the game currently, with Guppy an all-time favourite for actually winning. Expanding the item pool is a tricky balancing act between adding enough new stuff that it shows up regularly, not adding anything that feels pointless and making sure players need to learn whole new lists of what’s hot and what’s not.

There’ll be pre-orders up soon at a “considerable price deduction.” The new Greed mode was detailed last week. It’s designed to show off as much new stuff as possible in a horde-style wave-defense setup.