What that does, should you find the item in a playthough (though Lilith does start with it), is make companions that much more useful. Or how about an item that doubles any companions you have with you. Because you’re unsure of exactly which tears will cause the effect, even if they’re clearly indicated once in flight, it pays to be more accurate with your tears and have each one hit. The newly introduced ‘Holy Light’, on the other hand, has a beam of light strike anything unlucky enough to be hit by randomly chosen holy tears. While items that make use of holy beams of light are great on paper, they’re fairly unappreciated in The Binding of Isaac because they rarely hit their target, and don’t do enough damage to warrant the effort.

Rather than adding different color palettes to already existing items and labeling them “new”, the team considered new ways to approach old situations as well as new situations altogether and considered how new items might best come in handy, or even hinder your progress. New “things” add more reasons to replay the game: new items, for example, mean having to unlock them, trying them out, eventually perfecting them and, in a game like The Binding of Isaac, ultimately exploiting them for the best possible playthrough. Talking about additions, rogue-lites, or roguelike-likes if you prefer, benefit greatly from additions, usually in the form of new things to do, see, play with and hear.

Binding of isaac holy light