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The Binding of Isaac isn't a pleasant game. But neither is the biblical tale it's inspired by.
Both are selling well, given that the former stuck around as Steam's No. 2 top seller for a good part of its first day, and the latter is also included in top selling anthologies such as the Quran and Torah.
You could take the story of Abraham nearly sacrificing his only son, Isaac, in the name of the Lord as a powerful message of Abraham's devotion and God's mercy, though I'll leave it to the theologians to decide how merciful it is to tell a father to kill his son only to shout out a heavenly "PSYCH!" at the last minute.
Like the majority of the Old Testament, the story depicts a less jolly God who is yet to be convinced by the sacrifice of His only son (dangerous to be an only son back then) that humanity is for sure worth a second shot after the whole original sin thing.
Super Meat Boy co-developer Edmund McMillen, who coded and animated the game, seems to be just as skeptical toward the beleagured inhabitants of his worlds. He doesn't hate his players — he's even planning on gracing us with some free DLC on Halloween since the game's done very well so far — but he sure does want to test us. Geez, who picked his forbidden fruit?
Don't let the game's intimidating pedigree perturb you, however. Your naked little boy will die a lot, no matter how many creepily disfiguring power-ups you get (by the end he looks like something only a mother could love… except Isaac's mother, who still wants to kill him), but thanks to a low low price of $5 and randomized dungeons and loot drops, the binding never chafes.