Noreya: The Gold Project is a very pretty 2D platformer that attempts to instill agency and creativity wrapped in a nice, neat metroidvania package. Whether it does so or not is up for debate, but one thing is certain: The puzzles and platforming are quite enjoyable.
Dreamirl’s Noreya: The Gold Project turned out to surprise me the longer I stuck with it. This 2D-platforming metroidvania reminded me of Astral Ascent in terms of its fluidity while masquerading as an exploration-focused adventure through beautifully designed biomes full of enemies. It functions like a normal metroidvania but transforms into something relatively unique, albeit not fully reaching a height to classify as meeting its full potential.
I’m getting ahead of myself – let’s step back for a moment.
Noreya: The Gold Project put me in the shoes of Kali. I was treated to a beautiful hand-drawn animation at the start of my journey, showing Kali’s companions being consumed by darkness, and then I was transported to a meticulously handcrafted pixelated world of light, darkness, and gold. I was to traverse beautiful worlds overgrown with thorns, shadowy creatures, and greed. This world offers me a choice to pledge my allegiance to two competing gods of light or gold (greed), all of which bring me additional power to help me on my quest.
I started out Noreya with a degree of cautious optimism: The game was beautiful, yes, but I couldn’t figure out where and/or how it offered a new and/or unique experience in the metroidvania space. Recently, I’ve reviewed several metroidvanias, namely TEVI, The Last Faith, Rogue Legacy 2 (if you would consider it a traditional metroidvania), Blasphemous 2, Nine Sols, and Ultros (just to name a few). All of these are pretty good metroidvanias, emphasizing an underutilized thematic, innovative theme like roguelite progression and/or planting, and various degrees of difficulty ranging from easygoing to grueling.
Noreya: The Gold Project felt like a middle-of-the-road metroivania for the first hour or so. I progressed through the first biome, The World of Gold, slaying enemies and collecting this black essence that emerged from their bodies. I encountered the first statue (The God of Gold) who offered me power in exchange for prayers. Okay, I thought, character upgrades are tied to depositing currency at statues.
I then encountered the second biome, The Catacombs, taking me down into a world of darkness. I had to fight the first boss, Crawley, a cat-looking creature that could shoot spider webs to pull me in all the while jumping around a massive arena of platforms. After slaying it, I obtained the first major upgrade, the wall jump, and came across the second statue (The God of Light). It was here where I was informed that I now have a choice in who I prayed to going forward any time I encountered a podium.
Depending on who I prayed to most, I could acquire additional skills in their respective skill trees, but I only had so many points I could invest in skills. This also meant that the world I was to explore would change based on who I prayed to. Praying more to the God of Gold made me ineligible to explore some spaces over others, changing up the order of which I was to explore and slay enemies to advance the story.
Ah, the decision of choice emerges. Interesting…
It’s not often that metroidvanias give players agency like this. If anything, it’s difficult to apply the Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild approach of playing-as-you-want to the metroidvania medium because it defies the essence of the genre’s loop. One is presented with branching paths, but most are inaccessible until you get the traversal upgrade from a specific path. Then, you must backtrack and take another path.
This isn’t to say that a changing world doesn’t work in Noreya. It just doesn’t function as it best could with the duality that is Light vs. Greed. Here, it transforms the game into having three general paths: aligning with only gold, aligning with only light, or aligning with a mix of the two. The degree to which variance could be implemented could work here if there were more biomes that were mostly explorable and could be partially completed in any order.
The other aspect of agency that emerged out of aligning with a specific god is that I had freedom to diversify my build. This method of character customization has been applied before, such as in Aeterna Noctis. Speccing and respeccing characters’ powerups feel good in a metroidvania playground, as it forced me to consider how I could best enhance my character’s powers all the while following the typical metroidvania gameplay loop of exploration and combat on a moderately linear path. Here, aligning with the gods gave me additional power in my melee attacks or defensive power. Or, I could level up my neutral tree and gain access to things like fast travel or improved cooldowns on my traversal abilities.
Some of the neutral upgrades were odd, though. Having to choose between fast traveling and additional power doesn’t feel good for a player, especially in a metroidvania setting where biomes are gigantic and a degree of backtracking is assuredly guaranteed. If you don’t take fast traveling, you’re artificially increasing game hours because there’s only so far a character can go. If the player is to be tested in their resolve and decisions to travel, it should cost something to fast travel, like currency that’s freely acquired from killing enemies. But even then, it shouldn’t cost so much that time feels wasted on retracing steps to find new paths that were previously inaccessible.
So yes, agency and variance are what Noreya: The Gold Project offers players as a way to differentiate itself from other metroidvanias. It means well in its pursuits, but it doesn’t hit the spot of offering enough outcomes from exploration and character building.
That said, there’s something where Noreya truly shines: Its puzzles. One of the permanent upgrades I obtained was the ability to turn into a ghost, leaving my physical body behind to explore the room I was currently in, slay enemies covered in a ghastly shroud, and open new pathways by activating levers that could only be activated by ghosts. Oh, and if I left my physical body near a stele (miniature statue), I could swap places with it.
This right here is such a cool concept and should have been leaned into at a greater degree. Some puzzles had me teleport multiple times in a room, activating levers that would open up temporary paths for me to use before needing to turn back into a ghost. Once I got additional traversal powers, these puzzles became more difficult and in turn, more rewarding. These little puzzles tested my platforming chops all the while testing my ability to problem solve.
When scanning through the Steam page and other players’ Early Access reviews, I didn’t see much fanfare about Noreya’s puzzles. They’re some of the most innovative and fun platforming puzzles I’ve played since…playing Aeterna Noctis. I wanted more of them because of how well and increasingly difficult they became as I acquired new powers.
Noreya’s combat was adequately accessible, relying on simple melee attacks. Unlockable skills could add additional attacks to a single change, as well as increasing my range and overall damage per hit, but it wasn’t complex. At most, I could swing downward like Hollow Knight’s sword bouncing, but even then it wasn’t something I was expected to use often because of how enemies would often retaliate when I attempted to sword bounce.
The lack of ranged power made the end-game frustrating. Upon entering some of the final biomes, I was bombarded by floating enemies that would keep themselves a fixed distance above my head while peltering me with yellow bullets. The only way I could kill them is by waiting until they literally stopped moving to attack me so I could quickly jump to their height to get a hit or two in.
Some bosses felt wildly unfair at first, too. One boss battle took place entirely in the dark, displaying a small yellow dot to warn me of an incoming attack or projectile. The attack patterns weren’t too difficult to learn, but the boss’ erratic behaviors alongside attempting to dodge projectiles in seemingly unfair circumstancing for frustrating battles. Permanent upgrades slightly gave me the edge in being able to deal more damage and absorb more damage, but boss balance would have eased some of my frustration.
If Noreya was to have leaned into that difficulty similar to how The Last Faith and Nine Sols boasted grueling difficulty and challenging-to-master combat, I would feel differently about its bosses’ behaviors and setups. Instead, it tries to walk a fine line between requiring precision while also being accessible to most players.
I digress. The combat will feel punishing at times without feeling rewarding like other, more difficult, metroidvanias offer. You can only bonk an enemy so many times while it enacts the same set of (questionably fair) attacks.
In all, Noreya will comfortably give you about 15 hours (or so) of content. Maybe more, probably less. If you want to see the other endings after your first runthrough, I could see maybe 20 (or so) more hours depending on your speedrunning abilities.
Noreya: The Gold Project is a very pretty 2D platformer that attempts to instill agency and creativity wrapped in a nice, neat metroidvania package. Whether it does so or not is up for debate, but one thing is certain: The puzzles and platforming are quite enjoyable.
