New Binding of Isaac DLC adds online multiplayer after over a decade of roguelike brilliance

Twelve years after its initial release, The Binding of Isaac will introduce online multiplayer to the existing Repentance DLC of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. The initial announcement was made on the game’s anniversary on Sept. 28, with players expected to be able to team up online before the year is out.

The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen confirmed the addition of the long-awaited feature—“It’s happening folks!”—in a Sept. 28 tweet presenting what appeared to be an Isaac multiplayer character select screen with “online winstreak” listed in the corner.

A more recent post on Oct. 12 featured a video that shows this character selection screen in action with some phone-recorded gameplay of the four-player roguelike, with chaos ensuing in the background. 

In his voiceover of the footage, McMillen goes into a bit more detail about how it all works, explaining that up to four players can join an existing save or start a brand new one, and runs can be completed from start to finish via a dedicated online server.

McMillen is onto newer horizons these days and is currently working on a new roguelike RPG called Mewgenics, but he always seems excited to give Isaac some love. “We’ve been wanting to do this for forever and now it’s finally here,” McMillen said. According to the video, he’s especially keen to have his daughter as player two.

If you think that Isaac looks familiar, you may be thinking of the Twitch emote BibleThump— they’re one and the same. Since its release in 2011, it’s been quite a popular game, garnering a reasonably sized speedrunning community over the years as well.

As in other roguelikes, the further you progress into a save, the more customization and paths you can access—once you complete entire runs, you’ll unlock new gameplay features as well.

Isaac is a young boy who jumped into the basement of his home after his mother had a religious awakening and was told by “a voice from above” to kill him to prove her loyalty. Fending off disturbing enemies with his projectile tears, he descends further and further until he eventually reaches floors such as The Womb and Sheol. 

With a total of 547 items for Isaac and additional characters to unlock and use, no two runs are the same. Although you could already share the same run through the local co-op mode introduced in the remake and creative use of Steam’s Play Together function, the online multiplayer is a step up with the introduction of a dedicated server to make everything run smoother.

The beta for the online multiplayer feature is set to release in about a month and a half, and it will only be available for owners of the existing Repentance DLC with more information still to come.