7) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth – Afterbirth+
For a series that began life as little more than a pet project of McMillen’s, The Binding of Isaac has since risen through the ranks of being an obtuse indie game with niche appeal to become a leading example of its genre. A feat made all the more impressive when you consider its humble origins.
Born out of a week-long game jam session between McMillen and Florian Himsl, Isaac‘s original, flash based incarnation seeded itself on Valve’s Steam service back in 2011 and eventually went on to blossom into one of the service’s most popular titles, without so much as a penny spent on traditional advertising. Wrath of the Lamb, the first and only DLC to be released for the original, stirred hundreds of new items, stages and bosses into the original’s melting pot of content, an expansion that was hindered in both scope and ambition purely due to the limitations of flash.
In order to bypass that roadblock, McMillen teamed up with Nicalis to create Rebirth, a total remake of the original that, again, included a charitable helping of new content with its own expansion, Afterbirth+, following shortly after. No such finality has been confirmed by the developer, but Afterbirth is largely considered to be the bookend of Rebirth‘s DLC lifecycle, offering more content than one could ever hope to devour in any feasible amount of time.
That, combined with full support for community mods (the best of which are released as booster packs), essentially makes for an endless stream of content that’ll never end, at least as long as Isaac remains popular.
