INTRODUCTION
You are a wizard looking to unearth the secrets of VERY old Magic. You find your way to an old land with an abandoned mine, which leads far down deep into the earth. Between old Ritual Sites for the old gods and temples you can also find lore of an ancient civilization, but your general goal is to “go deeper” because the most knowledge is to be found at the deepest point.
GAMEPLAY
Noita is a Roguelike / Roguelite game in good old 16 Bit style with procedurally generated worlds. It is also heavily influenced by those old “Falling Sand” games, you might know from DOS throughout Win 98 times, where you could draw lines to direct falling (yellow) pixels into a container. So what about that? Basically every Pixel you can see is physically simulated in its entirety. Lets Start Simple. You’ve got a puddle of water. Water will make your robe wet, protecting you from fire. If water comes into contact with fire, it will turn into steam and begin to rise. Steam hitting a ceiling, where it can come together into great amounts will fall back down into the level as water droplets. Water can wash and dilute/cleanse toxic sludge. Water has a higher density as alcohol so it will try to sink below that and may dissipate the alcohol and Water can also be Frozen into ice and displaced by cracking it. Oh and one more thing be careful where you are pointing that lighting wand when swimming!
The second main ingredient of Noita are its spells. While traversing the different biomes, you can find magic wands each of which have a random number of a massive assortment of Spells and Modifiers to it. For example, there could be a wand that will summon 4 arrows for you to shoot, or there might be a wand that shoots nuclear bombs. No Kidding.
Now between levels you can find portals to like a safe zone where you can switch out spells between wands. Lets take the arrow summoning wand from earlier. We could add the “trail of fire” modifier to it, so now the arrows have a… you know. If you now shoot these said arrows into a puddle of oil or a pile of coal, it will ignite! How useful! Except you stepped into oil before and your own robe is oily. Then: Not good.
Which brings me to one very important point: Dying in Noita IS SO MUCH FUN! Why? Well most of the time you did not die because a monster was killing you. No, at least 90% of my deaths have been self-induced! Using a burning wand while standing on oil. Using a lighting wand while standing in the blood of my enemies. Using a wand with nukes. Are more of the direct causes of my deaths. Also having a wand with ricocheting projectiles that bounce on walls and hit you or the oil barrel next to you;
Or, my favorite, spraying polymorph juice to transform an enemy but hitting myself, thus morphing into a sheep with fly wings getting one shot because sheep don’t have much HP.
Often times, you cant really figure out why you did die that’s why with the current patch you can save your deaths as gifs! You can scroll through your last moments to figure exactly out why you just went poof.
Controls are very easy and intuitive A and D to walk W to jump / levitate S to drink/suck up fluids F to Kick I for Inventory left click to shoot/throw right click to spray potions
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Noita uses 16 Bit graphics which gives it a nice retro charme and also makes the simulated pixels blend perfectly into the environment when there is effects working om them. Elements are clearly distinguishable, so you will always be able to identify what you are looking at. Even if there are things with similar colors your UI will always show you the name of the material you are pointing at.
Spell and ambient effects are well made, packed with enough oomph. Especially explosions. If you use lightning spells you will get a sparky, flashy projectile and sound. If you have a fireball spell equipped you get a nice smoky/woosh effect. Environment is pleasant to look at and boasts with small details like bushes, grass, moss or funghi. You generally will find the caverns to be very faithful in their biome structure, compared to real life ones. (Condensing steam will also result in droplets which you can actually hear!)
Music will change its volume and beats and speed according of how much effects are taking place on screen. Between the fighting phases it stays with you as a mellow background music enhancing and refining the whole cavern setting even more.
CONCLUSION
Noita has the potential to become an instant classic. It offers a refreshing twist to the roguelike / roguelite genre with its biggest selling point being all the hilarious ways you can die. Where other games make me get salty at some point in can go 3 hours a time throwing my self into the world of Noita over and over again. When reviewing my deaths, I will notice that they where my fault 90% of the time anyway where sometimes there wasn’t even a monster there to kill me.
The art of playing with different materials and elements each of them affecting each other and having their own properties and the enormous amount of attention to detail raises this game to a whole new level instantly directly rivaling AAA-Titles with no need to hide itself.
Apart from the “just another run” addictive potential of the game there is also lore to unearth. There is hidden Areas which makes you wonder: “ How much more is there to find here?”
Noita is awesome and unique, which is actually a hard to find attribute on todays gaming titles, because there is so many games out there already you gotta praise devs for coming up with genuine new ideas and their own twists to gameplay styles. If you are looking for a roguelike / roguelite title to play casually or consistently, look no further. Noita already is one of my favorite Games of 2019 and deserves an entry as Gold Standard Roguelike Game with no doubt!
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