46 Noita PC
Nolla Games finally casts its magical Roguelike out into the world
After six years of work, the spell is almost complete. But if Noita grows more powerful than it already is, we’re going to be in trouble. We are mesmerised by the thing, booting it up over and over again for just one more run. It’s a devilishly difficult Roguelike with a twist: every single pixel in Noita’s randomly generated cave systems is physically simulated via Nolla Games’ own Falling Everything engine.
Conjure a bomb from your wand at a vat of acid: when it explodes, the contents melt through the floor below it, sizzling violently. The remains of its container creak and fall. Fire an electric bolt at a sheet of ice and it cracks, chunks breaking off and shattering on the ground. The chain reactions of Noita’s
strange, subterranean world are hypnotic to watch; moreover, they can be weaponised. A mineshaft leading to some kind of loot sparkling coquettishly in the darkness – most likely a wand, or a flask of a magical potion – is filled with leaping, bloodsucking monsters. One well-placed bomb later, and we manage to cave in its ceiling from above, dumping an entire lake of oil onto them. Not a problem for the already hygienically challenged foes, you might think – until we switch to a wand that spews arcing fireballs, and barbecue them silly.
The trouble is that physics does not take sides. Our robe catches fire as we float over the sea of flames to our now-unguarded prize; we desperately hunt for some water (or even blood) to douse ourselves, but end up burning to death. In a later, more successful run, we arrive at the Holy Mountain – a temple-like respite you teleport to between each of Noita’s
dangerous substrata, where you can top up health and personalise your collected wands via their spell slots – and find a spell that conjures a large circle of water that would have saved us. Rather than discouraging, it only deepens our resolve to push onward. Like Spelunky before it, Noita is a constant balance of smarts and sheer dumb luck: it tests your decision-making processes, tempts you into greed, and sometimes refuses to throw you a bone, all of which heightens the staunch belief that your next run will be the run.
But its reactive physics engine and the level of customisation over wands and abilities takes things a step further. You’re constantly having to improvise to avoid a horrible demise, usually around the bizarre new item you’ve
Like Spelunky before it, Noita is a constant balance of smarts and sheer dumb luck
just found – or your own fatally stupid mistakes. Intrigued by a spell that conjures chunks of dirt, we add it to our now multi-projectile wand, and in a moment of panicked spell-casting at a gang of flying eyeballs, end up repeatedly trapping ourselves in great mounds of the stuff. Curiosity – in the form of cyclops bats – meets cat, and there goes another run.
This (suspiciously cheap, in retrospect) spell seems to be just one of several additions
since the year or so ago we last played Noita. Elsewhere, we find a wand that casts a glittering bubble that stops enemies in their tracks when they walk into it – and, in one glorious stroke of fortune, another with five ‘bouncing burst’ projectiles that careen around narrow tunnels with wild abandon. There’s an eerie gaseous substance that can appear in caves, which we manage to burn off before presumably perishing as a result of. And we’ve thrown a polymorph flask before, but it’s still amusing to see enemies turn to harmless winged sheep; the berserker flask strikes us as a more recent addition, although we’re unsure entirely what effect it has on our enemies. A lack of clear communication as to how certain substances behave is an issue we’ve expressed concern about before; then again, the more we play, the more we realise that the scarcity of information just makes the sense of discovery stronger – and our failed experiments funnier.
Noita has always been a compelling prospect with a solid systemic foundation. In the past year Nolla Games has added ever more creative variables, while balancing and refining how they relate to one another, and that will continue on the road to full release. Inevitably, we’ll see early-access players pulling off some game-breaking sorcery. But creative chaos is the essential nature of Noita – and one that could cement it as one of the great Roguelikes.