In The Binding of Isaac (I’ve only played AB and up in terms of versions, but for now I am talking about some of the older characters), many of the characters have very small differences. There’s a group of characters I like to call the “IWDI” (Isaac With Different Items) characters that… well, they have slightly different starting stats, different starting items that any character could theoretically find, and different starting resources.

You might start with different strengths, like Cain’s higher damage, or Judas’ higher damage, or Samson’s higher… higher… hmm. Their items are all really interesting, too, like Eve with her Dead Bird, a familiar that does kinda okay damage after you get hit in a room and then it goes away and Eve’s damage is already really bad… um… maybe not the best example.

But these characters aren’t just Isaac with different items! They have a few unique gimmicks too! For example, Cain only has one eye, so items that affect only the shots from one of your eyes will affect all of Cain’s shots. This matters for about 5 items… it’s still kinda cool but nowhere near as significant as his starting items, I guess.

Many of the IWDI characters have these unlisted mechanics. One of Eve’s starting items, Whore of Babylon, activates when you’re on half a red heart… for other characters, anyways. For Eve, it can also activate at a full red heart! This is. Really unique and. And so. Um. No, okay, sorry, I should stop using Eve as an example, Eve fucking sucks, sorry Eve enjoyers, she’s just, ugh.

Anyways, as I’m sure you can tell by now, the IWDI model is… well…

I love it!

… What?

Okay okay fine, I’ve mostly talked shit about it. And there’s a lot of shit to talk, too. But I do actually think this system has a lot of potential, even if its execution has a few stinkers. I like that it highlights the importance of individual game elements by making sure you’re interacting with them at a time when you have nothing else, at the start of a run. Maggy shows you what it’s like to get by on good health and healing, Judas flips that around and gives you low health but high bursts of damage via your active item, Cain is just amazing and is my favorite character in the game and I won’t be accepting further questions…

I actually like this system so much that I made an IWDI character mod! He’s called Timothy, and he’s focused on trinkets. Tainted Timothy, on the other hand, is focused on secret rooms. He’s my least popular mod (of three), which makes me kinda sad, because I think he’s really fun. You can give it a look here!

Anyways that’s enough advertising out of me. Uuuhh conclusion, conclusion… the IWDI model seems kinda underwhelming, but I think it’s quite cool, and great for pointing out how runs can have different strengths and weaknesses, and be “good” or “bad” in different ways. More mods that add characters like this could be cool, but instead they’re all ultra-gimmicky and flashy… and many of them are, well, incredibly cool, so fair enough, I guess.

EDIT: Oh, something I completely forgot to talk about is how such characters are designed! The main thing about this is that they’re relatively easy to design, and to design around. Making one isn’t terribly hard, and it enables you to make crazy stuff that works for all of them like Isaac’s wildly varied shot types and synergies. Very little needs to be hardcoded, like with Risk of Rain.