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The Binding of Isaac is a game about child abuse, both mythological and semi-autobiographical. While its numerous opaque endings are open to interpretation, there is no way to shy away from its distressing foundational theme. It's alluded to in the game's title, borrowed from the myth that features in all three major monotheistic religions in which Abraham comes close to sacrificing his bewildered child, Isaac. And it's made explicit in the game's introductory sequence, which depicts a young boy being chased by his zealot mother, who has been driven to fanaticism by a diet of religious TV and now wants to cleanse her son of his sin with the aid of a carving knife. The eponymous Isaac flees his parent and retreats into the basement beneath the family's house, where responsibility for his safety passes to us.For Edmund McMillen, the co-creator who has made clear this is an exploration of his own childhood experiences living with a family of recovering drug addicts and fundamentalist Christianity, his basement sanctuary was probably metaphorical. In The Binding of Isaac it's a tangible place, a warren of rooms and floors filled with Dante-esque horrors that leads deeper into the earth and Isaac's sense of physical and psychological isolation. It's a shifting maze that changes with each fresh game, a design that reinforces in us the sense of confusion and fear the protagonist feels. Neither Isaac nor we quite know what horrors stand on the other side of the next doorway. And they are horrors indeed - toothy maggots, sobbing babies, lanky spiders and giant hell blobs that spit blood and faecal matter. These grotesque visions are only somewhat tempered by McMillen's cartoonish, flippant art-style.
The urge to protect Isaac and help him to survive in such a relentlessly hostile place is strong. It's encouraged by the game's elegant structure. Rather than present a 60 hour epic with thousands of dungeons floors to clear, there are just eight levels through which Isaac must descend. If he loses all of his health then it's an instant game over, and you must start your quest afresh. Each of the game's floors is punctuated with a boss room, in which you must defeat a stronger enemy in order to gain access to the next floor. In the final battle Isaac faces-off against the Freudian final boss that is his own mother. There are further, optional levels to contend with (including a battle with Satan himself), but it's possible to clear the game within an hour if you're vigilant, skilled and, crucially, if the game deals you a favourable hand.
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