Noita is a roguelike physics game focused on spell crafting and surviving seemingly endless dangers. While the main goal of the game is to make it to the last level and defeat the final boss, there are tons of other routes to take and places to explore.
This roguelike has a very similar feel to Terraria, but with roguelike gameplay and insane physics. I’ve put a ton of hours into the games far, and I think the game is amazing. The goal of this revie is to show you all the awesome gameplay features of Noita and help you decide whether or not the game is worth it for you.
Gameplay
The first thing I want to cover is the gameplay, which is the most important part of a game like this. You start above ground in a very Terraria-esque world facing the mouth of a large cave.
Even though the cave is the obvious place to go, you can actually go left, right, and straight up. There are alternate environments and tons of awesome secrets to discover, so I won’t spoil any of those things in case you want to get the game.
As you walk into the cave you’ll see a basic tutorial on how to play the game, and you descend into the dark caverns below. Every run gives you a starter wand, explosive wand, and some sort of potion.
The most common type of potion to have is a water potion, which happens to be the most useful. Sometimes you’ll get lava potions or other various liquids that have many uses.
The goal of each stage is to get to the purple teleporter at the bottom of the level, which teleports you to a semi-safe zone called the Holy Mountain. I say semi-safe because certain things can still harm you while you’re there, so always be careful.
The Holy Mountain refills your health and consumable spells, gives you a shop to buy new wands and spells, and gives you one free perk. Here you can experiment with spell combinations and try out all sorts of crazy wands.
When you’re ready to leave, you head out the door on the right side of the Holy Mountain and continue downwards. You basically repeat that through each increasingly difficult stage until you find the last stage, but getting there is easier said than done.
Luck is actually a huge part of the game, so RNG can sometimes make or break your run. Sometimes you go through several stages and find extremely weak wands, and other times you’ll get God wants that can blow up huge chunks of the map.
If you’re extremely lucky, you’ll get a wand that’ll let you destroy every creature with ease. For most runs, you’ll need to be cautious with every step you take.
It’s a fully roguelike game, meaning there’s no sense of progression except for seeing how many spells, perks, or enemies you’ve discovered.
Noita is an extremely hard game. Most of the fun comes from the spellcrafting rather than finishing a run, so just know you’re going to die a lot.
Physics
The next obvious thing about Noita is crazy simulated physics. You have liquids, solids of various hardness, and even simulated gasses like steam. Every single element has a purpose, whether that be deadly or helpful.
There’s a liquid mechanic called staining, which happens when a liquid touches your character. Basically, your clothes are covered in a certain liquid and will apply effects to you until it wears off.
Coating yourself in blood makes you more fireproof and gives you a higher chance of critical hits. Being soaked in slime makes you slow but also fire resistance. Oil makes you slippery but also makes you more flammable. Carrying around a flask of a liquid allows you to spray it onto yourself to apply those effects.
Whiskey is another liquid that’s flammable, but makes you drunk when you get covered in it. There are potions that you can drink or spray on yourself to give yourself powers, like super speed or turning yourself into a sheep.
Noita also has simulated powders such as snow, sand, and gunpowder. All of these elements combine together with elemental enemies to create the perfect storm of chaos. You can be swimming through a pool of oil and next thing you know an enemy throws a fireball into it and the entire thing goes up in flames.
I’ve never seen a game that can create chaos and destruction so quickly. Enemies always seem to cause chain reactions that start everything on fire or electrify giant bodies of water.
Every single pixel is destructible, letting you manipulate the environment with tons of different wands. Destroying certain materials will have dire consequences, so always know what you’re doing before destroying something.
The physics in Noita are simply incredible, and if all you wanted to do were get mods and play the game as a sandbox then that’s a viable option too.
Spellcrafting
Perfectly complimenting the physics and gameplay is the spellcrafting. Every wand has different stats such as mana and recharge time, which you combine with spells to make unique new spells.
Modifiers will change the way the spells cast, or will apply powerful effects to previously weak spells.
Sometimes you create wands so powerful you won’t even know how to use it properly. Sometimes you’ll create wants that instantly kill you.
Every time you do though, you’ll learn more about the complicated but fun mechanics of the game. Dying is a learning experience in Noita. Sometimes I’ll get annoyed that I died and exit the game, but 5 minutes later I’ll start playing it again.
It’s frustratingly difficult sometimes and you’ll often rage at when you die for some lame reason, but I keep finding myself coming back for more.
Environments
The developers did a great job with the game world. As you progress throughout the run, the worlds become more difficult. The game conveys the added danger by making the environment design more ominous.
Not only do the enemies become harder, but the terrain becomes harder to navigate. The ground is harder to destroy so that you can’t dig away from enemies, and there are more hazards to hurt you.
The enemies in these new environments drop more gold, but the wands and spells in the shops become more expensive.
The soundtrack for this game fits the game extremely well. It both sets the mood for the current stage and creates tension, further drawing you into the world.
I think the developers did an amazing job creating this world and putting life into it. Outside the main world there are tons of extra locations that I won’t spoil. Those locations are randomly generated every single run, and I think it’s kinda cool that most players don’t even know about them.
The game world in Noita is absolutely incredible. It’s very impressive that such an expansive procedurally generated world was created by such a small development team.
Overall I think the game world is one of the coolest procedurally generated worlds I’ve ever seen.
Lore and Secrets
Part of the reason I love Noita so much is because it’s filled with lore and secrets. I’ve played the game for 60 hours and I’ve barely even scratched the surface of everything the game holds.
Strewn throughout the game is a ton of lore to uncover, and the game doesn’t hold your hand to find it. Either you can spoil all the secrets by watching others play them on Youtube, or you can have the thrill of exploring them for yourself.
Of course, there are so many secrets in this game that the average player won’t even find half of them, and that’s perfectly fine. None of those secrets are required for game completion or trophies, so the developers just added them as a bonus.
For me personally, I find that the secrets make me want to play even more. Even if I’m not specifically looking for them, it’s an awesome feeling to stumble upon one randomly in a playthrough.
Conclusion
So to wrap up my review, for me, Noita was 100% worth buying. I haven’t mentioned any negatives for the game, and that’s because I haven’t found any really. The game doesn’t hold your hand at all, and the difficulty is unforgiving.
Many players might not like that aspect of the game, but I personally find that to be part of the appeal. People who get frustrated easily probably won’t enjoy it either, so keep that in mind.
There are very infrequent bugs, but when bugs do happen they’re usually not game breaking. If you have a low spec PC, you may have trouble running the game when there’s fire and pixels falling everywhere. The game does seem very well optimized and it’s impressive how many things can be happening on screen without major lag.
Overall, if you don’t think the difficulty of the game will be a negative, and you don’t mind that it’s a roguelike, Noita is a great game to get.
