The Binding of Isaac's Greed mode detailed

The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen has detailed the upcoming Greed mode coming to the to-be-dated Afterbirth expansion.

As detailed on McMillen's blog, Greed mode offers a twist on the endless survival mode we see in so many games by offering players a mercy button that ends each wave... at a price.

Greed mode will always be set in a layout like so with a double-sized room in the center surrounded by two treasure rooms, one store, one cursed room, one devil/angel room, and an exit room.

The round will begin with the store, one treasure room and the cursed room unlocked, but once you press a button in the center of the stage it will lock all surrounding doors and spawn enemies.

Once you slay a mob of enemies or run out of time, another wave will spawn. This continues until you've cleared a certain number of waves or die. But there is one out with the Stop button.

Hit this and the wave will stop, but you'll lose a half heart in the process. Enemies won't drop health, so sacrificing even a half heart is a huge punishment.

Interestingly, enemies won't drop items at all. Instead, each wave also spawns a shower of pennies. The more waves you've cleared without using the Stop button, the more pennies you'll receive.

Since players won't receive drops from enemies, they'll have to be very vigilant in how they choose to spend their coins at the store.

"This new risk reward or resource system makes for some fun strategic planning when it comes to how you tackle each run," said McMillen. "Money is vital in this mode.. but so is life seeing as you will lose a half of a heart each time you stop the waves from spawning."

There's still some things we don't know about Greed mode, either because McMillen isn't sharing or simply hasn't sorted the details. We don't know how the mode ends, if it will include bosses, or how shop items have been altered to account for this high scores arcade mode. But from what we know so far, what do you make of the upcoming Greed mode?