World's best/worst wizard physics sim Noita gets terrifying update featuring white holes and... cheese?

Noita! A wizardly 2D dungeon crawler without compare, in both good and deranging ways. Man, it feels like only yesterday I equipped something without looking and suddenly everything that damaged me caused me to teleport at random. I flew through entire levels this way like a Tardis set to shuffle, bumbling into one enemy posse after another, granted a few seconds at a time to assess my surroundings before the sorcery swept me deeper.

Behind me, meanwhile, whole layouts exploded as lakes of pixelated lava, acid and other substances which I’d nudged in passing overflowed and combined and transformed. Noita! Heaven help us all, they’ve released a big new update, after all these years.

As detailed on Steam, it adds a whole bunch of magic with terrifying names like “giga white hole”, “sparkly bounce” and “amazing golden spell”. Further into the changelog, there are ambiguous promises/threats such as “A little surprise for the turophiles” and “Dupe around and find out”. What the hell is going on down there? If you’d like to find out, the game is 60% off on Steam to mark the update’s release.

The update kills old Noita save games, sadly, though you can still finish an existing run by accessing a new Steam beta branch called "update_20240214". In return for the heroic martyrdom of your save games, you’ll get eight modifier spells, six new enemies, three new secret spells, a new biome, a utility box, three new bosses, and more besides.

“When it comes to chaos, no game does it better than Noita,” our Graham wrote in his 2020 review. I heartily concur. “Noita is very good even if you are very bad at it,” our Alice B wrote of the early access build. I heartily concur again. This is the game’s second “final” update – the last one added “rage-fuelled levitation”.

Those patch notes, without further ado. Or at least, half of them. There’s also a tidal wave of bugfixes – excerpt: “Vaihdosmestari can no longer move cursed rock” – and a colossal quantity of new modding features that I don’t feel equipped to assess.

GENERAL

FEATURE: Spell - Sparkly bounce

FEATURE: Spell - Lightning bounce

FEATURE: Spell - Vacuum bounce

FEATURE: Spell - Null shot

FEATURE: Spell - Inner spell

FEATURE: Spell - Giga white hole

FEATURE: Spell - True orbit

FEATURE: Spell – Hookbolt

FEATURE: Spell - Anti homing

FEATURE: Spell - Holy lance

FEATURE: Added 8 modifier spells

FEATURE: Added 6 new enemies

FEATURE: Added 6 new spells

FEATURE: Added 3 new secret spells

FEATURE: Added new rare materials

FEATURE: Added chemical reactions

FEATURE: Added new small biome

FEATURE: Item - Utility box

FEATURE: Potion reactions

FEATURE: Audio is muted when unfocusing the game if "Pause the game when unfocused" is On FEATURE: Amazing golden spell

FEATURE: 3 new bossfights

FEATURE: Added a new creature

FEATURE: New materials and reactions

FEATURE: New secret quest

FEATURE: Added a new easter egg

UPDATE: Dupe around and find out

UPDATE: Better interaction with No Wand Tinkering and Tinker With Wands Everywhere perks

UPDATE: Lukki Minion is slightly more powerful

UPDATE: Spells can now be dropped from inventory at all times

UPDATE: Spell drop rates rebalanced

UPDATE: Explosive bounce's radius increased

UPDATE: Shiny Orb is now more lucrative

UPDATE: Moved a boss into a slightly more accessible spot

UPDATE: Adjusted various spell mana costs and prices

UPDATE: Adjusted weakness modifiers

UPDATE: Updated the look of the Hiisi Alchemist's potions

UPDATE: Potion content percentages are displayed now (Thank you Evaisa)

UPDATE: Vomiting now requires eating a bit more nasty materials

UPDATE: Buffed Vampirism

UPDATE: A little surprise for the turophiles

UPDATE: Audio - new sounds for [REDACTED], glue, eldritch portal, freezing gaze, barrier & wall spells

UPDATE: Audio – bzzzt

UPDATE: Audio - new sound for [REDACTED]

UPDATE: Audio - new music for a few side areas

UPDATE: Powder pouches have a new functionality

UPDATE: New enemies show their statuses in the UI

UPDATE: Visual, audio and other fx when moving very fast

UPDATE: Tele bolt resets caster's vertical velocity

UPDATE: Less harsh sound for tele bolt for more pleasant tele spamming experience

UPDATE: Improved camera tracking when moving fast

UPDATE: Lukki Minion should no longer be killable to make it more useful

UPDATE: Optimized file system performance when using mods

UPDATE: Optimized performance of some game effect queries in various systems

UPDATE: All bosses use final boss style health bars

UPDATE: Added up to date localizations