Developed by French indie studio Dreamirl Game Studio and published by PixelHeart, the metroidvania Noreya: The Gold Project is now available. A game that allows us to choose “our own path.”
Noreya: The Gold Project is available for PC.
Noreya puts us in the shoes of a warring Kali, who has lost everything at the hands of an evil god known as Salluste. In search of revenge we head to the city of Lemia but find ourselves face to face with the Goddess of Light, who gives us the power to end this corrupt world. But she also gives us an ability that allows us to choose whether we continue with our revenge and fall into the corruption of the God of Greed or bring hope and restore peace in the name of light?
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This decision is what opens up the range of possibilities not only in terms of gameplay, but also in the different endings that the game has based on the actions we take.
A personal style of play
Noreya: The Gold Project follows the Metroidvania formula. Our character at the beginning has a simple jump and an attack, but then he acquires new abilities to reach previously unreachable places, such as a wall-jump or a slide in the air. This makes us return to the stages more than once.
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The curious thing about the game is that everything costs coins, which we find in pots and which enemies drop. This point brings it closer to other genres such as souls, where we will be farming enemies for coins in an area to be able to get things. These range from being able to recover a heart of life in exchange for coins. To making an offering to a deity.
There are several statues of the various deities and our offerings give us a point to spend on a large skill tree. We will have to choose wisely which ones we want to unlock and which ones suit our way of playing.
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Within these statutes we can also choose which world we are going to explore: one bathed in light and the other corrupted by gold. A kind of “rogue-like” with two different parallel worlds.
Among the abilities, Kali can also transform into a spectre, accessing areas that were previously unavailable, attacking certain special enemies and solving puzzles. The combination of all these moments results in several challenging but fun platforming situations.
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A great pixel art map to discover
The maps are quite large, especially when compared to the size of the characters. Each biome has a different color tone. The only problem in certain areas is that some objects or things get lost in the background and we don't know which “layer” of the drawing they are in. At the same time, some areas are very large and can become a bit repetitive.
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Beyond exploring is the core of the game, if you want to teleport from one statue to another; you have to unlock this feature in the skill tree.
The music also works as a great companion, almost subtle without disturbing during the game and maintaining that level of minimalism. Except of course when an enemy appears or there is a chase.
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- Multiple exploration options and skills
- A careful pixel art.
- The idea of how metroidvanias continue to explore other paths so that they are not all the same.
- At first, when we don't have any skills, it's a bit difficult to get into the game.
- On large maps exploration can become repetitive.