Writing this review for the 2021 Steam awards, nominating this game for the "Labor of Love" award. I'm nominating this because The Binding of Isaac: Repentance released in March of this year but I can't nominate that specifically so this will have to do.

The nomination feels only fair though. My reasoning is thus; The original flash version of Isaac released over 10 years ago at this point. Rebirth released in 2014 as a ground up remake of that the version which was straining under the weight of all the additions it received over time. Rebirth was a solid remake in that regard and between then and now Rebirth continued to receive various updates and additions in the form. These took the form of Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ but towards the end of those releases it started to feel like the creative well was running dry. The Afterbirth+ booster packs released in a fairly janky state and were relatively light on content and were pretty much just mediocre overall. At this point any future expansions seemed unlikely.

Then the fan community started to gain traction and a few prominent fan expansions rose from that scene. One specifically, Antibirth, received official endorsement, support and integration into the main game as the expansion now known as Repentance.

I never played the mod Antibirth so I can't really compare it, but I will say that Repentance completely surpassed my expectations in terms of both quality and content. And this is considering that it launched with several features, mechanics and items missing which the developers are still in the process of fixing and improving. Even in that state it surpassed all my expectations, and seeing how many of these features have been fixed it continues to impress.

I've played this game for over 700 hours and nearly half of that was spent just tackling Repentance content, and I play this game purely with purpose, mostly achievement hunting, and to get that much time out of a game like this and it rarely if ever felt boring speaks a lot to its value for money. You could, and many do, just play this for thousands of hours on self motivated runs or challenge attempts to increase that value proposition even further.

I know some people felt like Repentance ruined a good thing by changing things up a little too much but honestly, after the dust has settled it's clear that most of the changes were needed and the game has indeed benefited greatly from them.

Not to say the game is perfect, there are still several key parts of the pre-Repentance era that went unchanged but there have been various promises that these will be looked at in a future. If the same amount of care goes into addressing those parts of the game then things can only get better for this game.

So yeah, a real Labor of Love for what started as a quaint little flash game over 10 years ago. Very few games get to live this long, to really see their potential truly realised.

Writing this review for the 2021 Steam awards, nominating this game for the "Labor of Love" award. I'm nominating this because The Binding of Isaac: Repentance released in March of this year but I can't nominate that specifically so this will have to do. The nomination feels only fair though. My reasoning is thus; The original flash version of Isaac released over 10 years ago at this point. Rebirth released in 2014 as a ground up remake of that the version which was straining under the weight of all the additions it received over time. Rebirth was a solid remake in that regard and between then and now Rebirth continued to receive various updates and additions in the form. These took the form of Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ but towards the end of those releases it started to feel like the creative well was running dry. The Afterbirth+ booster packs released in a fairly janky state and were relatively light on content and were pretty much just mediocre overall. At this point any future expansions seemed unlikely. Then the fan community started to gain traction and a few prominent fan expansions rose from that scene. One specifically, Antibirth, received official endorsement, support and integration into the main game as the expansion now known as Repentance. I never played the mod Antibirth so I can't really compare it, but I will say that Repentance completely surpassed my expectations in terms of both quality and content. And this is considering that it launched with several features, mechanics and items missing which the developers are still in the process of fixing and improving. Even in that state it surpassed all my expectations, and seeing how many of these features have been fixed it continues to impress. I've played this game for over 700 hours and nearly half of that was spent just tackling Repentance content, and I play this game purely with purpose, mostly achievement hunting, and to get that much time out of a game like this and it rarely if ever felt boring speaks a lot to its value for money. You could, and many do, just play this for thousands of hours on self motivated runs or challenge attempts to increase that value proposition even further. I know some people felt like Repentance ruined a good thing by changing things up a little too much but honestly, after the dust has settled it's clear that most of the changes were needed and the game has indeed benefited greatly from them. Not to say the game is perfect, there are still several key parts of the pre-Repentance era that went unchanged but there have been various promises that these will be looked at in a future. If the same amount of care goes into addressing those parts of the game then things can only get better for this game. So yeah, a real Labor of Love for what started as a quaint little flash game over 10 years ago. Very few games get to live this long, to really see their potential truly realised.