Noita

I want to say that Noita is the best designed game I've ever played but that wouldn't be quite right. It was in early access/pre-release for a long time, evolving, iterating and growing and the result is a game that was as much grown as it was designed. However it came to be, Noita IS the best single player game ever created. It doesn't just have depth but a recursive quality where even seemingly simple game mechanics have layers to them and those layers interweave with other mechanics. The world is large and unforgiving. Except actually, the world is colossal and brutal. It is also fair in the same way life is fair - sometimes bad things happen and sometimes there is nothing you can do about it, but there is always a reason why and there is always a lesson to be learned. If you are going to play it, you will need to be patient and you will need to learn. Not just facts - though there are plenty of those - but through hard-earned experience. You will need to get good technically and be fast enough to apply that huge amount of knowledge and experience gained over countless deaths to get the point of mastery. Except you never really master Noita. Like life, you can only ever get to a good place, not as a destination but as a staging point from which you can respond to life's difficulties with strength. Of course like life, you never really win at Noita either. You just have stories you can tell. And maybe some nice jewellery to wear at the end of it.