Recent reviews by duke (Danny)

This game shows what VR can really do when an experienced game studio creates a highly polished and perfectly detailed and atmospheric game. It's not perfect by any means, but I'd argue that it is the best VR experience you can get right now!
A great thing is also that there is a wide support for different VR headsets, which allows people who can't justify spending like $1000+ for a Valve Index to just get e.g. a decent Windows Mixed Reality headset. That's what I'm doing right now, using a Lenovo Explorer. The experience of still amazing, but I'd imagine that it's yet another step up with an Index and the Knuckles.

Personally this is getting my hopes up for great new VR experiences in the future. The quality expectations definitely are high after Alyx.

I am playing this game since it's early access days and it still is a lot of fun and keeps getting even better!

(>) Before I start about the actual game itself, let me tell you some very positive facts about the developers behind it:
After Noita left early access and released it's 1.0 version the developers didn't just stop caring about the game. It's quite the opposite! You have a choice between the regular stable branch and then the beta branch. If you switch to the beta branch, there are frequent updates which often fix things, fine tune some balancing and also add new content to the game... ranging from new spells, perks, enemies or even new areas to explore in the world.
The developers behind the game, Nolla, also run a public Discord server everyone can join and give feedback and such. They also organize a monthly community event on their Twitch.tv channel, inviting known people from the Noita community to participate in showcase runs, speedrun competitions and so on.

(>) What is this game all about?
Think of those classic 2D physics sandbox games out there. Now combine those with some actual gameplay and lore and you get Noita, the game where every pixel has physics! In Noita, which is the Finnish word for witch, you are on a mysterious quest. You start out with a basic wand and have to explore a dungeon in a roguelike fashion. There you find enemies, potions, treasures and most of all: wands and spells. After each level you get to a safe zone, the holy mountain. Here you are able to heal up, buy new wands or spells and you can freely edit the wands you own to your liking. A versatile wand building system allows you to let your imagination and creativity go ham.... from a simple wand that digs through the ground to a rapid firing wand or even literally a god wand that will leave destruction on your path...
Besides that, the game world is filled with secrets, lore hints, hidden bosses and other challenges that just wait for you to find them.
When you first start out with Noita, the game might be seen as having a rather high difficulty level. This is somewhat true... it does take you a bit to fully delve into the game and learn it's mechanics, but once you do, it is just amazing. It personally took me over 150 deaths before I got my first win and even after so many failed attempts, I don't feel annoyed by the game, rather the opposite, I enjoy dying and the experience I gain from every run, every wand build and new tactics on how to slay certain enemies!

(>) What makes this game so fun?

• A vast world to explore with lots of challenges and things to do, giving you a lot of replayability
  
• Tinkering with wand building can be quite the fun experience
  
• Lots of heart and love put in the continued development of the game by the devs, adding new content to it for free!
  
• Modding is possible! The game has an API built in that lets you create mods by using Lua scripting. There are loads of mods you can find on the Steam Workshop alone
  
• A friendly and helping community - The community is well active on Discord, Reddit and a nice selection of twitch.tv streamers

(>) Are there any negative things though?
I really can not think of any real negative things with this game, but there are a few (if not many) things I would (some a subjectivly) list:

• Performance hungry - You do need a somewhat decent modern computer to enjoy the game, since every pixel has simulated physics and on a standard laptop you might get some drops in the frame rate (My laptop has a Ryzen 7 2700U and 8GB of RAM and the fps drops in intensive areas; On my main computer with a Ryzen 7 3800X, 32GB RAM it runs perfectly)
  
• Steep learning curve for new players - There is no tutorial other than the controls getting explained at the start, the game does not hold your hand and you have to learn mostly by yourself - this can be a bit frustrating for some players
  
• Modding API using Lua - This is really a subjective thing from myself being a software developer... I just don't get together with Lua and would prefer other ways to script logic for mods, e.g. via C#, C++ or even Javascript

(>) What about multiplayer?
There is no official multiplayer support in the game and I feel like adding it would be quite hard to accomplish in a proper way. That said, since the game provides modding support and the community around it is active, there is one very good project that makes multiplayer in Noita possible to some degree: Noita Together - A mod made by Soler91 that makes it possible to play the game in single player, while also having other people playing along with you, even co-operating by sharing some perks or items. The mod is not available on the Workshop, but you can get it on GitHub: https://github.com/soler91/noita-together

(>) Ending remarks
I hope my review gave you a little insight about this little jewel of a game and will help you with the decision whether to try it out or not!

Geniales Rhythmusspiel, selbst heute noch. Immer wieder eine Runde wert. Außerdem ist der Soundtrack total geil!

Seriously, what has Steam come to? Baby Jesus RPG... Really? Even if those 3 games are free to play... games like those should not appear on Steam, but rather in a community forum for RPG MAKER related things.

Also, Jesus would facepalm if he ever got to play this game. I guess it's worth for forcing a cringe moment.

Has a doggy friend that often acts adorable and derpy. 10/10