Norman Bates chic
Well I’m doomed. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth expansion, Afterbirth, is going to include a whopping eight new transformations to discover, experiment with, and obsess over. I’m already addicted to transforming into Guppy the cat (one of only two currently possible transformations) in vanilla Rebirth. With eight more mutations to chase after, I’m never going to see my friends and family again.
Designer Edmund McMillen teased one of the new transformations on his blog, posting a picture of Isaac dressed as his mom and wielding a butcher knife (that will presumably fire behind him judging from the notes). How very Psycho.
Transformations in Isaac are accomplished by collecting a set of specific, similarly themed items among the literally hundreds of random items you could possibly encounter in each run. As McMillen explains in the update, the Guppy transformation added a delightful risk/reward dynamic to the game. Guppy is very powerful and snagging the transformation is practically a slam dunk, while there are ways to steer and finagle the RNG towards spitting out Guppy items, they involve heavy risk, and there is never a guarantee of a payout. I’ve scuttled many a promising run by trying too hard to make the Guppy dream happen.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who loved the highs and lows of aspiring to become a flying dead cat, more transformations have been the single most requested feature forAfterbirth. McMillen said he’d be taking fan ideas into consideration while working on the expansion, and it looks like this is a case of the monkey’s paw. We got exactly what we wanted, and it is probably going to screw us all over.
Transitioning [Binding of Isaac]
