THE BINDING OF ISAAC WARP ZONE: S H A R D S O F I S A A C

"Bum-Bo Got Coin!" is the Isaac equivalent to "Don't Trust Them New _________ Over There" from The Boondocks.

The Legend of Bum-bo is a fucking WEIRD game. It’s the prequel to The Binding of Isaac, but I never fully played it, and I couldn’t say I would recommend it, but I kind of liked it at the same time? It’s complicated. This one’s gonna be pretty “”quick”” because of that, so buckle up. This is my pretty brief review for The Legend of Bumbo.

Okay, so Bumbo is some guy with Mii Hands, who gets his shit stolen. And then he descends into the depths below, only to fight all of the monsters in his path. There’s not much to overarching story itself; Bum-bo kind of just goes through the motions, and upon clearing a new floor, the run ends, the next character is unlocked, and you get another new floor. It’s pretty straightforward, but The Legend of Bum-bo adds some important pieces to the story of The Legend of Bum-bo. In the 5th ending of the game, the ending is suddenly interrupted by Isaac’s mother, storming in and taking the cardboard set from Isaac. It’s revealed that The Legend of Bum-bo was made by Isaac’s father, and the Mom threw it out. It’s such a well done scene, with the voice acting and music really selling the fear that Isaac goes through. And, in the end, the cutscene points to The Binding of Isaac’s title screen. A great way to segway into the game. But, if you 100% the game, and get 10 Jackpot endings, which are endings you get at random, Bum-bo creates an underground society where he is king. Bum-bo goes on all kinds of adventures, with monsters to fight. And then, the game pans out once again to reveal that Isaac’s dad is the narrator of the game. He made The Legend of Bum-bo as a way to escape from the real world for Isaac. The Dad taught Isaac the power of his imagination, in order to make this world a reality for him. But, this very action would cause Isaac’s downfall, no matter how good it seems. Is that a good storyline, or what? I absolutely love it when Edmund reveals new elements into the storyline. It makes the story feel so open, and interpretation heavy. I’ve already explained why Isaac has a phenomenal story, so if you’d like a full explanation of why I think it’s amazing, check out the Rebirth review.


But on the game itself, does it stand up on its own? It’s a match-4 puzzle game, where each tile does something different. Activated items are the main focus of the gameplay, and they alter the board or damage enemies. Bum-bo has 3 HP, and if he dies, it’s Game Over, back to the start. Each enemy is on a grid based system, but at times battles can get pretty overwhelming. The game is simple dumb fun, but I wish there was a little more variety to each individual run, like The Binding of Isaac. Bum-bo gets a little more stale than Isaac and FAST. Sure, each individual character adds some variety, but in the end, you’re doing the same thing ad nauseam. Match, use item, repeat. What if there were passive items that added all new tiles, or items that expanded the board? Or perhaps allow the player to pick up different weapons to spice up their attacks? I feel like there’s a lot of missed potential with Bum-bo’s kit here. Oh, and the boss fights... Yeah, not the greatest to say the least. They’re just too tanky for my liking. Each boss just has too many enemies, and making one mistake too easily leads to a dead run, in my opinion. But after that, the game just kind of goes on...? It doesn’t really change up the formula much. And while it was fun for a few hours, it did get pretty stale, so I just ended up dropping the game. One thing I can praise The Legend of Bum-bo on is its PHENOMENAL presentation. Everything in the cardboard world is so animated and colorful, and the soundtrack is pretty solid to boot. A good effort all around, but the game kind of falls short for me otherwise.

The Legend of Bum-bo is fucking WEIRD. I don’t think it’s really a bad game, but it’s not all that great either. A solid effort, but not all that fun, unfortunately. It has good production values, and amazing music, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Consider it on a sale, and not much else.


“"I want coin" I say / In reality I lay / in grim thoughts all day” - “Bumbo” by zeusdeegoose, Written on 4/22/24

Hmm, mixed feelings about this. I'm a big ol' Binding of Isaac fanboy so I figured I'd have to play this at some point. I was very nervous of its Bejeweled/Candy Crush-style central puzzle mechanic, but it is honestly a lot better than I was expecting from first impressions... but that doesn't necessarily mean I liked it.

The set dressing is pretty damn good; stylish and nicely themed in an unexplored part of the Isaac canon (it definitely helps to have the context going in to this one, otherwise its just going to come across as kooky and weird). The music is pretty solid throughout, better than Isaac: Rebirth even I'd say; the music is by the same people for both Bum-Bo and Rebirth, and the little musical references to the main game in the Bum-Bo soundtrack were nice touches. I was also a big fan of the voice acting; again, you definitely need the context for it, but I really think it nails for what its going for. And the ending cutscene (which I won't spoil) is great.

To some extent, the gameplay is also /substantially/ better than it could have been. At the start of the game, yes, you are just solving these Bejeweled-type puzzles to fire off 1-damage attacks at enemies, and it all feels pretty mobile-gamey and reductive. But before long, you can end up with a bunch of different spells (moves independent of the puzzle grid) that chain off each other to do brutal combos and it feels really good. The spells mechanic really do save the gameplay here; without it I would be giving this a /much/ worse review. But I cannot deny that, at its best, this game is really pretty fun.

But at its worst, it isn't. Sure, it's hard; so are the original Isaac games. But Bum-Bo comes off as brutally unfair at times. If you start a level with a bad puzzle grid, you're screwed and there's nothing you can do. If a bunch of enemies all decide to attack on the same turn and you don't happen to have a load of defence poop lined up to deploy, you're screwed and there's nothing you can do. If you build a gross combo character that relies on spell chaining (a.k.a. the fun half of the mechanics) and hit a room of spell-immune enemies, you're screwed and... you know the rest. Add to this a suite of gimmick and puzzle bosses that will probably just kill you before you work out the esoteric condition required to harm them, or at least deal so much damage that your run is dead.

I had a couple of glitches too in the form of achievements not popping and unlocks not working correctly (annoying but not exactly deal-breakers), but the final straw for me was finding out about the 'Jackpot Ending' system. When you beat the final level on a run with a character, you put a coin into a slot machine. This machine has a chance of 'winning': a high chance at first, decreasing with each win you've had on that save. If you win, you win! The character gets the 'run complete' mark by their name, you get the unlocks for 'Get the Jackpot Ending X times' (/many/ things in the game have that unlock condition) and everything's great. And if you don't win the slot machine... that doesn't happen. Even if the odds line up for you throughout the run, you beat every room and make it to the ending, the game has a chance to just nullify your progress based on a single RNG call. What the fuck. It feels like the game is going out of its way to /try/ to feel unfair at this point.

If I'm going to play a game where most of my runs are going to end in failure, I want that failure to be on my terms, because I made a mistake or I wasn't good enough. Ideally I would also like said game to have fewer Candy Crush elements. Perhaps I should just go back to playing the original Binding of Isaac...

-----Throughout the 2010’s there were a lot of significant releases for video games. One of those video games that I have always held as deeply significant for me has been The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. It's a fantastic game that has a lot going for it to this day. So much so that it would be hard to really describe it here. It honestly encompasses a lot of things mechanically and narratively and culturally for video gaming that I could even describe it as the Sgt. Pepper's of the medium. Now, even though The Binding of Isaac had a pretty decent development time with lots of add-ons and DLC attached to it, developer Edmund McMillen kept busy throughout that time. He released many side projects, and participated in a lot of collaborations. Today's important collaboration is with James Interactive who with their help McMillan was able to make The Legend of Bumbo here.
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-----The Legend of Bumbo is a neat side project for The Binding of Isaac. Unlike the very action-oriented, shooter gameplay of Isaac, Bumbo takes the guise of a puzzle game and a very familiar one at that. It's a match four puzzler where you slide tiles in order to match different types of icons. During the game you have a set number of moves before your opponent's go on the attack. In this way the gameplay kind of fuses with a JRPG in a sense. It's a game whose gameplay I wasn't very keen on at first. In fact, I wasn't a big fan of this game at all when I initially played it. I found the very slow gameplay kind of frustrating, and the randomness of the tile board didn't add to that.
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-----However, once I played more of the game, and allowed myself to dig deeper into the mechanics, I ended up walking away from Bumbo a lot more positively than what I first felt. While I still don't love the game as a whole, I found a lot of things that I think normal players might love with in Bumbo. First, for the types of titles you match a different kind of action will execute. For example, if you match bones or teeth that is your way of attacking enemies. Meanwhile poop and boogers will stifle their progress. Finally there are pee drops that you can match in order to make further returns. There are also wild tiles in the mix as well. Finally the two tiles that I didn't find much use out of, or was kind of unhappy with more than the others were the heart tiles and the cursed tiles. The heart tiles are meant to heal you, but you don't get a lot. I understand why, but when you do actually end up matching Hearts they don't give you a lot in return for the Rarity that they are set as. Meanwhile for the cursed tiles, I don't even know if they even have a use in general. Within my 16 hours of playing the game I never once understood how the cursed tiles could hurt me in any way.
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-----In addition to those tiles, you also get Mana every time you match a certain tile type. You can use these to execute spells that can help you out. These spells can range from damaging the enemies in the field to helping you clear your own board in front of you. In classic Isaac fashion as you go through the separate floors of the game you'll be able to acquire more randomly generated spells into your repertoire. there's also these little trinkets as well that can have subtle soft effects on your gameplay. Speaking of both classic Isaac and soft effects, there are also several different character types you can play as throughout Bumbo. Most of them I like. one thing that's soured my first impressions of the game overall was the initial character you get. Well I felt the other characters had very interesting mechanics and systems that you can play around with, the initial main character I didn't care for all that much. Not only that, but it also feels like James interactive and Edmund McMillen are reusing ideas to a certain point with these characters. Especially since it seems like you can unlock the Lost in the game, which given its more random nature than that of Isaac’s, I imagine has got to be extremely excruciating to play eyes. Heck, you have to make sure not to get hit on the first three floors to even unlock him, and I imagine that's got to be left all to chance.
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-----However throughout the game there are some interesting enemy types that you can run into. Like Isaac they'll have their own little quirks that you have to learn to deal with as you go along. For example I like the fart clouds and how you couldn't attack through them. It added an extra layer of caution to my game play that I liked. I also like the little exploding flies that if they got too close to you, their death would cause them to explode, which in turn would cause you to lose health. That is an interesting point. One of the mechanics that I'm not necessarily sure if I'm keen on or not is the positioning mechanics of the enemies that you face. In Bumbo, the enemy field is kind of split up like a 3D graph where you have 3 columns, a top layer, a bottom layer, and about 5 rows where the enemies will try and move closer to you as you go forth. Meanwhile whenever you try to attack you can only hit the closest, top most Enemy. Ultimately I think it does add some depth to the gameplay, though it felt a little forced and clunky at times as well. The only time where I felt like this mechanic was utilized especially well was during some of the boss fights. These bosses would use their multiple moves to try to get close to you, which then you in turn would use attacks to push them back. I felt those fights were very smart.
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-----Meanwhile the narrative of Bumbo is told in the vignettes that are very similar to Isaac. I do like the intelligent way Bumbo’s story is tied into Isaac, even if I don't care for the narrator behind it. I also like the very diegetic user interface that McMillan and James interactive setup for Bumbo. In fact, as a fan of games like Paper Mario, I really do appreciate the very paper craft, almost childrens’ theater of the entire presentation of Bumbo. I think everything looks great from an aesthetic standpoint. Even McMillan's art, which I feel like he's got such a unique and singular style that sometimes it can become one note at times, still shines through here.
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-----Overall, while the legend of Bumbo isn't one of my favorite games I played this year, I had a lot more fun with this addition to Isaac then I thought. That being said, Bumbo still feels like an add-on to the Isaac experience rather than its own kind of standalone enjoyable experience. I thought the puzzle mechanics with depth were interesting enough to carry my playtime all the way to 16 hours. However, the match four gameplay isn't something I'm necessarily a fan of, and there were several elements here that I felt like they were keeping me from enjoying the game as a whole. There are spots in the software that feel really polished and have a lot of care taken into it, and other spots felt like there needed to be more added to it in order to flesh it out even further. Ultimately I would recommend the legend of Bumbo, but only after you've enjoyed a great helping of The Binding of Isaac first. - [06/10]

Review for 1.0.8

Fantastic game that is sadly in need of some bug fixes and QoL improvements (even basic important ones that Isaac had, such as being able to close the game and continue runs later). The music is great, the visuals are very charming and very well done and the gameplay is fun and rather addicting.

I personally had no big issues with bugs and/or softlocks, nor did thr game crash at all, but there's definitely some odd shit that shouldn't have happened such as enemy "counters" getting triggered when they shouldn't and the rewards room forcing me to replace my spells because the skip button didn't work. Considering what others have had issues with though, it's hard to recommend the gane in its current state, but I had few issues myself. Sadly, there were some issues dueing development that hurt the game. A content and bug-fixing/QoL update is being worked on, though.

I also didn't find the content particularly lacking, specially considering that all trinkets and spells in this game are decent compared to how much nearly useless shit Isaac had. It feels comparable to the original BoI release in this sense, which is understandable and anybody who expected Rebirth/Afterbirth amounts of content is honestly a fucking idiot.

The game also is a pretty nice addition to the BoI story but not a particularly necessary part of it. I liked what story there is a lot though. At least, so far, as I have only actually gotten the normal ending from beating the final stage once. And you know how it is eith these games, no doubt there's more to see yet.

So yeah, all in all, a fantastic game that's brought down by bugs/QoL issues to me, and more content wouldn't hurt either even though I feel it's not particularly lacking. As I said though, that's being worked on, so I hope it all plats out well because this game has 11/10 potential to me.

A ver, es una de las peores ideas del mundo, muy bien pensada, hecha como el culo.
Esto pone mi ordenador a 1000 grados y hace que se me ralentice por completo JUGANDO EN BAJO, el juego está lleno de bugs horribles y tiene decisiones de diseño horribles como que, DESPUÉS DE GANAR UNA RUN, el juego tira una tragaperras para decidir si has perdido o no el tiempo. Yo creo que merece la pena probarlo porque el gameplay es muy satisfactorio y tiene un diseño sorprendente, pero el juego se cae a cachos por completo yo no entiendo cómo es que esto se vende siquiera.

Das System ist ziemlich elegant, da das vervollständigen einer Linie aus den gleichen Elementen einem neben dem Einsatz des Objekts auch Mana gibt, welches man für weitere Aktionen verwenden kann. Dadurch entsteht eine ganz nette Entscheidung daraus, welche Elemente man priorisieren soll, da man manchmal das Mana des einen aber auch den Effekt des anderen Elements braucht.
Zu Beginn ist der Schwierigkeitsgrad ziemlich angenehm, später zieht der Schwierigkeitsgrad aber stark an, was etwas anstrengend sein kann, da ich persönlich nicht das Interesse habe das Brett ewig anzustarren um die perfekte Kombination zu finden. Zudem tuen manche Gegner einen später auch stark Einschränken, was sehr frustrierend sein kann.
Musik und Stil sind sehr schön.