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Feature: Burn it all down
Noita is a big firework show, where the fireworks are heaps of gunpowder, exploding barrels of acid. The acid turns into steam in the heat of the blast and rises to condense on the cold cave roof, eventually falling back down as acid rain. Argh. This is a very dangerous firework show. In this roguelike spellslinger where you play as a flying witch, every pixel…
As if Noita weren't already deadly enough, a new update has added a dozen new spells that I don't doubt will kill me as hard as my foes. And as if the delightful 'all pixels are simulated materials which react with terrifying consequences' shooty platformer weren't chaotic enough, it now has official mod support. Yesterday's update also added two new enemies, three new perks, a…
Feature: Life and death advice
Noita rewards you for being reckless, so set everything on fire
Noita is a game about searching for a good death. This is the conclusion I've come to after two weeks of playing it each day. I try and I die and I try again, and when I stop for the evening, it's not because I've reached further than ever before. It's because I have crafted a suitably satisfactory demise.
Feature: Successful experiments
From falling sand to Falling Everything: the simulation games that inspired Noita
"Ants. Cover them in ants." The RPS treehouse is gathered around my screen, where several dozen stickmen are currently duking it out in a blank 2D void. This is not nearly violent enough for Sin, who has seen the Ant button. I obligingly sweep my mouse across the screen, summoning a haze of insects. Some of the stickmen jump into them, and get stuck there.…
Feature: Die and retry
Noita might have come from an alternate universe: one in which we harnessed the forward progress of computer power not to render 3D polygons and open worlds, but to apply greater degrees of simulation to the pixels of a Lemmings or Worms-style 2D world. It's a roguelike in which 'every pixel is simulated', which in reality means that wood burns one pixel at a time,…
Feature: Everything is on fire
As you might have already surmised, Noita is a side-scrolling roguelike in which every pixel is meticulously simulated, from the fanciest molecule of glowing gas down to the lowliest granule of common dirt. Each pebble, spark and drop of water interacts dynamically with everything else. Liquids slosh and flow and form pools, steam and smoke billow upwards and gather along the ceiling in suffocating clouds.…
Feature: A noit t' remember
I am in no way prepared to say that Noita is as good as Spelunky. They're both platforming roguelikes that fizz with the emergent problems and solutions of physics-driven cavern-exploring, but Noita only released on early access last week. This is exciting, because the main reason I'm not prepared to declare even this early form of Noita on par with one of the best roguelikes…
Noita has a secret death replay editor, and here’s how you activate it
When things go wrong in Noita, they generally go wrong in all the right ways. The wizard sim will kill you in a cascade of calamities that begs for an easy way to show them off. But unless you're recording the game at that moment, you'll be left to reenact the death using stray cats and burning oil, and I'm not a fan of that.…
Noita’s physics-simulated spelunking hits early access today
Blimey, it's a good day for destruction, isn't it? Now that we've spent all morning tossing bricks at towers, it's time to dig a little deeper. Underground, perhaps, into a cavern full of goblins and wizards and plenty of flammable barrels just waiting to explode. Pick up your wand and don your witchiest robe, physics-simulated dungeon crawler Noita entered early access today.
Oh man, how did I miss Noita? It looks like someone took that Powder Game everyone was well into back in school, gave it a colour palette and made a Spelunky out of it. Brilliant! There's so much physical goodness going on, I'd love it if one of the developers, say, released a 10-and-a-bit minute YouTube video explaining how Noita's meticulously simulated materials come together…
I want it I want it I want it. Let me revel in chain reactions of dripping lava and exploding acid. Let me bask in quelling them through spell-summoned rain. Or at least die trying. I kept forgetting Noita exists, because despite Noita being a fabulously-promising platforming roguelike that had Alec (RPS in peace) making favourable comparisons to Spelunky, it had also spent many years…
Feature: Season of the witch
The Noita devs on how to make a fun game when everything is falling
Noita is a very giffable game. The official Twitter account for developer Nolla Games has a lot of cool gifs. Explosions. Acid. Ice. Rats. Noita is that game where every pixel in the word is animated. You can explode, burn, melt everything you see, as a little witchy character exploring a procedurally generated dungeon. I was sitting around a laptop on the floor with the…
Feature: Some people just want to watch the world burn / be drowned in acid
Feature: E3's hidden gems
Now that the festival of bellowing that is E3 2018 has come to an end, we begin the arduous process of making sense of it all. This means sifting through mountains of press releases and trailers to find all the curious games that lurked outside the spotlight glare of the larger publishers. And we find such treats as Maneater (Jaws RPG where you play as…
I've always loved the concept of completely physics-driven worlds in games, but so few have gotten it right. While others have tried and failed, I've got high hopes for upcoming platformy roguelike Noita, especially after its appearance at E3's PC Gaming Show. Within, an exciting little trailer showing off enormously detailed environmental destruction, pixel-on-pixel violence, some impressive lighting effects and all silky smooth to boot,…
Feature: Everything falls apart
Noita is how Spelunky looks in my dreams. It's a game in which the world is simulated down to each individual pixel, so that liquids drip, flow, splash and stain. You're tasked with travelling ever downward through a series of caverns, collecting new magical weapons and slaying beasties. That wasn't always the case though. As I learned when I sat down with the developers at…
Just the other day, I was complaining that there aren't enough games with awesome fluid physics. Imagine, I shouted to a pub full of strangers, imagine if somebody took all the lovely fluid physics from Pixeljunk Shooter and stuffed them into a procedurally generated roguelike. Well, Olli Harjola the creator of clever clone-wrangler The Swapper must have been in that pub because today he sent…