izigame.me

God, where do I even start with this game? There is so much more than meets the eye when it comes to Noita.
A bit of a backstory first. My friend recommended this game to me about a year ago. Promised me it was a nice, easy, relaxing game. I tried it once, died in the abandoned mine shaft, tried again, and got shot by some guy way off screen. I put it down, said "f this," and forgot about it. Recently, while I was going through my library, I saw this game and decided to try it out again. I was immediately hooked. What had previously been a hellish game with no appeal became one of my favourites. Within a month, I had racked up 100 hours, and I’m sure I’ll have many more by the time any of you read this.
Anyways, back to the review. On the surface, this game is a simple roguelike: go downwards through various procedurally generated biomes, and kill a boss at the end. There is no okay, maybe some... meta progression. Every time you die, you completely restart. Everything you worked so hard to build disappears. Sounds punishing, right? That's only scratching the surface.
But here's the thing. Noita is a lie. It is so much more than that. While the simple pitch is enough to intrigue some, it's what's hidden beneath the surface that truly defines the experience. The world is fully simulated, from pixel-level physics to chemistry interactions between materials. Water reacts with lava, oil ignites, gas explodes, and acid eats through terrain. You don’t just cast spells, but you craft them from scratch, combining effects and triggers in a system that resembles programming more than traditional gameplay. It’s complex, it’s overwhelming, and it’s brilliant.
And the secrets. My god, the secrets. Whole parallel worlds, cryptic riddles, alternate endings, even hand-placed lore and cryptic in-game messages that reward those willing to deep-dive. There are hidden temples, golden zones, god-killing artifacts, and puzzles that have taken the entire community years to unravel. The community around this game feels more like an ARG than a player base sometimes. You'll end up reading wikis, watching hour-long breakdowns, and sketching theories, and somehow that just makes it better.
Noita doesn’t hold your hand. It doesn’t even tell you where the hands are but i will! there are in the snowy depths. you feel like kicking them . But if you’re the kind of person who finds joy in experimentation, in mystery, in finding chaos and crafting control from it, then this game will consume you in the best way. Every run is a new lesson, every death a cruel but necessary teacher.
And let me be absolutely clear: you will die. A lot. Not in a fun "haha whoops" kind of way, but in a soul-crushing, controller-throwing, "what the hell just killed me" kind of way. You will perish to things you didn’t see, didn’t understand, and didn’t even know existed. You’ll ignite yourself with your own fire trail, drown in toxic sludge, get polymorphed into a sheep and kicked into lava. And perhaps the most unfair of all, enemies can and will pick up wands. Sometimes those wands have nukes on them. And sometimes you’ll be walking along, minding your business, when an enemy off-screen decides to shoot a planet-destroying spell in your general direction. Instant death. Zero warning. Pure chaos.
And yet, somehow, you’ll crawl back for more.
Just... don’t believe your friend when they say it’s relaxing.