Man, I used to spend a TON of time playing old flash games. Newgrounds, Congregate, Addicting Games, Cool Flash Games, all that stuff. There were always new and interesting things to play or watch. One that I always came back to was Falling Sands, a pixel-based physics engine in flash. Dozens of elements and compounds interact in various ways as little sand-based pixels. Water puts out fire, fire sets off gunpowder and burns through things. It was really fun setting up cool reactions and finding new, unexpected ones.
Noita
Developer: Nolla Games
Price: $19.99
Platform: PC (Steam, GoG, Humble Store, itch.io)
MonsterVine was supplied with PC code for review
Somehow, the guys over at Nolla Games managed to make a badass wizard roguelike from this concept, giving us a huge randomly generated world jam-packed with pixels that interact with each other and you! Let’s talk some more about the fresh out of early access title, Noita!
Like a lot of roguelikes and similar titles, the story isn’t the focus in this game. You start the game, see some starry constellations about eggs shooting out various things and boom, title drop. Awakening from some kind of sleep, your wizardesque character is conveniently in front of a few various rocks that show you your controls. Noita is 2D action side-scrolling game. You can move, you have a limited flight ability, you can kick things in order to huck things across the rooms, most notably explosives and lamps. But the most innovative mechanic is the ability to cast magic.
There are various wands you can use to cast a spell. Each one has myriad stats to experiment with, like casting delay, mana charge speed, and others, as well a number of spell slots. Now the slots are where you put spells or modifiers in order to produce an attack or an effect, and you can mix and match. This leads to a HUGE amount of customization within your main method to attack and interact with the world. I found wands that blew me up when I used them, often in grand ways. I sometimes misinterpreted the effect a spell would have when moving spells around on my wands at a safe spot in between major areas and managed to electrocute a nearby pool of water that caused a spark to light the wood around me and light me on fire. Great! But as you play and try everything, and discover how spells interact, you can make some truly amazing attacks that are amazingly effective. I love the feeling when I find a unique looking, beefy wand with some innate effect and eight different spells slots. It leads to awesome moments where you know if you use this weapon, it can lead to something bad happening. But it also could be so rewarding that you question whether you hold onto it for a later level and use the spells with more knowledge in how they work. Or you can whip it out early in an intense battle and completely change courses.
In between major areas area safe zones, within which you can restore your health and magic. There is also a selection of perks! Yes, that’s right, perks! Adding even more levels of customization, perks can make you impervious to fire, cast faster and some other ones you would expect in a game like this. But to spice it up, you can also get fun things like robot spider legs that make you fireproof and allow you to move in the air without using your flight energy as long as your leg can touch a wall, or of course, the always expected Revenge Tentacle! Folks, anyone who will ever hurt you will be attacked with a tentacle filled with rage, just what you always wanted!
You will also find lots of vials of various liquids that let you do a few things! You can spray it around, putting yourself out if you are on fire (hopefully it’s water!) Maybe spray it on an enemy if you maybe have some acid or something similar. You can also chuck it if you want, spilling whatever you have left, which can be a game-changer if you have a vial of an, especially offensive liquid! For the brave, you could even just chug the liquid and deal with whatever outcomes follow. Vials can play a pivotal role in the way you progress in Noita and are worth paying attention to and learning.
I’ve had many moments of yelling out loud as situations escalated, or an intense chain reaction lights the screen up with danger, or the first time I use a random wand with unknown effects and it blasts away half the geography on the stage. The moment-to-moment gameplay teeters between tense exploration and navigation to frantic combat and adapting to the ever-changing combat situations this game’s very nature brings. It’s super satisfying to get a good run going, but one of my few complaints is that it’s hard to turn a bad run around. You really quickly get the feeling if you are going to be able to keep up with the increasing difficulty curve or not early on in a run, which can be frustrating.
This game also happens to have an absolute set of bangers on the OST, and the sound design, in general, is very well done, while sometimes feeling a little crowded as an innate result of the physics engine based gameplay, which is almost to be expected. The music ranges from moody and atmospheric to red hot and full of instruments, really adding to the atmosphere of the game. The game makes sure to let you know anytime that you run into a new spell type, perk, or enemy at your game over screen after one of the many deaths you will suffer through your adventure, and it shows you how many there are total, so you feel your progress every time. I rarely don’t run into at least a new one on a decent enough run, which keeps you feeling like you are still making progress.
The Final Word
I really enjoyed this game, and it has that one more run quality to it that you really want from a roguelike. As someone who loves the genre, this one stands out by letting the randomized sandbox idea set in the genre and cranking those levels up to 11. Noita provides a memorable experience with a unique physics engine that is integral to understanding the game. If you love wizards, cursing at your screen frantically, or roguelikes, I recommend Noita highly!
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
