Be inducted into a corrupt League of Wizards, find true love as a horse, bench press baddies as a Bodybuilder, and create an army of undead as a Zombie—Nobody Saves the World is the newest zany hack and slash game by Guacamelee! developer Drinkbox Studios.

Waking up in a grimy and abandoned shed, our protagonist Nobody has a typical case of amnesia. With no purpose or direction, Nobody gets caught up in the disappearance of the powerful Wizard Nostramagus and a Calamity that is spreading an infectious disease across the world. If you’re thinking this scenario creates too big of a shoe for a nobody to fill, you would be right. Although after luckily happening upon (or rather stealing) a magical wand, Nobody is gifted with the ability to transform into 15 different ‘Forms’ and is hopefully now up to the task of saving the world!

Nobody Saves the World takes creative gameplay to its highest potential by blending components of different genres together to create the hybrid hack and slash game of your dreams. Nobody is on a mission to find gem fragments that are the key to tracking down the missing Nostramagus, but they’re locked deep within dungeons surrounded by swarms of baddies. Clearing the dungeons means testing your mettle against baddies with different immunities and weaknesses, but if you die then you’ll find yourself right back at the entrance of the dungeon. Sounds familiar? Nobody Saves the World utilises both rogue-like and dungeon crawler components to create intense fast-paced challenges. However, the game isn’t confined to just clearing dungeons, there is a whole world to discover that takes you and Nobody through a surprisingly open RPG narrative.

Nobody Saves the World is absurd, eccentric, and most of all funny. Its comedic backbone is built on Nobody acting as a nondescript spectator for the World and its whacky inhabitants. If you haven’t played a Drinkbox Studio game before, their style usually revolves around caricatures, and Nobody Saves the World is no different.

Each region embodies a theme that is stretched to the extreme not only through its environment but through characters, quests, and tone. On the East is Damptonia, a cruddy swampland housing the League of Wizards and decaying fields of pumpkins. There are disguised aliens trying to find their way home and a witch with a thirst for broomstick racing. There’s a suspicious Dungeon made from sweets and gingerbread that the owner, a witch, insists isn’t to entice children, but you can never be too sure. In the West you’ll find Rustrock Barren, a canyon filled desert wasteland housing shady characters wanting to relieve you of your purse and the equally untrusting Thieves Guild. Bounties are aplenty in these parts of the World and an unstable Power Plant is spreading toxins through the town, which you are tasked with shutting down. The extremity in which Nobody Saves the World pushes the individuality of each region generates an unmatched curiosity to explore the very large open world.

The game, however, is no sandbox, and there is an order to the chaos which comes in the form of a levelling system. Nobody Saves the World splits each region into recommended levels you’re expected to reach before exploring. To progress, you clear dungeons and to unlock dungeons you need wands, which is a currency you attain through completing objectives for each of your 15 Forms and completing quests for other characters in the region.

Objective-based levelling is an interesting concept because instead of levelling in the traditional sense, which usually involves killing enemies to gain experience, Nobody Saves the World forces you to experiment with different Forms through its form-locked objectives. Instead of buddying up close to the one Form that suits your play style, you have to kill baddies in each form to level and progress the game. Surprisingly, there was very limited backtracking with the objective-based levelling. I only had to re-do a couple of dungeons later on in the game to complete objectives with Forms I hadn’t used as much, which is a testament to the amount of content available to you in the game.