Nobody Saves the World is a unique and thrilling take on top-down adventure games, featuring a sharp aesthetic and genuinely addicting gameplay that fosters combat where similar titles have faltered.
As much as I want to compare Nobody Saves the World to The Legend of Zelda, I feel like doing so would be a great disservice to DrinkBox Studios’ latest genre retooling.
Where Guacamelee! could be easily marketed as a Metroidvania, its Luchador hero’s emphasis on melee combat resisted the traditions of super missiles, swords, magic, space jumps, and transforming into bats. Nobody Saves the World undoubtedly stitches the flesh of Link to the Past onto its coat but it is one of many skins. There’s Binding of Isaac scrawled all over its visuals and in the swarms of enemies that flood in from all directions. Splashes of violence and style spurt from the corners like Hotline Miami.
Regardless of where you see the similarities in Nobody Saves the World, its unique language of transformation-based combat serves as a boon to the genre. Adore the exploration of Zelda but yearn for a challenge or a modicum of thought when fighting against legions of strange beasts? This is where you should turn.
Using the story of a wizard gone missing and an icky force known as the Calamity, Nobody Saves the World provides players with a minimal story that relies more on oddball characters to compel investment. As a pale white humanoid with vacant holes for eyes named Nobody, players obtain a wand that allows Nobody to transform first into a rat, then a knight or a ranger, then a horse, later a dragon but first an egg, at some point a muscled bodybuilder. I don’t feel guilty for not remembering the name of the mage or wizard or whatever players are trying to find to save the world from the encroaching threat of the evil Calamity. I barely remember what the Calamity was going to do aside from cover the world in gross blobs and thorns.
Yet being able to chuckle at the asinine characters and their quick jokes populates Nobody’s world with a ditzy personality that is meant to be inviting with charm. The various guilds around the map barely feel like they know what they are doing. A shop run by a mutant refuses to provide service unless the patron is in the form of a human or half-human–resulting in a simple, progression-gated quest that manages a laugh based on what form the player enters the shop as. None of it is meant to make too much sense, much like the cartoon-inspired world. The colors and jokes gleefully assault the senses, allowing for players to be excited for what the next screen or room will bring.
Nobody Saves the World has a wonderful sense of adventure, much as the genre would dictate. Players encounter various environments from castles to swamps to deserts to forests. The map is easily navigable with secrets tucked away that are found using the various transformations or by players simply engaging with their curious nature. Thankfully, nothing feels as obtuse as it was or simply had to be in the earlier decades of gaming to allow for padded playtime. Simplicity often thrives in the game because DrinkBox didn’t bog the world down with overly bustling cities or screens’ worth of empty space. Shortcuts unlock quicker paths that will help players get to out of reach items or secrets faster.
An overworld map helps make sense of where players are and where they will eventually go. That being said, with of a running time of about 20 hours, I think Nobody Saves the World runs at a near-perfect pace. Backtracking doesn’t grow into tedium but there are a few moments where being too curious will result in having to turn around because a progression-gated moment.
Also fueling that sense of adventure is the burning desire to unlock new forms that Nobody can become. The game’s core combat system is fairly traditional, giving players three different attacks that either spend mana or regain it. Special attacks that consume mana usually provide the player with higher damage, hit large groups of enemies, or allow for additional mobility. Nobody’s first form, the rat, chomps down on enemies at a rapid pace while building up poison on them, this is its signature move that can’t be changed. After leveling up the rat, players unlock Consume which leeches attack damage as health but also uses mana. And then the rat can level up to detonate any poison enemies on screen. Imagine the possibilities when you realize that the higher level a form gets, the more varied and deep its abilities go.
My favorite early transformation was the slug that left a trail of slime as it moved. Enemies that spent too long in the slime would become slowed and the slug has a passive ability that does increased critical damage on enemies who have a status effect. The true beauty of Nobody Saves the World is that it eases players into understanding its combat language. To progress, each form Nobody can use has a series of quests that will level up that form and the overall character level, which boosts base stats universally. These form quests require players to engage with the various utility that each form has to offer. Sometimes they can be a bit tedious and ask players to reach high thresholds that don’t often feel natural. However, unless you’re brute forcing every single quest at once, swapping between forms is fairly seamless and quests automatically equip themselves.
A few hours into the game, players are able to equip the abilities of one form onto another. Specific form quests are also unlocked that task players with testing out multiple passives and abilities across the entire roster. Some are as simple as using the rat’s passive to apply poison to the ranger’s base attack. Others ask players to apply different status effects on enemies and then kill them. For completionists, this means that there is an opportunity to see the advantage of nearly every permutation of Nobody’s transformations. For co-op partners… well, it’s a chaotic party.
Nobody Saves the World is probably best enjoyed as a cooperative game where players dominate the visible space with two unique powerhouses. A player can jump into another’s game without worrying about having progressed to the same point in the campaign. Simply join and the higher-leveled player’s unlocks are available to anyone. Better yet, both players are working toward form quests, meaning that progression can go even more rapidly.
The game isn’t a cakewalk but doesn’t frequently stomp the player’s will into submission. Higher level dungeons are the premier challenge in Nobody Saves the World and usually feature modifiers that often have to be puzzled out with the interplay between the abilities of different forms. One dungeon might have enemies do nearly a thousand times more damage, resulting in one-hit kills and players will have to figure out how to survive after being dealt a fatal blow. Most dungeons after a point will have enemies equipped with Wards, meaning that they are immune to damage unless their Ward is broken by the indicated elemental attack.
Can the game be longer and have just a bit more to do? Sure. It lacks the near-endless loop of a roguelike but possesses the ability to nudge itself happily into the genre if a sequel inevitably tries to evolve the formula. Those difficult dungeons and simple sidequests have a decent amount of variety but I could have used just a bit more wrinkles in the gameplay loop to further compel me to unlock transformations, level them up, and earn keys to unlock the story dungeons.
As a person who rapidly runs out of time to play the games they want, it’s a blessing and a curse that Nobody Saves the World has a finite runtime. Do I see a version of this game where the dungeon modifiers impact the gameplay more and players are forced to constantly grow their base stats? Sure. But eventually, roguelikes can be completed too and I think DrinkBox made a wise decision to give players a lot of weird and wonderful shit to experience and not run it into the ground.
Nobody Saves the World is an enticing adventure through and through. The first time I stumbled upon a decaying dragon corpse or the rusted remains of a giant robot and knew I had to fight baddies inside their guts, I was sold. But DrinkBox Studios transformed the combat of a top-down adventure game into a magical experience by literally allowing the player to transform into the most typical and bizarre forms imaginable. Who knew an action game would allow players to become an egg that helplessly rolled through cat warlocks or a horse that could only attack when facing away from danger? These unique forms make for equally unique combat that merely ask the player to constantly experiment with the tools they are given. And who can say that isn’t fun? Nobody.
