Nobody Saves the World makes you grin at the grind; DrinkBox's RPG doesn't shy away from XP farm ring requirements, nor does it immediately let you mainline the story without XP farm rings. But it's also not strictly traditional, with delicious challenges left off until you've eaten all your vegetables, and only the occasional status boost to indicate their nutritional value. Rather, the game asks, "What if hard work was not a means to an end or an imposition, but a satisfying play in itself?" and shows exactly how it can be done.

Indeed, despite the game's title, saving the world feels like a distant secondary goal, simply to enjoy the process. Yes, there is a story. The main character, Nobody, collects five crystal shards and tries to stop a pandemic of malignant bacteria. But, like DrinkBox's previous title, "Guacamelee," the game is imbued with a cynicism about genre clichés, and no one except Nobody is expected to take it seriously, from "Diablo" monster hunting to "2D Legends of Zelda's While acknowledging countless RPGs, from gated maps to cheesy jokes and a lively cartoon style filled with chaotic edges and bug-eyed characters that look like "Sponge Bob" cribbed from "Stardew Valley," it's clear that we're in the land of the dumb

And the silliness is infectious through the suppleness of the protagonist. No one is a blank cardboard cutout with amnesia, but a blank canvas with no ability to do anything other than give the most impotent slap in the face you've ever seen. But just as this game is more about the journey than the destination, it is also literally about what happens to you on the journey. With a magic wand, nobodies are free to transform themselves into animals, mythical beasts, or professions, and use their unique skills to fight off hordes of monsters.

Unlocking new forms (18 in all) and playing around with their quirks is at the heart of Nobody Saves the World. For example, there is something wonderfully absurd about taking on the persona of a cabaret magician and pulling an aggressive rabbit out of a top hat in a fantasy world where wizards and magic are real. It is also fun to run around backwards as a horse (a long press of a button can lock the direction). This is because the horse's main attack is a two-pronged boot from behind. The slugs back away from the enemy and pull him into their slimy trail, slowing him down and knocking him away with watery bullets.

Each form begins with a unique signature attack and passive abilities, eventually learning one or two chargeable special moves. The real fun, however, comes when the abilities of the different forms can be freely combined. This open-ended system reminded me a bit of "Transistor" in its emphasis on free-form experimentation. In other words, you could equip a horse with a rat poison buff to add real poison to its kicks. Or maybe you want a turtle that can sneak up on and outwit its enemies like a night burglar, or a slow-moving bodybuilder with the ability to sprint.

Importantly, all of these possibilities are utilized to ensure that the toil of chewing monsters around is never just about watching your XP bar fill up. all level-ups in Nobody Saves the World are quest-related It involves not only completing dungeons and errands offered by NPCs, but also a series of objectives related to each form's abilities. The most basic ones involve defeating a certain number of enemies with the form's normal attacks, but they quickly evolve and require mastery of the nuances of power and stacking power in specific ways. In addition, the Critical Path dungeon can only be entered by completing a number of small quests, so the player must continually experiment with different techniques while defeating monsters.

As such, I rarely focused on where I was going, content to wander the map with a plethora of skills at my disposal and get sidetracked by tasks such as slaughtering dozens more enemies with bite attacks that restore rat strength when playing as a zombie. Still, the overworld is worth exploring, with its meticulously laid out liaison corridors, open fields, lakes, and underground tunnels, packed with monsters, treasures, settlements, and delightful distractions. For example, I met a slug who wanted me to bring his wife back to life, and a speedy wizard awaits a challenger near a makeshift racetrack. This is because we are required to consider the combination of forces to accomplish the task.

There are also plenty of dungeons to crawl through, and warding and location-specific rule changes add to the combat. The former, carried over from "Guacamelee," prevents damage until certain types of attacks (blunt, sharp, light, and dark) destroy the enemy's shields. The latter creates some nasty wrinkles, such as increased enemy damage and items that heal not only you but also the monster. There are few major difficulties, but they make you think about your form and tactics. Especially since dying before the boss's door sends you back to the starting point.

Despite all this variety, however, "Nobody Saves the World" feels a bit underwhelming given its 20-hour length. From a horse mine littered with horseshoes and giant carrots to the interior of an alien spaceship and a dead dragon, the themes and decorations are certainly imaginative, but in reality they are quite similar, a maze of procedurally generated monsters followed by the occasional trap that must be dodged, and a steady 15 to 20 minutes It ends in a steady 15-20 minutes. If each maze were more distinctive and provided more contrast to the pace of outdoor exploration, the number of mazes would have been much smaller. At the very least, there should have been some strategic boss encounters, rather than just an expanded version of the usual enemies surrounded by minions.

Also, the enclosed conditions in the dungeon tend to make the generally clever and consistent combat feel more haphazard. Dozens of monsters and familiars clashing at once are effortlessly handled, but there is no sense of impact between characters like a cutout, and hits are not visibly recorded except in small numbers that pop up, so when it comes to something like a mosh pit, who is winning? difficult to determine. Death comes surprisingly suddenly, whether when surrounded by a mob protected by wards that cannot be instantly shattered or when one simply loses oneself in the chaos.

Nevertheless, there is much more to enjoy in Nobody Save the World, even if it is a bit flabby and messy; Guacamelee was a showcase for inventive level design, but DrinkBox layers complex systems, which are cleverly and logically It shows off a different knack for combining and interacting with each other in a cleverly logical way. Underneath its bold exterior hides a wonderfully technical game, and you have the freedom to take your time and assess its qualities. It's a real joy to do the quest, and who wouldn't want to be a horse with the power of a slug?