When I think of the Steamdeck, a game like Nobody Saves the World should always come to mind. This is an absolute gem of a 15hr dungeon crawler/action RPG that doesn't take itself serious, both in its story and its gameplay.

It's great that we have complex ARPG titles like Path of Exile, but it's also heart warming that we have easy to understand systems like the ones found in NStW. No armor, no items, no weapons. Just skills and talents. EXP? Get it through questing and using your skills and talents in certain ways! Such a simple idea, but the execution is perfection.

I'd put this on a must play list for fans of the genre, or anyone looking for their next pickup and go game on the device of their choice.

Had a lot of fun with this. A classic 2D adventure similar to 2D Zelda games but with the fun twist of changing into various forms with different abilities. A bit grindy to get everything done, but as someone who likes that sort of thing they managed to hit a good balance.

It's not without it's flaws - the story wasn't anything special, and definitely the weakest element, and most of the time the game was too easy. There are also some crazy choices, like preventing quest progression in story dungeons, that really got in the way of me enjoying it at times. But I think the core gameplay loop, unlocking forms and experimenting with them to then unlock even more, was fun enough to keep me enjoying it throughout my entire playthrough.

Nobody Saves the World is an Action RPG made by the same studio as Guacamelee, which is perfectly reflected in the strong art style this game features. The art style really is the standout feature, though, as everything else is much more mixed. Dungeon design is very boring because there are minimal differences between them; exploration is hindered by a lot of roadblocks on the overworld, and especially the beginning felt very slow because there aren't as many options to play with. The way you can customize each class is pretty unique and offers a lot of different styles to play the game. Overall, I enjoyed it but will probably never touch again.

Deus abençoe meu amigo planta por ter me emprestado esse jogo maravilhoso, que foi meu escape mental em muitos dias. Que joguinho carismático, tendo bastante personalidade em vários aspectos, com sua gameplay que consegue se renovar bastante trazendo vários modos de jogar e enfrentar os desafios dos jogos que são na medida é muito gostosinhos de se enfrentar, com uma trilha sonora muito boa e principalmente seu estilo de arte que da um tom muito bom para tudo, foi uma boa experiência que fui jogando durante dias, sem pressa para zerar e mesmo assim mantendo progresso sempre, terminando o ano de uma boa maneira.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for December 2023, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before January 2nd, 2023, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

Achievement hunting the game.

You know what’s better than Achievements, lots of them, and in quest form, with multiple different characters, and abilities that you’ll have to use to complete the quests. You then tie the completion of those achievements into progression in the game, so players are constantly pushed to beat more of the game’s meta quests. And while this sounds like a sick fantasy of people who care about achievements too much (which I do)... it’s also how Nobody Saves the World works.

Players will change their form to use different abilities and constantly switch what attacks they’re using so they can beat these mini-quests. In addition, the game has an interesting and often funny story. There’s a lot to do in the game, taking about 20 hours for me to beat and I was having a great time throughout.

Still, this is very meta quest and achievement style gameplay, so players who want to focus on the large epic journey and get annoyed by achievements in games should steer clear, that’s most of what the game does. The art style is a take-or-leave-it number, and while I like it, it took me a while to get comfortable with those empty eyes.

Pick this up if, I keep saying it, but if you like metagaming. This was an engaging title, and I even picked it up myself because I wanted to play the whole thing after seeing it on Game Pass, but I’m also thrilled more people will get the chance to check this out.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/FzxvEceV60k

Gameplay seemed like a mix between old school 2D adventure games with a bit of roguelike thrown in for good measure.
Character design is great with each form having distinct abilities keeping a reason to use the different forms - rewarding players for doing so with new and different style of abilities.
Gaining abilities by leveling up different forms made the challenges worthwhile and made creating a unique build fun and enjoyable - keeping the gameplay fresh throughout.
The story felt like your typical fantasy genre with a few twists and comedic humour added into the mix, rewarding players who chose to go off and explore the beaten path.
The dungeons did seem to get a bit repetitive and they did lack variety when it came to the music and enemy design.
All in all NSTW is a great little indie game and was definitely hard for me to put down once started.

As a big fan of Drinkbox’s previous games in the Guacamelee franchise I was pretty eager to try out Nobody Saves the World. It was initially revealed as an Xbox console exclusive which definitely disappointed me, but I was okay with it, I had a feeling it would become a multiplatform game. This period apparently took literally 3 months lmao but I simply did not notice because it turns out, I had better games to play (MLB The Show addiction).
I guess I forgot about the game until I saw it appear on this month’s Playstation Plus games. I let out a “lets fucking go never punished” or something to that extent. I wouldn’t even have to pay for the game.I had heard rumors of it being a roguelike or something like that and I think that was what offput me from fully committing to playing the game.
Going into the game itself I had almost no idea of what the gameplay of it would be. I didn’t watch any reviews or pay attention to trailers. However what came across to me eventually while playing was that thank god, this was just a normal dungeon crawling action RPG. I felt it was quite evocative of 2D Zelda in the gameplay. You play as a formless character quite literally called “Nobody” a wizard who can transform into different creatures The game also feels a bit like Binding of Isaac without the twin stick stuff in the ways the dungeons exist. However, the true draw I felt playing the game was through the upgrade system. Each form is given a bunch of tasks to complete in order to upgrade its level to the max where more skills can be unlocked. These are all done in the form of a checklist making these upgrades feel like a collectathon in the best way.
Another very interesting part of the game’s combat system is the skills your characters can use. Forms have 1 signature attack they must have followed by up to 3 other slots to use for skills and attacks. Additionally you could have multiple passive slots (level ups bring them up to 4 but you start with 2) to gain passive abilities to benefit whichever situation you are in. Well initially customization with these characters is limited but with enough upgrading, these characters can have custom built builds for tasks a dungeon will present. Sometimes a dungeon will have “wards” who have shields requiring a certain type of attack to break, by customizing your build to account for obstacles like these it provides an element of strategy that makes customizing your build rewarded by the game. What is genius in ways about the tasks you are given to upgrade the characters, is that they actually give good ideas for the player to use in future builds with “Custom quests” needing you to use many different builds to fully upgrade a character.
New Game+ goes even further with this customization with dungeon modifiers as they are called being affected. One particularly dastardly modification I had to deal with was that every attack you dealt would cause mini homing rockets to be shot at you. So I had to do the equivalent of deck building to figure out the best combo involving the equivalent of a damage shielding passive and some abilities from the ghost character on the slug character who sort of functions like a rapid fire moving turret.
The artstyle of the game is quite charming, feeling like an average children’s cartoon with thick linework. The animation work in the games cutscenes, while limited, is completely serviceable for the game this is present in. It is a drastic departure from both the Guacamelee games and Severed (A game I have played about an hour of. It was a neat hour of gameplay) but it ends up working pretty well.
The story of the game itself feels pretty weak with it probably not being the focus. Guacamelee’s story in general was sort of weak but nothing in it felt truly cringe besides maybe the dated memes. The dialogue in particular to me feels a bit groan worthy with what I would consider out of place mild swearing. Damn is a commonly used word and I truly don’t give a shit about cursing but it just felt out of place in the dialogue.
The difficulty curve of the game is a bit weird with the final boss feeling like an easy breeze compared to the dungeon I had previously played. The New Game+ as a whole also experienced a similarly odd difficulty curve because of the randomization of the dungeon modifications. There were early game “demi dungeons” that felt much harder than the big dungeons in that version of the campaign.
As a whole I thought the game beat my relatively muted expectations and kept me gripped enough to commit to this gameplay loop all the way through and beat it in a little under a week. My game rating scale might be fucked up because I am giving this game the same score as Spider-Man 2 despite that game being a lot better. Don’t care
8/10