The Binding of Isaac

I’m totally getting into Indie games at the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever really been all about the ‘mainstream’ games – sure I’ve played my share of Call of Duty (I love the crap out of Nazi Zombies) and Halo and those types of games, but they’ve never really been my favourite – but I’ve never really delved into the real Indie area until the past year or so.

My introduction to some awesome Indie titles does come through the Humble Bundles, the idea of which I love, and while my initial interest into my first Bundle was through the game Psychonaughts, I’ve now decided to get the Indie Bundle each time it comes around, regardless of what’s on offer. There are some really interesting games out there.

The one that’s caught me at the moment is The Binding of Isaac, which beautifully combines random map generation with interesting, intense game-play. I love the idea that you are given very, very limited information about the maps that you’re playing, the enemies you fight and the items that you come across, without it being an annoying gimmick.

What I’m enjoying about Indie games is that they’re usually quite short, which means there’s no useless padding and we receive more concentrated quality immediately. They’re usually built on simple, yet interesting mechanics and, when they aim to tell a story, it’s done very effectively and in a minimalist fashion – an excellent story was told in Limbo, with absolutely no dialogue or context, it was thrilling.

I’d really love to just spend a couple of days doing nothing but playing Indie games, just to see the vast range that’s out there… Damn life, getting in the way of gaming and being antisocial…