Summary

Norco is a point and click adventure game released in 2022 by Geography of Robots and published by Raw Fury. In it, you play as Kay, a woman who has returned to her home of Norco, Louisiana after the death of her mother. You become involved in the mysteries of your mother's investigations and your brother's disappearance.

The second in the batch of indie games I recently bought cuz of how interesting they looked. Loving the vibes of this one. The southern gothic mixed with the futurism is a great combo. It immediately pulled me in. I saw this one in particular as it was compared to Disco Elysium and Kentucky Route Zero, two particular favorites of mine.

Review

Norco was good. I think I definitely look back on it more fondly after having played, than while playing it. It's one of those games I had to sit on for a bit. That being said, I don't think it quite fully comes together. It's going for a lot of themes and a number of references. A slight too many, in my opinion. we've got religion, environmentalism, sci-fi with aliens, thinking robots, mind uploading and memory editing. It's just a lot. And I don't think it all quite blends together as well as it could have. I wanna take like one or two logs out of the jenga tower you know? I tend to always err on the side of what can we cut of this to get to the more lithe and focused experience. Because what, at the end of the day, is Norco about? I think grief primarily. But if that's so, there's like 1 or two entire sideplots that could be cut with nothing being lost. We get a lot of info about the St. Claires that doesn't really amount to anything, because none of the themes have room to breathe.

As I mentioned in the summary, I had heard the game compared to Kentucky and Disco. The Kentucky comparison I very much can see (and I'll be going into more detail on that). The Disco one not quite so much. I'm thinking the comparison probably comes from the generally humorous dialogue. Dialogue that is also just generally well-written. (Though I really wish we would tune down the purple prose and deploy it more strategically) That I can see, though I feel the comparison mostly stops there. The Kentucky comparison 100% I can see. And another comparison I would actually make is Mundaun (2021). Not in the dialogue department, but with the sense of place. Kentucky, Mundaun, and now Norco all were these interesting examples of games that deeply reflected the place that they were set in. They were incredibly local and I think each would benefit from being a person who is from those areas. They seem like experiences where you get a lot more out of them. For me, that would more be in the Kentucky department. But I can very clearly see a lot of local knowledge has gone into the final product. I do not at all have to look it up to know that the people involved with making Norco were from Norco.

The art is another area I really enjoyed. I'm a sucker for good art and this one was particularly beautiful. Standout example being anything involving Superduck. The surreal alien imagery mixed with the completely normal animal was great stuff.

So yeah, overall good. I think it had too much going on, and I think it would have benefitted from being slightly more focused. The editor's scissors could do wonders here. But I'd always rather a game make big swings than not try and this one swung hard and had some good hits. I did look up the other endings and I definitely would say I got the best one. You apparently can jump off the railing alone. That one didn't feel good to me. It seems weird to go this far and then just...fuck off. Odd. On the other hand you can sit down and go along with Paw Paw. That was the one I was more curious about. If you stay, it's somewhat ambiguous as to what happens. There is clearly an explosion that happens, but no obvious alien Christian vistas on Mars. So I'm inclined to believe Paw Paw is in fact just crazy which would be the reasonable thing to think about him. I kinda wanted some clearly supernatural shit to happen in that ending to be honest. So that the choice isn't so clear cut. As is, I'd say escaping with your family is the clear winner. Fuck them Garretts and fuck Paw Paw.

Links

Playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXbBIoFOxaQsRcQ7Ur1OnTkwf1BIyAznJ