Noita is an action game with roguelike elements. It was released in 2020 and is characterized by a well-thought-out physical model. The author is Finnish indie studio Nolla Games. In Finnish, the word “no” means “witch.”
Storyline
The player controls a nameless witch who must get to the bottom of the deepest cave, teeming with a variety of monsters. Some of them are much larger than the heroine and noticeably superior to her in survivability.
Numerous spells that can be learned, as well as potions and abilities carefully hidden in dark corners, will help in the fight against them. This is the end of the story, but it doesn’t matter at all if you want to enjoy the game. After all, Noita is, first and foremost, a realistic simulation of all sorts of destruction.
It’s time to destroy!
The authors describe their game as something toxic and explosive. The laws of physics here work the way nature intended. Gas can be scorched by flame; water freezes, evaporates, and turns to rain, interacts and mixes with other liquids; water easily conducts electricity; poisonous fumes can suffocate.
And most importantly, there are dozens of ways to destroy hard surfaces and destroy monsters. It seems that the developers have done everything to make vandalism fun and the desire to destroy the world to the ground. Each level of the cave has explosive barrels and vats of acid.
Tons of stone and earth are held together only by flimsy wooden supports: touch them, and disaster is unavoidable. Noita has a good indie game engine, capable of handling every pixel individually. It doesn’t achieve visual realism, but it’s good for simulating physical phenomena.
Backlash
However, while you admire the game’s physics, you should not forget that nature can always fight back – it’s enough only to hesitate a little. A witch can die at any moment, not only from a crowd of monsters but also because of her own stupidity.
No one can survive after falling into the lava, it is easy to drown in the water, and the acid on the body permanently damages the character if the player doesn’t take care of the treatment in time. A witch can blow herself up along with her enemies by miscalculating her impact or die under a cave-in.
Before each action, the player has to think and calculate the possible options not to go after the defeated monsters to the other world. That’s why, despite the new patches that make the gameplay easier, Noita remains very difficult to pass.
Each witch must have a magic wand
From the beginning, the player has two magic wands. One can be used as a pistol, and the other imitates a larger caliber, more similar to a grenade launcher. The resemblance is not accidental, as this weapon also requires you to buy shells.
Other wands can be obtained by passing through dungeons or purchased from a merchant in the buffer zone called Sacred Mountain. Each wand has several parameters, including the rate of fire and reloads time, which cannot be changed. But the shells can be combined, set in any order, and modifiers can be changed by combining different properties.
However, even here, there are limitations because each shot requires mana cost, and the number of slots in which you can insert shells is limited. The fun and mischievous Noita will help satisfy the passion for destruction that periodically arises in every person. It is a unique game with real physics, almost unparalleled among similar projects.