What genre is Noita? Is Noita a good game for me?
I am myself a fan of DC:SS, ToME, CDDA, and more graphic roguelikes like Don't Starve and Slay the Spire. Not so much a fan of ADOM, and I didn't take a stab at the original Rogue, but I did take a stab at Brogue and even wrote an ASCII roguelike in Pascal in school myself. So, if you're into roguelikes in general, go see it for yourself - I bet you'll find Noita... interesting.
What is Noita? Terraria times Binding Of Isaac as one of the players soundly put it; I couldn't say better.
First off, I can't help but notice how heavily Noita emphasizes the simulation aspect. Just as they promised in the teaser-trailer, every pixel burns, melts, freezes, explodes, transmutes, flows, falls, or whatever else secret mechanics they've built into it, so a player faces a hard choice right away: how do they want to play this game? As a simulation sandbox or as a classic kill-them-all roguelike? The former is not entirely convenient in the main game mode considering that various enemies swarm around and the necessary materials and tools are scattered across the world, and the latter gets very hard because of physics getting in the way. The said physics in not always intuitive or predictable. Even though most of the time objects do behave like we expect them IRL, there is a number of exceptions when they don't (it's a magic game!), and the discovery of it might... end the run. There is more than one way to make the game engine behave even more unpredictably and break it up to the point of crashing the game. Lag is common: even professional streamers with top gaming rigs report inevitable FPS drops when the pixels are engaged in simulating certain intense situations. ("Pixels" are about 1/4 of Terraria block height.)
Noita is not for the impatient. I spent more than a moment waiting for a wooden obstacle to burn down. Or draining a huge body of water for whatever reason. You can't stray too far because the chunk will stop loading and freeze. There are many time-consuming mini-games in Noita, like catch a single pixel of matter into a bottle, or keep a certain useful mob alive.
The world stretches far in all directions, and there are no immediately available stationary portals or scrolls to facilitate fast travel. Free fall is the fastest early game means of transportation. (Once, I decided to travel to the eastern edge of the main map. That was when I caught myself being forced to appreciate the scenery and little moments of being alive in the current seed.) In general, something commonly abundant in the majority of similar games is a blocker in Noita, and a player character starts severely impaired in all regards: they are slow, vulnerable to all kinds of hazards, have no means of fast travel or altering the environment, no means of convenient exploration, and, of course, no efficient tools to dispatch hostile mobs. I was surprised to discover that there is no natural regeneration, for example. And I grew paranoid, going out of my way to find a means of sustainable healing, making it a side quest effectively. What other players do is avoid every hazard with skill, so there you have some freedom of choice at least.
I was a little disappointed comparing all this to auto-explore commands and out-of-combat healing of simple top-down grid-based Dungeon Crawl or Tales of Maj'Eyal.
But I recall Noita devs themselves acknowledging the peculiar dynamics of their game and offering the remedy: take it slow, don't rush. Hits the nail right on the head. My first run was actually among the most successful and enjoyable ones. How so? Guess, I was more careful, patient, and explorative. I savored every little acquisition, discovery, and victory. I asked a lot of stupid questions and experimented with objects and environment, staying away from anything that seemed dangerous in the slightest. It made sense because every time I was irritated, distracted, sleepy, or otherwise in a bad mood, the runs
ended much faster and even more senselessly. It is also true that it is nearly impossible to achieve a peaceful ending and most (if not all) runs end with a character dying one way or another. Being overpowered and invulnerable is boring as it will turn out; nothing is meaningful when there is nothing at stake, so there is no other way but to venture out on a new run and die repeatedly. At least you get to a point when you have a fun spell/wand/perk combo, from time to time.
With all its restrictions, Noita is not designed to be exclusively a masochist paradise. Largely but not exclusively. All the hardship brightens up a moment of glory. Somewhat like Slay the Spire in a way it makes players lose more often.
Don't look for clear game objectives. This part of my impression post is meant to be spoiler free, so I'm not even supposed to share any thoughts considering the storyline. Is there a storyline? Do you want a storyline? The death screen shows the basic stats for every run, so maybe there is a hint for the game objectives? Explore more locations? Descend deeper? Kill more enemies or collect more gold? Come across a new spell? Hit a mark of trillion zillion Max HP? Any of the objectives will suffice; it is entirely up to one's playstyle preferences.
For those who want to explore everything on their own, there is a lot to explore. Those who have fun literally bathing in blood of their enemies, have seas of blood bathe in. Red, green, or purple blood, sir? There are also geeks who are obsessed about crazy wands that do crazy stuff, pyromaniacs, cryomaniacs, legendary destroyers who blow up entire biomes, master alchemists, exploit abusers, rats, ghosts, glue junkies, saints and demons, wannabe pacifists (it me), and other characters. Yours for the taking, at the condition that RNGesus sends all the right wands, perks and items your way. Speaking of which...
Teach yourself to worship RNGesus. In regard to wands, perks, and items, the game is extremely randomized. You cannot "plan" a run in particularities, you cannot choose your favourite combination of traits and items, except for really rare occasions (that probably costed hours of exploration). Take what the dungeon has to offer, as someone put it, and make the best use of it. May the odds be in your favour.
At the same time, contrastingly, you always get the exact same map layout and the exact same, bland, blank slate character at the start of each game. Two weakest wands with some starter spells. One, to shoot things, another, with something explosive to blow through obstacles. Both randomized. One potion, randomized. If it's useless, experienced players just pour out the contents to have an empty bottle at hand. Those willing to skip the boring slow-paced start are advised to stick to the Daily Challenge mode: it spawns a player deeper down a level or two, with improved wands, perks, items, and HP increase, randomized. All the stuff one would normally get from the previous levels, except, maybe, less orderly.
Wands, perks, and items... those are the core features that make each run unique. It goes like this: spells, multicasts, and spell modifiers go into wands. A wand is basically "a gun" but any of 'em can be loaded with utility spells for travelling, messing with materials and terrain, buffs/debuffs, etc, so they are not meant to be purely offensive. Most of the mouse clicking revolves around wands. There are just 4 wand slots and 4 item slots plus 15 spell slots, which is not much as you'll see.
Concerning the items: potion bottles and powder pouches alone can hold dozens of materials are serve respective purposes. A bottle and a pouch are just two of about a hundred available items with unique behavior. But there's no Civilopedia, no Rimworld- or Factorio-like tutorial to explain all this, so you're not supposed to know, and it's already a spoiler. Just know that more than enough spells and items have the potential to hurt the player. Emotionally, I mean. The player character would just die in a ridiculous and sometimes spectacular way.
It is still a puzzle game. And it reminded me of Guacamelee, which is a fighter-platformer with many space-related puzzles that force players to use primitive controls to perform nearly impossible acrobatics and get to secret locations that are normally unreachable – after, like, 40 tries. At least, Guacamelee had save checkpoints. In Noita, you can also build primitive, highly unsafe, electric circuits.
It is more a puzzle than a sandbox, I would say. Wishing for a clean, spoiler-free playthrough, you'd ask the Universe, 'How in the hell was I supposed to know or guess that?' more than once. Alchemy is a large puzzle. The in-game cryptic alphabet is a small puzzle. Wand editing and modified behavior... don't even ask.
Noita is content-rich. Despite seldom updates. It is about three years old, relatively young for an indie game (compared to, say, Dwarf Fortress) but its richness cannot be compared to that of some other games of the same age. Did Terraria have dozens of materials, and hundreds of spells and enemies at the age of three? Can Minecraft stand anywhere close to Noita in regard to material diversity and their interactions even though it's been it professional development for ages?
But hey, roguelike is roguelike. There are no friendly NPCs, no night-sky wallpapers in cozy dark oak rooms, lit with emerald torches. No redstone circuits to play with. Noita is hard. Noita is hateful, until after 2000+ hours one actually discovers that it is the best game of all ages... If the someone builds a more peaceful, sandbox experience on top of the same engine Noita is built with, I'd be willing to take a look.
Images from Noita Steam