Since his friend was coming over in the evening, no matter what, he had to at least finish the first run of the game.
Otherwise, it would be way too embarrassing.
Only then did he suddenly realize that the types of games he'd played before were actually quite limited.
This kind of randomly generated roguelike dungeon gameplay was something he had never really encountered.
But that also meant he was now looking at the game from a completely fresh perspective.
At this point, he no longer wanted to say the game was bad.
It was as if he'd finally realized the game's true charm.
Just the fact that it could keep him patiently playing all night long already meant the game was a success.
So what if the art style was ugly? That very ugliness now felt kind of cool to him.
As long as a game was fun, the visuals didn't really matter.
He rushed to the bathroom and splashed some water on his face, mainly to wake himself up a bit.
Next, he had to finish his first clear before getting off work in the evening.
He couldn't let his coworkers look down on him!
Maybe it was luck, or maybe all those failures had finally turned into real experience.
This time, his run went noticeably smoother than before.
He also started deliberately looking for certain equipment synergies.
Of course, those were hard to come by and depended heavily on luck.
Finally, his luck arrived. A solid set of synergistic items came together, and when he went to fight the Mother's Leg boss again, he managed to kill it with only one and a half hearts of health left.
First clear. First run completed.
The moment he cleared it—when he saw the animation of the Mother's Leg boss being defeated—he collapsed onto the sofa like a deflated balloon.
He'd spent far too much mental energy staying hyper-focused just now.
But soon after, a wave of pure satisfaction flooded through his entire body.
He'd finally cleared the first run.
That sense of achievement was incredible.
It felt even better than beating top players in ranked matches of Counter-Strike or Titanfall.
After all, even the best players make mistakes sometimes—they're human.
But computers are ruthless.
Under fixed rules and patterns, they can be terrifyingly strong.
Only by constantly experimenting and uncovering their behavior patterns can you finally win.
What stood out to him most was how intelligent the enemies in The Binding of Isaac seemed to be.
For example, earlier he'd assembled a very powerful explosive-attack build.
In theory, he should've been able to just blast his way through everything.
But every boss would deliberately avoid his attack range, constantly kiting him and making it difficult to get close.
Sometimes, bosses would even use evasive movement skills purely to dodge attacks.
The intelligence of these bosses was honestly impressive.
After all, the game was developed with the Unreal Engine—and in this world, Unreal Engine was also the most powerful AI computation engine available. Making enemies smarter was hardly a problem.
These AIs could even learn a player's combat habits and respond with different strategies.
That, in turn, forced Darry to constantly adjust his own tactics.
This back-and-forth battle of wits felt even more intense and exciting than playing against real people.
And because of that, the sense of accomplishment from defeating these bosses was on a whole different level.
Heh. I've cleared the first run too. Now I can calmly wait for my friend to come over tonight—I won't be losing face.
Perhaps because he'd finally cleared it, his mind relaxed at last, and a wave of sleepiness washed over him.
Might as well take a nap before my coworker arrives.
With that thought, Darry slowly drifted off to sleep.
What surprised him was that even in his dreams, The Binding of Isaac continued.
In his dream, he kept playing as Isaac, entering dungeon after dungeon, defeating bosses that had once felt incredibly difficult.
Of course, in the dream, he had absolute control.
Those powerful bosses were no longer hard to deal with at all.
He could even predict their attacks in advance and defeat them effortlessly.
Ding-dong!
"Darry, are you home? I'm here!"
In the middle of an intense dream battle, Darry jolted awake.
He shot up and looked at the time—it was already a little past three in the afternoon.
It wasn't even off-work time yet, but someone was already knocking.
From the sound of it, it was definitely his coworker friend.
He walked over and opened the door, and his friend immediately slipped inside.
"Why are you off work so early?"
"Heh, of course I was worried about you. I told the boss I wanted to check on your condition earlier, and he agreed. So here I am!"
Darry was momentarily speechless.
"So, how far did you get? I've been playing The Binding of Isaac a lot too lately—this game really has some kind of magic. I almost stayed up all night myself, but luckily I held back."
His friend had played far more games and clearly had much better self-control.
Unlike Darry, who'd never really touched roguelike dungeon games before.
In the future, Darry probably wouldn't get this obsessively hooked so easily again.
"After I hung up with you, I went to sleep. I was pretty tired—but I already cleared the first run."
As he spoke, Darry deliberately emphasized that he'd cleared the first run, as if trying to prove something.
"Hey, enough talk. Turn on the computer and let me see. By the way, this game can actually be played by two people—though the feature isn't available yet. Still, let me see how you play. We can co-op a full clear together in the future."
"This game can be played online too?"
Darry was genuinely surprised. The game felt pretty rough around the edges to him, yet it even supported multiplayer?
Small but complete—it really had everything.
"Of course. You should know who made this game."
"This was made by the God of Games."
The God of Games…
Darry thought back to his mindset before playing the game.
Back then, he'd even started doubting the so-called "God of Games."
He'd felt that the title was now mostly empty hype, that the reputation rested entirely on the company's overwhelming strength.
But now he realized just how wrong he'd been.
The God of Games was still the same God of Games.
Nothing had changed.
The games he made were still unbelievably fun.
Even an indie game like this was overflowing with charm.