The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the sequel to the original Binding of Isaac by Edmund McMillen has an upcoming major expansion titled Afterbirth. There’s no release date yet; however, McMillen does tease and announce new features in a weekly blog he writes.
This week, he’s announced possibly the biggest addition yet; the introduction of Daily Challenges, in the same vein as Spelunky, Nuclear Throne and Crypt of the NecroDancer. The way a daily challenge works is everyone is given an identical seed to play through to try and beat everyone else.
However, daily challenges are often scored on time, how quickly you can complete the run. Others are scored by how much gold you pick up, but both methods aren’t suitable for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth as you’re not rewarded for going quickly and there is a gold cap of 99 coins, not to mention the Dollar item which instantly maxes out your coin total. McMillen is yet to announce how the challenges will be scored, though it is likely a new method will be brought into the mix.
Here’s McMillen’s quote from his blog on the implementation of daily challenges:
“What does this mean? Well every day the game will generate a specific seed that will be generated the same for everyone (minus locked things) and you can now compete against the internet for best score in the run! This feature was one of my favorites in Spelunky and I always wanted to do it in Isaac… but how do you score a game like Isaac? more on that in a later post…”
The ‘minus locked things’ refers to the fact that players have their own save file where most of the items start as locked and you have to complete various different tasks to unlock them legitimately and Afterbirth will undoubtedly release with a whole lot more. After you complete your run, you’ll be able to see how you fared on a leaderboard versus everyone else who competed.
With the new items already announced and plenty more still yet to even be teased, Afterbirth is looking like a very promising expansion indeed. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long!
You can find Edmund McMillen’s blog here.
