Noita is probably the best roguelite ever made in my opinion. In a genre where games are often judged on their variety and replay value, Noita comes out on top every time. It's one thing to have a game built around chasing the heralded "god run" but fact of the matter is, a "god run" isn't godly forever. Once you've cracked the code and done it more than twice, you realize that, just like everything else at play, it's "just another run" that leaves you unsatisfied. That's the hallmark where usually you might find it time to give up on most roguelites, but Noita proposes a different idea. Extreme brutality and esoteric design go a long way in characterizing a different method. In Noita, the amount of variety at play comes from its sheer focus on simulation, details and secrets. No two runs will usually end the same and it's frequently possible to kill yourself solely from being curious about something, but that's okay, because it never was about winning.
Rather than sharing the "beat the arcade game" model and the "browse the wiki" model as separate elements, the two are fused. Death is entirely a learning experience and the bigger questions at hand while you play are less tied to survival (though that is a factor) and more about the limits of the simulation itself. While most of the game will see the simulated world and lively enemies beating you down in unique ways, the simple factor of getting that god-tier spell and thinking "wait, what if I do this that wasn't possible before?" leads to an entirely new facet of the game you never even knew existed beforehand, and that itself is a huge appeal. Discovery becomes so core to the experience that the "wiki game" element entirely dissolves as you open up a new avenue that is pure morbid curiosity manifested into an entire game, turning the knowledge you gain into the moment-to-moment gameplay with little to no downtime due to how many factors are constantly at play. All the most painful moments made worthwhile by the realization of "I'm probably gonna die doing this" and the comfort of "well, at least the runs don't take long in this game" bringing you back to skin yourself alive in an acid spell many a time.
Rather than sharing the "beat the arcade game" model and the "browse the wiki" model as separate elements, the two are fused. Death is entirely a learning experience and the bigger questions at hand while you play are less tied to survival (though that is a factor) and more about the limits of the simulation itself. While most of the game will see the simulated world and lively enemies beating you down in unique ways, the simple factor of getting that god-tier spell and thinking "wait, what if I do this that wasn't possible before?" leads to an entirely new facet of the game you never even knew existed beforehand, and that itself is a huge appeal. Discovery becomes so core to the experience that the "wiki game" element entirely dissolves as you open up a new avenue that is pure morbid curiosity manifested into an entire game, turning the knowledge you gain into the moment-to-moment gameplay with little to no downtime due to how many factors are constantly at play. All the most painful moments made worthwhile by the realization of "I'm probably gonna die doing this" and the comfort of "well, at least the runs don't take long in this game" bringing you back to skin yourself alive in an acid spell many a time.