After 320 hours in my favorite roguelike, The Binding of Isaac just got a game-changing Path of Exile-style mod that could be the perfect excuse to go back

The legendary roguelike The Binding of Isaac has seen a huge overhaul of its modding scene, culminating in mods that entirely discard the rulebook.

At the very end of 2023, Repentogon, a script extender that promised the beginning of “a new era for Isaac modding,” arrived on Steam. Put together by a team of modders “frustrated with the shortcomings” of the current game, Repentogon is a platform allowing for faster, more varied mods.

Recently, that’s culminated in a mod simply called Passive Skill Trees. Originally released last month, its name sells the project pretty short. ‘Passive Skill Trees’ adds a tree that looks, at a glance, as though it would put Path of Exile’s famously enormous leveling system to shame. The mod features both a persistent global tree, as well as trees for each character, and while each small node only offers a very small bonus – a sliver extra damage or XP, for instance, they add up over time. Larger nodes, however, offer bigger boosts, often enough to shape an entire playstyle.

Perhaps purists won’t feel great about it – this kind of thing does change The Binding of Isaac’s relatively pure roguelike systems into a rogue-lite system that’s more reminiscent of something like Hades. But, personally, having found a lot of joy in Hades but squeezed about as much juice out of Isaac as my abilities allow, a system that lets me find some progression in one of my most-played games ever is something I’m very interested in.

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen is using his new project to right the roguelike’s 11-year-old wrongs.