Under the witch’s spell
It has been four years since The Swapper — a masterful puzzle platformer from two students at the University of Helsinki — originally released. Since 2013, the developers have updated their studio’s site exactly once. It was a couple of weeks ago when one of them announced the formation of a new studio.
The new company is called Nolla Games and its debut project is a rogue-lite called Noita. (“Noita” means “witch” in Finnish.) Nolla describes Noita as “a magical action rogue-lite set in a world where every pixel is physically simulated. Fight, explore, melt, burn, freeze and evaporate your way through the procedurally-generated world using spells you’ve created yourself.”
It’s tough to tell exactly what that means, but the trailer gives some decent indication. This seems to be a game about casting spells on the environment to interesting effect. Death is permanent but you can “use what you’ve learned to get further on your next adventure” — hence the “rogue-lite” designation.
Noita is currently only planned to launch on PC. Nolla says it’ll release “when it’s done” but that there will be some sort of early access period. We’ll have to wait ’til then to see if this is some spellbinding stuff.
