Noita calls itself “The Falling Sand Roguelite”, a description which will probably only make sense to people who spent a lot of time playing flash games. For those of you who didn’t, “Falling Sand” refers to a genre of simulation sandboxes where you spread around particles of various substances, like water, oil, or sand, and play with their interaction. You watch as oil separates itself from water, which you can then set alight, and then smother with sand. There isn’t a goal to accomplish, the reason to play is simply for the joy of experimentation. Noita builds its worlds around this concept, with every pixel of the environment having simulated physical properties, which you can manipulate using the random magical abilities you find along your journey. Your goal is to traverse a series of biomes, fighting increasingly stronger enemies until you reach a tough-as-nails final boss. Even in this small summary though, you may have noticed the disagreement between each of its genre halves. If progression is done by defeating a linear set of enemies, why is it mixed with a genre about freeform experimentation? Not only does the linear difficulty structure incentivize players to only create wands that kill enemies as quickly as possible, the randomness of the magic means the map generation always has to include a freely accessible exit that doesn’t require magic at all. Most of the time, you’re just quick-firing boring magic missiles or arrows, leaving all the fun interactivity essentially as window dressing. Not only that, but taking risks with more complex wands is actively disincentivized by how fragile your character is, when accidentally hitting yourself is often a one-shot kill, leaving you with no way of enjoying that wand you were so lucky to craft. Confusingly enough, this falling sand game not only lacks a sandbox for experimentation, but it actively discourages you from experimenting much at all. It’s no wonder that some of the top mods on the Steam workshop are the ones that add testing rooms and custom wand spawning, giving players a way of actually enjoying the potential of the robust simulation. This is one of the rare times I’m happy about a game being heavily modded, because the beauty of all the elemental interactions is something more people should experience, and I’m glad there’s a way to do so without sinking hours into mediocre roguelike randomness.

TL;DR: 9 hp, on fire, hiisi father to the right, ukko to the left, currently crying

I will now talk way too much about my all-time favorite game: Noita. It's a physics-based roguelite by Nolla Games, a Finnish group consisting of the creators of Baba is You, Environmental Station Alpha, The Swapper, and Crayon Physics Deluxe, topped with a unique and well-fitting soundtrack by psychedelic rock band From Grotto. It is a roguelite with a custom physics engine reminiscent of old falling powder games; one where every pixel on screen has the capacity to fall, burn, melt, and explode, among other things. While such physics sound like they belong on some unblocked games site that you used to mess around with when bored at school, the roguelite elements completely change perspective on the engine. It takes your awe at the material reactions and transforms it into pure terror as you watch fire slowly burn away at the one wall separating you from 30 hiisi. Making the most of the materials you're given is a big part of this game. Another that I have failed to neglect until now is the wand-crafting mechanics. You discover wands and spells with different stats that you can edit during the interlude area between levels, which can range from a fast-firing wand that fires bouncy bolts to one that unleashes nuclear havoc before converting all of the rubble into solid gold (which is the game's currency, of which all forms are collectable). The third and final main part of the player's abilities in the game would be perks. The previously mentioned interlude area contains a rerollable set of three perks, which can improve your survival chances or teleport you directly into lava when you take the slightest bit of damage.

How the pillars of Physics, Wand-crafting, and Perks combine to create a satisfying experience is in the enemies and their AI, which is quite smart, and you can often watch enemies learn from their mistakes by making slight adjustments. All enemies can be cheesed in some way, some with toxic sludge, some with the metal-melting concentrated mana, and some by pouring water on them, but no enemy in this game is by any means a pushover. One hit from a weaker enemy could throw you directly into a pit full of ones who can three-shot you.

Being a roguelite, this game is difficult. Even masters of the game often see themselves die to the stupidest things, but in the end they always feel like the fault of the player: you fired the wrong wand, you didn't dodge well enough, you didn't see the glowing dot on a robot turret before jumping headfirst into that room. Noita encourages both the approach of pure skill and speed, and the approach of taking your time and thinking things through. There is no time penalty in this game. It's why the fastest runs are around three minutes while trying to collect all of the secrets in one run can and will take hours on end.

That brings me to the secrets. There is an insane amount of hidden content in the game. One that might become obvious within the first few hours is the fact that you don't have to go down at all, or the Connoisseur of Wands (a late game boss) guarding an orb just to the right of the first stage. In fact, roguelite is just the barest bones of this game. The usual playthrough area takes up a fraction of the world, with plenty of things to do both on the surface and deep underground. There are even looping parallel worlds on each side, though the game will experience issues or crash if you travel more than four or five worlds' worth in any direction. However, the vast majority of hidden content in the game is so difficult to figure out that it feels closer to a community effort than something you can just stumble across. They've been adding hints in recent betas, but it's going to take more than one person to figure out a lot of the secrets. If you're interested in experiencing any of these secrets once you've acquired a decent amount of skill, I would recommend FuryForged's youtube videos about the game. They're not the kind of things you can figure out more than two or three of on your own, sadly.

Noita has a lot of updates. The rate at which they add new features parallels or exceeds any other game that's out of early access. New spells, perks, enemies, or even items, bosses, and biomes are added all the time, with the beta branch having roughly weekly content updates. In fact, if these updates continue throughout 2021, I'll be nominating Noita for Steam's Labor of Love award, simply due to how much content they keep adding.

I wouldn't say this game has much of a story. It has lore if you look deep enough, and even a reference to Monty Python's Holy Grail. It feels like an experience by people who genuinely love working on the game, who value the journey far greater than the destination. There are various endings, some accessible earlier, and some hilariously difficult to achieve, and while they're decently satisfying conclusions, the true experience comes from everything that got you to that point. Everything about this game is fun. Dying can be painful or feel unfair, but simply starting another run is often enough to bring you right back into the fun again. Even if you get bored with one playstyle, you can always try something stupid or fun. I love every part of this game. Thank you, Nolla Games, for such an impeccable experience. I will continue to hold this game in my heart for as long as I walk this Earth.

10/10

(P.S. I set the status to "Mastered" but I still have a lot of endings to get and secrets to discover...)