After 320 hours in my favorite roguelike, The Binding of Isaac just got a game-changing Path of Exile-style mod that could be the perfect excuse to go back

From roguelike to roguelite

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The legendary roguelike The Binding of Isaac has seen a huge overhaul of its modding scene, culminating in mods that entirely discard the rulebook.

At the very end of 2023,Repentogon, a script extender that promised the beginning of “a new era for Isaac modding,” arrived on Steam. Put together by a team of modders “frustrated with the shortcomings” of the current game, Repentogon is a platform allowing for faster, more varied mods.

Recently, that’s culminated in a mod simply calledPassive Skill Trees. Originally released last month, its name sells the project pretty short. ‘Passive Skill Trees’ adds a tree that looks, at a glance, as though it would putPath of Exile’s famously enormous leveling system to shame. The mod features both a persistent global tree, as well as trees for each character, and while each small node only offers a very small bonus - a sliver extra damage or XP, for instance, they add up over time. Larger nodes, however, offer bigger boosts, often enough to shape an entire playstyle.

There’s a Binding Of Isaac script extender now that’s letting modders to WILD new stuff like a massive Path Of Exile-inspired passive upgrade grid that persists between runs.https://t.co/DvwZgFOgie pic.twitter.com/V08s65nSzlSeptember 26, 2024

Perhaps purists won’t feel great about it - this kind of thing does change The Binding of Isaac’s relatively pure roguelike systems into a rogue-lite system that’s more reminiscent of something like Hades. But, personally, having found a lot of joy in Hades but squeezed about as much juice out of Isaac as my abilities allow, a system that lets me find some progression in one of my most-played games ever is something I’m very interested in.

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen is using his new project to right the roguelike’s 11-year-old wrongs.

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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.

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