Noita

Noita is a game unlike any other, that’s able to create unique situations thanks to its physics-based world.

Ultimately, Noita is probably not going to change anyone’s mind on roguelikes, but it sure is well-crafted. The game is filled with so many little quirks and gameplay nuances that I never ran out of things to experience. At almost every run, I would run into something new, be it a spell, an enemy, or even secret areas. One thing certainly worth noting is that the game is what you make it. Noita is undoubtedly a title worth playing for those willing to just dive into the gameplay and master the systems at play rather than worry too much about trying to win.

Noita is a true standout title in the roguelike genre, featuring endlessly deep gameplay that plays off of its engaging pixel art style.

Original, challenging and incredibly deep, Noita is a roguelike capable of surprising every time you launch a new game. If you like tough challenges and love this genre of games, Noita is really for you. It doesn't cost much and guarantees plenty of hours of exploration, disruption, killing and fun. But beware: it’s tough. Really tough!

Noita isn't for everybody, but anyone who loves to learn a game's intricacies while getting mercilessly slaughtered at the drop of a hat will find a lot to enjoy.

Noita combines classic roguelike progression with complex RPG-style spellbuilding and sets it in an incredibly dynamic environment.

Yes, deaths you suffer might linger in the memory longer than the runs themselves, but pixel for pixel, this is as exciting in the moment as anything we've played all year. Light the fuse, stand back and prepare to gasp in wonder. [Issue#352, p.106]

Noita is an exciting experiment that grew into a tense, complicated, and altogether satisfying game of self-expression and discovery. It allows players a level of freedom often unseen in rogue-likes at the expense of a clear and distinct visual language, and situations that become difficult to quickly parse.

Straightforward and occasionally frustrating the set-up may seem, Noita‘s hands-off approach to instruction and allowing player-made discovery to bloom is one sought-after trait in gaming that here pays off time and time again.

A reinvention of a childhood favorite of mine, The Powder Toy, Noita amazes with its pixel-perfect simulation of physics, chemistry, and magic.

And yes, there’s an engaging gameplay loop beyond all of the terrain and wand modification. There’s an eclectic variety of enemies in the myriad regions that players can explore, running the gamut from familiar antagonists such as rats, robots, and gunmen, to more wild creatures like sentient blobs of acid and all manner of tentacled eldritch horrors. The environments are similarly diverse and player exploration is constantly rewarded in the form of new spells, potions, and secret locations, among other things.

In its best moments, Noita is a visual treat of interesting physics mechanics, status effects, and weapons that encourage experimentation, explosions, and just a damn good time. It offers hours of amusement and surprises wrapped inside a fairly traditional roguelite offering. What it lacks in actual progression systems, it makes up for with a bewildering amount of exploration and a high skill ceiling for those willing to master it. That difficulty is also its biggest shortcoming, as the ease with which players can die — often unfairly — means a lot of repeating familiar areas and weapons, and the user interface and RNG often get in the way of the better parts of the experience. Noita isn’t a game to sink 50 hours into, but it’s a blast to drop in and experience for its systems, and it 100% lives up the promise that “every pixel is simulated” — often to deadly and hilarious effect.

All in all, Noita‘s package is filled to the brim with content: the descending path down the caves is not the only available one, and multiple secrets are scattered all around the world, granting even more bizarre and wacky effects to experiment with. Even so, much of the fun derived from a playthrough feels more dependent on the luck of the draw rather than the player’s skill and knowledge of the game’s mechanics. A single run can end within minutes, but reaching the credits will likely take multiple tries and over twenty hours, with many more to come if one is set on discovering the multiple hidden mechanics and optional pieces of content. Noita is a challenging roguelite winking at those players who put freedom of exploration and experimentation in high regard, but the heavy reliance on RNG and a steep difficulty curve can hold back anyone from relishing in the chaos more often than not.

Creatively manipulating Noita's reactive world with an inventive spellcasting system acts as the game's initial appeal, but it's also the game's biggest stumbling block early on. Trying to gain footing in Noita's dangerous, unstable world is an abrasive task that distracts from its wonderful secrets and challenging puzzles, but its main hook of experimentation with spells and their effects on the world around you is strong enough to pull you through its uneven start. Noita is tough and unforgiving of even the smallest mistakes, but it's also just a gleeful sandbox of destruction that brings as much joy as it does death.

Noita is a magical platform adventure that always encourages the player to start a new run, except for a missing permanent growth factor.

If you’re not bothered about kicking a thirty-plus minute run to the curb because you didn’t quite manage to piece together anything strong enough, or about dawdling around a bit in an attempt to grind for whatever may be needed to build a dream weapon, you might really enjoy Noita. It’s not exactly my cup of tea but I think I may have been taking it a little too seriously – sometimes it’s just fun to embrace the madness and see how far you can take it.

Noita is well-designed and offers players many secrets and strange environmental interactions to discover throughout a run. In both design and execution it is very similar to Terraria in that way. Unlike its more popular competitors, however, it suffers from a lack of quality of life features like a tutorial or difficulty settings. Noita is not a game for the faint of heart, and is a title that will be enjoyed by the most hardcore of gamers while frustrating most everyone else.

Noita relies far too heavily on random numbers to create any kind of enjoyment, and though it might make some fun stories, players will be left craving an actual roguelike rather than this RNG simulator.