Noita — “God is Change”
When you talk to people who do not play video games, the reasons why highlight the idea that things are too static. Players in a sports game look stilted, with dead eyes. Environments look blocky and virtual. The stories in games that play out, even from those that offer choice, seem to play out in similar ways. The idea of sitting down and playing something that looks so banal does not appeal to the person who appreciates the changing landscape on offer in our real world.
Even from a Noob, I think this kind of critique is more damning than we care to admit. In real life, our most basic institutions change over time, and our premises about even ourselves is prone to shifting. Am I really the good person I claim to be, after what just happened? Do I still have the trust and assurance of those I love?
There are some games that attempt to turn that static problem into a process. The physics engine from Half-Life was a great leap for movement. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was a great one for time, taking those gaming assets from Ocarina of Time and remixing them into an ominous world filled with masks and NPCs carrying out strange habits at the end of the world. Outer Wilds proceeds to end the world every 22 minutes, and it is up to the player to end the loop, to understand how time is affecting the planets and the story of that solar system.
Noita is a game in this category. Its tagline is “every pixel is simulated” meaning, unlike other games, no part of the game is untouchable by certain qualities that react with others. Snow, under the right circumstances, will pack, melt, shift, and fall down a chasm. Lava will melt the dirt underneath it and set fire to the wooden structure holding up the cave below. Explosions can decimate passageways, creating beautiful firework effects that have to be seen to be believed. Noita is thus a manifesto against the static way that other games play, as it is constantly shifting and tearing itself asunder. The game is a metaphor for the absurdity of existence. It is an entropy machine that, always, points to one end.
If Noita were just a pixel simulator, it would be a tech demo, but luckily the game designed on top of this technical marvel is excellent. It is a roguelike, where each biome is procedurally generated. There are definite points to cross in the game however. Think of it like sheet music: the time signature is the same, but the notes played can be almost anything. When a player dies, they die for good, and must restart, with only their newfound knowledge to guide them on subsequent journeys. Like jazz, the player is free to embellish the sheet music as much as they wish, and Noita offers perhaps hundreds of secrets and goals that expand from the simple one of “reach the bottom”. Mysterious tablets that offer lore in secret places inviting you with an ethereal hum. And perhaps down is not the only place to go, but every cardinal direction we have at our disposal? Some secrets are so deeply embedded that some players were only able to discover them by breaking open the code. It is bristling with the kind of easter eggs I used to love discovering as a child. If there was one critique about Noita, it is that a player has no hope of uncovering all of these themselves, as some secrets defy conventional logic. Yet there will be some players who will want to experience the game blind. These blind players are typically the most dedicated, which creates a strange bifurcation. They want to discover, yet there is no possible way to do so unless cheating, something these players do not want to do. It comes part and parcel with the secrets, and I am willing to let it pass, if only to have a richly filled world, rather than one that holds the player’s hand.
But uncovering these secrets is not easy. Standing in your way are plenty of enemies with Finnish names that harken perhaps to Finnish folklore from the Kalevala, with some quirky creativity. Zombies with shotguns and a laser aim. Sniper zombies with laser sights and…laser aim. Floating monsters that spew toxic sludge when struck by a spell. Machines and monsters both are aching to kill you quick. You’ll need a good set of wands and spells to defeat them. Noita takes procedural generation to its wands as well, producing some wands that shoot rapid-fire, while others have larger mana pools to cast slower, but bigger spells. In each pit stop between levels, called the “Holy Mountain” you’ll be able to tinker with wands and change the combinations of spells on them, creating the experience you’d like to have. Is there a dedicated following to maximizing the output of these wands? Of course. But will that stop you from creating insane and inadvisable wands that could eat the world? Wands that conjure large boxes of explosives directly in front of you? Wands that may crash your PC for firing too quickly? Wands that conjure black holes that eat through anything, even the “Holy Mountain” you’re standing on, thus angering the Gods? Of course not. At all times, the game is begging you to break it. And most of the time, I end up breaking myself.
At 24 hours in, I can say assuredly that I have not been this obsessed with a game for perhaps years. The original Dark Souls maybe. The simulated pixels, combined with the randomized worlds and wands, the hundreds of spells, perks, and enemies, all promising plenty of secrets I have heard about but know little of how to unravel, means that each “run” through the game has something new. I am stunned at seeing it move, haunted by the way it has rewarded almost every curiosity I have placed on it, alarmed at how dispassionately it will murder me; and though it may seem like death could be frustrating, I have not once gotten upset. Death–like the simulated pixels in the game–has become only another process that I have to understand.
For those wanting to dive in, I should caution you that Noita is horrifyingly opaque. There is no tutorial, no explanation for even the controls that could help in a pinch. There is a lively YouTube and Discord community that exists for the sole purpose of assisting new players. Part of this fault lies with the developers, who have responded with providing multiple game types that allow players to get used to the wealth of spells, biomes, and loadouts for the player to enjoy, as well as excellent mod integration for such helpful quality-of-life boosts like “health regeneration” and “tinker with wands forever”. These sound like gobbledigook to the outsider, but to even the laymen, these are massive changes to the way the game is played. It would have been nice for the game to offer an onboarding tutorial, perhaps even a small world seed and simple spells and a water flask, as well as some text or voice, to introduce the key ideas. It’s a shame that roguelikes as a genre cater to this opaque quality as a feature rather than a bug. But if you can use YouTube, you’re off to the races. Your mileage may vary.
Noita received its last major update on March 30th, 2021, titled “Epilogue”, which added even more spells, secrets, locations, and enemies to the game. After leaving early access, it seems to be feature complete. It will be a game that will last for years, perhaps decades, based on its tech as well as its design. Seeing firey particles falling through the dark spaces of a mineshaft, seeing flammable gas ignite as it ascends and spread to the ceiling, while oil drums are exploding, is so beautiful in its change that I have found it difficult to return to other games. Octavia E. Butler’s narrator in Parable of the Sower hypothesized that “God is change”. To have God as a process, rather than a static being, is a difficult switch in the mind. Yet to see Noita is to finally understand the beauty inherent. Noita is divine.
Originally published at https://theroyleline.blog on April 19, 2021.
