Noita Entangled Worlds: a true co-op mod that syncs the pixel world itself

What is actually synchronised

Noita Entangled Worlds is described as an online true coop multiplayer mod, and the sync list is the part that makes it interesting, because Noita is a simulation of falling sand and pixelled matter rather than a typical platformer.

The list of what is synced: players, their positions, health, perks and inventories; wand usage; item usage; items in the world, so that one player can throw a wand, potion, spell or item and another can pick it up; enemies and their attacks; pixels of the grid world; fungal shifts; and polymorphing.

That last group is the hard part and the reason a mod like this is difficult rather than merely complex. Syncing a player position is a matter of sending coordinates. Syncing individual pixels of the grid world means the two instances of the game are converging on the same simulation state, and the fact that pixels, fungal shifts and polymorphing are all in the list suggests the approach is state replication at a fine granularity rather than a simplified approximation.

The project is called after the game, Noita, and the mod directory in the repository is quant.ew, with the display name Quant's Entangled Worlds in the in-game mod menu. There is a video by nichelessone showcasing a recent version, and a Discord server for the community.

The primary language is Rust, which fits a codebase whose hard part is a proxy process mediating between game instances. The repository top level shows the structure: a noita_proxy directory for the host process, a noita_api directory, shared for the common code, ewext for the extension side that runs inside the game, quant.ew for the mod itself, ew_api_example as an example of using the API, plus docs, scripts, nix, redist and extra.

The project is licensed under Apache-2.0, with LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT present at the root, and the last push was on 2026-10-14 with v1.6.6 released on 2026-09-13.

The proxy installs the mod, so installation is short

The installation path is unusual for a mod because the proxy does the work of fetching and installing the mod itself.

You go to the releases page and download the latest noita_proxy-win.zip or noita_proxy-linux.zip, depending on your operating system. You unpack it and launch the proxy, and the proxy is able to download and install the mod automatically. Then you start Noita and enable the mod, first enabling unsafe mods in the Mods menu and then enabling the Quant's Entangled Worlds mod.

That last step is worth pausing on. The mod requires unsafe mods to be enabled, which is a setting Noita exposes for code that can run outside the game's own sandbox. A multiplayer mod that syncs the game state is inherently in that category, and the installation instructions make the requirement explicit rather than burying it.

For Linux with Lutris the flow is a GOG install through the Lutris game installer, then running the proxy with ./start.sh from the directory where it was downloaded, then enabling the mod as in the main instructions.

The macOS path is the most involved, and the reason is that Noita is a Windows game. The instructions, provided by two contributors, start with installing a GOG copy of Noita using portingkit, following the guide on the portingkit Noita entry page with specific options in the Advance Settings step: set the Engine to WS12WineKegworks10.0-battle.net and set the Operating System to Windows 11. After confirming the game launches, you go to the install folder to find noita.exe, usually at /Users/{User}/Applications/Noita.app/Contents/SharedSupport/prefix/drive_c/GOG Games/Noita, and add a shortcut to it in the Finder sidebar.

Then you download noita_proxy-macos.zip, unpack it, launch the proxy and give it the path to noita.exe, which it saves, and the proxy can install the mod automatically. The final step is the one that trips people up: the proxy has to be closed and then launched again from a terminal with a specific command, and the documentation notes that this must be done every time you want to play multiplayer.

~/Applications/noita_proxy-macos/noita_proxy --launch-cmd '"/Users/{User}/Applications/Noita.app/Contents/MACOS/wineskinlauncher" --run "C:\GOG Games\Noita\noita.exe"'

Hosting a lobby over Steam or a raw port

Connecting is done through a lobby, and there are two ways to do it.

The GUI way is short. In the proxy window you click Create Lobby, then Save lobby ID to clipboard, and you send that ID to your friends, who copy it and press Connect to lobby in clipboard. After that, you start a new Noita game on everyone's PCs and you are in multiplayer mode.

The command line way is where the two transport options become visible. You can connect with noita_proxy --lobby [steam_code/ip and port], and you can host with noita_proxy --host [steam/port]. The documentation explains the two forms of hosting: --host steam will host a steam game, and --host 5123 or any port will host via ip at that port.

So the proxy is either a Steam peer or a plain TCP listener, and the lobby identifier is the join ticket for whichever mode is in use. That is a sensible design for a game with no official networking, since it does not require every player to have the game on Steam.

There is a checkbox for exactly that case. In the top left of the main proxy screen there is an Allow using steam networking even if you don't have the game on steam option, which covers the common situation where one player owns the Steam copy and the others do not.

One piece of operational advice sits alongside all of this, and it is the rule about save files. New Game is for joining a multiplayer run you have not joined before, and Continue is for reconnecting to a multiplayer run you have joined before and that has not ended yet. Using the same save file for multiplayer and singleplayer is explicitly not something that should be done.

Global perks and the community mod sheet

Some perks in Noita affect the entire world, so in a co-op run they apply to everybody, and the mod makes that explicit by showing them to all players.

There are 11 global perks, and the list reads like a summary of the kind of run-altering decisions a group has to agree on: No More Shuffle, Unlimited Spells, Trick Blood Money, Gold is Forever, Greed, Trick Greed, Peace with Gods, Extra Item in Holy Mountain, More Love, More Hatred, and More Blood.

Gold is Forever and Greed and Trick Greed are the economic ones, Unlimited Spells and Peace with Gods are the run-defining ones.. Presenting them to every player is a small but thoughtful detail, because in a shared world a perk that one player took and nobody else sees looks like a bug.

Mods support is handled through a public spreadsheet that lists mods tested by the community, and it is publicly editable so that anyone can add an untested mod together with their findings. This is the right shape for compatibility data in a mod ecosystem, because the compatibility question for Noita mods is not whether they load, it is whether they break the world sync, and that can only be established by people running them.

The acknowledgements section gives credit to the contributors, to EvaisaDev for allowing the use of code from the Noita Arena mod, to dextercd for NoitaPatcher, and to the creators of the other libraries used.

Funding is handled through Liberapay for one of the two developers, with a note that the other developer does not have the means for donations because of his residence.

The toolchain behind the mod, and where the project stands

The repository is a multi-language project rather than a single Rust crate, and the layout shows the pieces of the problem.

The noita_proxy directory is the Rust process that runs on your machine and does the networking, the lobby handling and the mod installation. The ewext directory is the extension side that runs inside Noita itself, which needs a bridge to the proxy. The shared directory holds the code both sides use, which is where the wire format lives. The noita_api directory and the ew_api_example directory are the public surface for other tools that want to talk to the same infrastructure, and the example shows how a third party would use it.

The build is described by a Justfile, a flake.nix and a flake.lock, so there is a Nix flake for reproducible environments, plus a nix directory, scripts, redist and extra. The Justfile is the task runner the way a Makefile would be in a C project, and having both Nix and Just is a sign of a project with more than one contributor who cares about reproducible builds.

The versioning is fast. The three most recent releases are v1.6.6 on 2026-09-13, v1.6.5 on 2026-09-11 and v1.6.4 on 2026-09-09, and the last push was on 2026-10-14, so the project is being worked on continuously and the release cadence is measured in days. A mod like this has to move quickly, because the upstream game it modifies changes, and a sync break in a pixel-level simulation shows up as a world that diverges.

The declared licence is Apache-2.0, and both licence files sit at the root, and the repository also carries a contributing.md and a last_release_notes.md, which is a reasonable convention for a mod where the release notes are part of the user-facing documentation.

Editorial conclusion

Noita Entangled Worlds fits a group of players who own Noita and want to run a shared world together, and who can dedicate a machine to hosting a lobby or accept that one player hosts. It is a poor fit for a single player or for anyone who has not bought the game, since the mod needs a real Noita install, and it is a poor fit if your setup cannot run unsafe mods, which the installation requires you to enable. Before playing, read the community mod compatibility spreadsheet and add what you find untested, use a separate save file from your singleplayer runs, and remember that on macOS the proxy has to be launched from a terminal with the wineskin command every single time.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. IntQuant/noita_entangled_worlds on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: Apache-2.0
4. README
5. Releases