Meaningful Decisions in Binding of Isaac
Developer - Nicalis
riginal Release Date - 11/04/2014
The Binding of Isaac is a procedurally generated dungeon crawler about a boy trying to escape from his mother. The game operates as a twin stick shooter, where your left control stick moves Isaac, and your right control stick stick shoots tears in the direction you push it in. Players can also find bombs, coins, keys, and various other items throughout the game to alter the way it plays. After navigating multiple rooms and reaching the boss of a floor, Isaac jumps down further into the “dungeon”. This cycle repeats until the player dies or defeats a final boss for that playthrough.
I chose to write about this game because it contains some of the most meaningful decision making I’ve seen in gaming. Almost every item in the game requires the player to make some kind of choice, and how the player plays is left entirely up to them. Some of these choices include how to traverse the dungeons, what to use keys and bombs on, how to spend coins, what items to carry, and what game changing passive items players want to pick up. The latter two affect the player the most, and sometimes include both positive and negative effects. These effects require players to weigh their options, and they can choose to ignore them altogether if they don’t like the negative side effects.
But some of the most interesting decisions in the game deal with the player’s hearts. They act as the amount of hits a player can take, and can be replenished by picking more up, but they also have several other uses. Hearts can be spent at blood donation machines, which give coins to players in need of money. Cursed doors and sacrifice rooms take health from the player, but often reward them for doing so. There are even rooms that players can only enter if they have a certain amount of hearts. And if the player wants some of the more powerful items in the game, they will have to make a deal with the devil, giving up a portion of their health in the progress. These choices can provide useful benefits to the player, but makes them more vulnerable in the process. Making the wrong choice could result in the player losing their current play session.
The flowchart below shows of how these decisions play out in-game:
