I have had the honour and privilege of being a part of some testing and stuff ahead of release -- I'm a long time Noita fan, and as I found out, the developer of this game also loves Noita, and has drawn a lot of inspiration from it to this game. My experience playing the game started roughly, as I haven't played this exact kind of games before, and there definitely is a learning curve to this game (even if you have experience in similar games). So it took time getting used to. But once I got a hang of the controls, that's when the real fun began.

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I'm not going to go into a full out story-mode here, but here is my list of highlights I would like people to know coming into this game:


As the game is largely built around spells and crafting your own spells, I thought I should mention this first. So, you can merge any one spell into another one, in order to create unique effects. This is limited to two spells merged into one main spell. But where it gets fun and infinitely more complex is when you start merging your previously created spells into new main spells -- This opens up endless possibilities of all sorts of chaotic chain reactions. I had, for example, a Black Hole -kind of spell, to which I merged a spell that creates Tornadoes - The resulting effect was that the original Black Hole spell casts 1 to 3 of the Tornadoes per second for it's duration, which was 6 seconds. Then, I further combined that whole thing into another spell with a duration, resulting in a wall of lava that splurts out 1 to 3 of these Black Holes each second, each of which casting their own Tornadoes. This is just one example of chaining interactions; Innovation is key. You can probably imagine all the crazy combinations that can be created.

Of course, the game limits you here in two forms; First, the more complicated your spell gets, the higher the chance for the merging to fail, destroying the less complex spell in process. Additionally, the more you combine, the more heavy the manacost and cooldown of the spell gets. So it's a fine art of finding the right balance.


When it comes to the very core structure of gameplay, it's rather simple; You go into one of three initial randomly generated realms with their own themes, and continue to progress up until the fourth and final realm, if you don't die along the way, that is. There are difficulty modes that unlock when you beat the first difficulty. My experience when it comes to replayability has been that I have never gotten the feeling of playing the same level twice. The developer has done a marvellous job at making each run feel unique -- each level has it's own unique features, including mini-bosses, secrets and more. In addition, there are challenges you can pick up between runs to add a fun twist to your run, rewarding you if you manage to complete the challenge. Each even semi-successful run, even if it ends in death, feels rewarding, especially due to the meta-progression - After each run, there's something new to unlock.


There is a lot of things to un-pack here, but I won't go into it all in detail. The main thing I want to point out is user choice; You gain resources from your runs, and you can choose what to invest them in; You have different elements that you can harness, which is the games more fun way of having "classes", and each of them have their own skill-trees. You also have shops for unlocking new Artefacts, Weapons and Spells for you to find. These, combined with your central tree that is used for core progression gives you the choice of what to invest in, and what to aim towards.


The developer of this game is very engaged with the community, especially on Discord, and is working overtime to make the gameplay experience as flawless and clean of bugs as possible. He is very passionate about this game, and has a vision that even spans long after full release. The developer listens to player feedback, and does polls on many major decisions, showing that he clearly wants to create the best possible experience, which I respect a lot.

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I could go on and on, but I think these four points capture, in essence, my opinion and experience of the game and it's development so far. Very excited to see where this journey takes us!!