How can this game be so successful??

[Uhtred son of Uhtred]

It is not a question to throw hate. I played the game after seeing the positive reviews and the number of hours users had put into it and I really couldn't last 20 minutes. Controls feel sluggish, art sucks, game mechanics in general are too simple to see or feel any progress, the flow is just too slow.
What do you see as good about this game?

[SL_Zerocore]

Yeaaahhhhh ummmm...no comment. Enjoy your clown awards I guess?

Its part of the game DESIGN, its a rouge-like with a pixel art style, mechanics can be easily understood, and there are many different characters to unlock as you play, there is a ♥♥♥♥ ton of stuff to unlock and believe me. If you put time and effort (and a bit of luck) into the game, you'll get a very nice reward shown across all your three saves. So many items to uncover, many gimmicky stuff to unveil.

What you said about this game will have consequences to your reception regardless, the game is a success because it is, how? Well, use your imagination lmao, the OG Isaac came from newgrounds back in 2011 and it gained massive attention, because it was a flash game nobody was expecting, 3 years later the game got a well deserved remake (I even saw images of it looking like it was on a GBA handheld before the game even came out)

Even if the remake's art direction was arguably a visual downgrade, its a remake because its better than the original with much better sounds music voices, etc, and new content as well.
The game even got DLC just a year later, again 2 years after, and yet again just one year ago.

So it is pretty damn obvious why the game is a hit.

[Drakkith]

I don't think the controls are sluggish, I like the art style, and the game mechanics are amazing. There simply isn't another game like BOI on the market. The number of items to collect is huge and the developers have done a fantastic job making sure most of them synergize well with each other. Progress on a new game feels good, but I'm a long time player and don't have the perspective of a brand new player.

[The deadly Cutsman]

It's ok guys, people are allowed to have bad opinions too.

[The Renderer]

Compared to some other games, the controls are a little more "sluggish", that is true, but it's not an issue, you get used to it. To claim the game mechanics are "too simple to see or feel progress" after playing for only twenty minutes is ludicrous. It's a roguelike, a runs lasts half an hour to an hour and within a run there is a ton of progress (plus meta progress through unlocks inbetween runs). The art, as all art, is a matter of taste.

So, this game simply might not be for you, play something else.

[❤NYXIC❤]

literally 637 unlocks, a lot of characters have their own playstyles (not gonna spoil what some of those are.), a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of synergies, and i also like the artstyle, and op i want you to keep in mind that artstyles are probably the most subjective things about games that you can talk about.

and yes, this game is pretty luck based, but you can still win a absolutely godawful run if you have the skills.

i don't have them so i wind up with like -100 win streaks sometimes, but i'm still having a blast because i'm also not taking the game very seriously.

also, game mechanics being simple isn't a bad or good thing, it's honestly up to your own preference, i don't like too complicated mechanics in videogames so i personally don't mind them. (actually one of the reasons why i stopped trying to beat dark souls 3, because i had taken a break for like a month or something from it and forgot all the mechanics.)

also if you need help identifying what item does what, i recommend the "external item descriptions" mod, mods don't lock achievements after you kill mom once.

[Mastema]

>game bad because....it just is okay?!

[fromage_enrage]

Sure, go ahead, form an opinion on a gigantic game that's been around for ten years in a mere twenty minutes.

What a clown

[Roler42]

Alternate title for the thread: How can people like what I don't?

[Best Waifu]

give it another 500 hours, it gets really good

[E3kHatena]

I guess keep in mind the era it came out. While Isaac wasn't the first roguelike and even Nintendo + Spike Chunsoft had experimented with the genre with the then relatively popular Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spin-offs, 2009-2012's Spelunky and 2011's Isaac introduced a hybridized form of the genre to a relatively large audience.

Looking solely at Isaac, the game plays like the original Legend of Zelda in terms of the general gameplay loop, and this made it very accessible for newcomers to the genre. This in turn led to the game exploding in popularity with the likes of YouTube creators; Northernlion in particular is infamous for uploading one run a day for the past several years, each time getting new items and experiencing new synergies with them. That boom in popularity meant that Isaac's popularity eclipsed that of Super Meat Boy, a game Edmund spent multiple years working on for XBox and PC, with Isaac just meant as a fun cool-down project before moving onto other projects.

So much of Isaac's initial (and continued) success comes from that virality nearly a decade ago, which had given the game a *ton* of attention, which in turn led to the remake selling like gangbusters for taking what people liked about the original flash game and expanding it significantly, and in turn led to demand for further DLC with Afterbirth, Afterbirth+, and Repentance.

TL;DR: the game is simpler than other Roguelikes and more akin to a top-down action/adventure a la Zelda I/Link to the Past, which made the game easy to pick up and play, which led to viral success on YouTube, and in turn led to people who were interested in its take on genre to pick it up and enjoy it for years to come.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by E3kHatena:

I guess keep in mind the era it came out. While Isaac wasn't the first roguelike and even Nintendo + Spike Chunsoft had experimented with the genre with the then relatively popular Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spin-offs, 2009-2012's Spelunky and 2011's Isaac introduced a hybridized form of the genre to a relatively large audience.

Looking solely at Isaac, the game plays like the original Legend of Zelda in terms of the general gameplay loop, and this made it very accessible for newcomers to the genre. This in turn led to the game exploding in popularity with the likes of YouTube creators; Northernlion in particular is infamous for uploading one run a day for the past several years, each time getting new items and experiencing new synergies with them. That boom in popularity meant that Isaac's popularity eclipsed that of Super Meat Boy, a game Edmund spent multiple years working on for XBox and PC, with Isaac just meant as a fun cool-down project before moving onto other projects.

So much of Isaac's initial (and continued) success comes from that virality nearly a decade ago, which had given the game a *ton* of attention, which in turn led to the remake selling like gangbusters for taking what people liked about the original flash game and expanding it significantly, and in turn led to demand for further DLC with Afterbirth, Afterbirth+, and Repentance.

TL;DR: the game is simpler than other Roguelikes and more akin to a top-down action/adventure a la Zelda I/Link to the Past, which made the game easy to pick up and play, which led to viral success on YouTube, and in turn led to people who were interested in its take on genre to pick it up and enjoy it for years to come.

And Spike Chunsoft has been making Japan-exclusive "Mystery Dungeon" games since 1993 (when they hadn't merged with Spike yet), a Pokémon spinoff was just the first one the rest of the world got.