How to progress and unlock stuff?

[Fab]

Hello,

So I just beat Mom for the first time and got the cinematic. I know the game has a lot more to offer but I don't understand how am I supposed to progress. Do I just repeat my normal run and wait for new stuff, or do I need to switch to hard mode? It's not clear like other roguelites.

Thanks in advance.

[SoldierDelta]

Once you beat the game the first time, you should've unlocked a bunch of stuff. One of the should be the next stage of the game. Play through the game again, and you should get to that next stage. Continue over and over and you unlock more and more stuff.

[The Renderer]

Yeah, you just keep playing. You can't miss anything or get stuck so just enjoy the ride and the exploration.

[Often]

Unlike other Roguelites, you don't get currency to unlock "progress". You unlock new paths by playing the game and get new items by beating runs with characters, or by beating challenges. It's lateral progress instead of vertical. So just keep playing and winning, more stuff comes. Fill out the post-its for everyone, then do hard-mode. Then do greed mode. Then the challenges. There's a ton of achievements and each one is attached to actually completing some form of progress in the game somehow (for the most part, some aren't).

[Nazemec]

However, keep in mind the...

List of things that prevent all kind of progress:
- Seeds (except a few special ones)
- Challenges (except for their reward obviously).
- Daily Runs.
- Reruns and Victory Laps (except for a few specific unlocks).
- Any active mod from the mod menu before Mom is killed once on that save (no matter what they do, other saves are irrelevant).
- Paranoid antivirus programs (or missing rights) preventing the game from creating/editing its save file.

[Fab]

Thanks for all these answers!

[Fab]

Additional question: I killed mom's heart with Azazel. If I continue with him, I suppose I'll that I get another ending. But if I play with Isaac right now, will I get the "heart end" (since I've not reached that end with Isaac) or the next one on the list?

[TheAdhesiveDuck]

You've barely scratched the surface, there's no "wrong" way to play this game, you can't really miss anything. Play whatever character you want in whatever order you want.

Your progress is shared between all the characters, the only thing that's character specific is what bosses you've killed on each one. So if you go back to Isaac you'll see exactly the same ending as you would do if you continued to play Azazel.