Recent reviews by Missing Minus

This is an impressive game, and honestly what I always wished roguelikes were: a reasonably reactive world in which you played a character within them. Not super hardcore and overly random, In Elin, it feels more like the actual 'RPG' part of many games, the roleplaying aspect of building up your character, town, and residents. The graphics are quite pretty—I think the only significant flaw with the graphics is the character pixel art, which could be improved.

Overall, a fun game. As expected, it is only loosely World War Z (there's a bunch of zombies around the world), but it does follow different characters in different areas with different goals so it does somewhat capture the spirit of the book.
+ Difficulty scaling seems to be pretty good, so easy is actually easy and you can choose harder if you want
+ Weapon upgrading is a fun mechanic
+ Class skills are enjoyable to choose, though some are obviously better than others
+ Mutators to change things up (though most of these are about making the game harder, it could do with more directly beneficial ones and/or amusing mutators)
+ Maps look excellent
? The game really likes swarms suddenly running in as you wander about. L4D2 did more of a 'there are a bunch of zombies already waiting in the level', while this has that, most of the enemies you face while walking around are ones which rush in.
? The game really likes areas where you have to defend against large swarms. There's at least 2 every mission. Place some defenses, try to defend a specific place which is for some reason attracting zombies (sometimes this makes sense due to a large noise, sometimes you're left questioning as to why hundreds of zombies are rushing this area). This isn't bad, but it does feel overdone. L4D2 did this more often just at the very end of a level.
- The game appeared to give some upgraded versions of weapons at the start? I don't know if this is DLC or just things they've added after the game has been out for a time, but they tend to be better than the default ones for that level. This makes so you basically skip a couple levels of a weapon, which is weird.
- There's no (notable) modding or custom maps, and you can get through all the maps in ~12 hours (probably shorter if you really try, or longer if you take your time on harder difficulties).
- It feels too easy to get most of the weapons?
- There's 'blue coins' for accessories which you get from completing challenges, but with how few you get via just playing the game rather than focusing on challenges, you probably won't get any accessories for the characters without essentially playing through the game repeatedly. As well, since the missions have a different set of four characters each time (except for the Japan and last Russia mission, though I don't know if they get the same accessories since they're treated as different characters elsewhere) then you won't be having them a lot of the time.

The game is fun, but I'm not certain I'd suggest paying the current $40 for it. It has some issues in polish (though the maps are beautiful, I'm referring to gameplay) and notable issues in how much replayability there is or will be.

This is quite the enjoyable roguelite. The interaction of various elements in the world, and the new things you see (and thus can interact with!) in the stages will drive you to experiment.
Pros:
- Destructible world (Even the blocks that seem indestructible at the start, are able to be destroyed. Want to dig through that absurdly hard wall? Have fun after you get a powerful enough wand.)
- Interactive physics. Most of the ground (dirt, stone, etc) stays in one place. Powders (sand, gunpowder, snow, coal, etc) will move until they form a stable hill (which you can disrupt with spells, kicking, explosives). You can drown in it. There is also liquids, which, well, flow. The liquids will flow towards gravity (I sadly don't think there's any gravity well spells), until it stabilizes. Different liquids can interact. Some float in water, some float to the bottom.
- Modding support. It's a bit experimental right now, but there's several mods, and there will certainly be more made in the future. It uses Lua for modding.
- Works on linux (under proton), I haven't had any issues with it. (I *did* have issues getting the modding extractor to work on linux though, but if you aren't making your own mods this isn't an issue and you can still manage without it.)
- Magic. These wands aren't some disguised guns like some games have them be. There's a wide variety of absurd effects, that you can then use together to form crazy spells.
- Secrets. There is all kinds of secrets in the world that you can find, and more are being added quite often.

Cons:
- There is some lag at times. I haven't had a single freeze, but at times it will be noticeably slower movement. Sometimes there's an obvious cause (an absurd amount of liquid), but at times it just appears to happen.
- Currently no "out of run progression". You die, and the only 'progression' you have outside of that is your own knowledge of anything new you learned. It may be intended in the future to add this, but currently there isn't.
- You start with the same wands each time (Wand that shoots simple bolt, and wand of three bombs), and have the same starting mine each time. This is fun, but it grows somewhat boring when you die a lot. I'd prefer some variation in starting (perhaps other simple weak wands that behave differently than the current ones). The wands you find are of course still randomized, but it might be a bit until you find a new one. There is a builtin (but default disabled) mod that adds some loadouts but they're kindof overpowered. There is also a usermade mod that adds other loadouts as well that are..... I wouldn't say less overpowered but there's more of them.


Overall, I'd say this is a great game to get, and it's constantly being updated (as of right now December 20th there was a recent update!) The subreddit for the game is also quite good (r/noita) if one wants to see the various crazy things you can die (and crazy ways to die).

A quite good game. The combat is fun and exhilarating, and you get to choose how you go about doing a level, with multiple different methods you can try. Requires a good computer, as it is rather intensive.

Great game.