Gnosia's design premise--a single-player randomized Werewolf with stat progression--is both its most intriguing asset and the source of its violent downfall. It works for a certain amount of time, as you're still getting used to how characters act, still discovering new skills through leveling stats, and likely seeing healthy amounts of new story content. But there comes a point when certain events are required for story progression, that require specific interactions with specific characters in specific configurations, and the game will allude to what's important but fights against itself by how it's set up.

God help you if a story event is locked behind SQ or Raqio, because keeping either of the most suspicious characters alive long enough to trigger events [and hoping that you don't need to meet other hidden variables], while also praying that you're not selected to get murdered or put in cold sleep yourself is not only unideal, it can often feel like downright trolling on the game's part. And since doing this may actively fight against a win, you're possibly not going to get much experience either, so I guess you could just play randomized games and try to win with the impression that increasing your stealth by 2 or 3 points will actually matter for your "story runs" whatever the hell those are.

What's even weirder is the game has a built-in "event finder" mechanic after you've done a certain number of loops, where the game will select randomized settings for you that "guarantee" to satisfy requirements for at least one event you're missing, and yet it's not like I'm going to know what event they have in mind [you would hope they'd prioritize story-mandatory ones but who can say] and it ultimately feels as though I'm selecting my own random settings anyway.

There was only so much of the same dialogue over and over that I could personally take, whether I was actively pursuing story progress or just hoping to level up. Just because a game operates as a loop narratively doesn't excuse when design repetition sets in, and the alarming speed with which this feels repetitive does a great disservice to whatever sci-fi tale they wish to tell. While there are some red flags [great treatment of your one trans character by the way] I won't ever know what that tale's finale is, and part of me wanted to know, but oh well.

A very effective implementation of a "single player hidden role" game with great art, enjoyable characters, and an entertaining but not quite revolutionary narrative. It starts strong with a tutorial that blends well with the format of the core game loop and narrative, but can drag a bit near the middle and the very end.

As a hidden role game it nails one particular aspect needed, which is a balance between random chance elements and character driven elements. The six stats you can level are present on each participant of the "who dunnit" debates and influence the results of uncertain actions, like say how many people will buy your lie, but then you'll pickup on behavioral quirks with the NPCs that you can also work into your strategy. For instance, some characters will simp for others by default and will support them until it's firmly proven their preferred character is against them. It can be more subtle things too, like one character who would almost always shutdown attempts to derail debates if they were a specifc role. These little touches make the gameloop itself part of the narrative and accentuate the main objective of the game.

However, the format also works against the game the further you get in. In each loop you're not only trying to win the hidden-role game, but also uncover information through additional scenes that unlock under certain conditions. The further in you, the more you have to search to find them. There are two things that the game does really well to keep this from becoming a complete slog, though. First, you level up as you go, so you gradually get more advatages in the random elements of the game. Second, there's a subtle "search" feature that will at least do the work of finding the starting conditions needed to unlock scenes, and that is enough to keep you going 90% of the time.

These parts sometimes fight against each other, though. For instance, one scene requires completing a loop with specifc characters alive, but roles are always random, so you may have to restart a few times just to get that half of the condition set, then you still have to win which is far from guaranteed untill you have really good stats. Additionally, while the NPCs stats also start low and increase over time (in their unique ways) to help keep the difficulty from going wild, you do have the classic problem in RPGs of accidentally giving yourself a terrible build, which can really pump the brakes midgame. There is a respec option, but it is fittingly esoteric to access.

The pace of the game also helps mitigate some of these problems, but overall it still ended up feeling a bit long for me playing with no guide....

I also encountered a bug that prevented a certain scene from occurring, so I couldn't actually finish the game. 😥 So I watched the rest on YouTube.

Overall, this game is very smart and creative where it matters, but still feels like it's missing that last bit to be a real top tier experience. Definitely recommend playing it, and even to those outside the usual VN crowd. Definitely more a game than a book.

Gnosia is a werewolf type game where you play against AI instead of players. Fun in theory, but werewolf is a social game.

The gameplay is fine enough as is, but gets repetitive really quick. It doesn’t help that the ‘discussions’ are just characters throwing random, typically generic and personalityless comments at each other.

Whoever dies or get voted out feels pretty random sometimes, no matter how the discussion went.

There are some interesting bits that you can learn about the AI characters, but you have to go out of your way to create specific scenarios for most of them, which can be hard sometimes.

I personally love most of the character designs, and the music is pretty good too.

I recommend playing in short bursts so you don’t burn yourself out on it.

I was caught off guard by how engaging the story and characters were in this game.
I thought it was going to be a simple little deduction game but with each loop you do, you slowly uncover more about the story and the characters and it becomes an addictive cycle as you try to work out how to further advance things.
The only real flaw I had with the game was struggling to unlock new things when I was nearing the end and trial and error was only going so far but the ending made up for it, managing to tug on my heartstrings.
Highly recommend this if you want something addictive and simple to play through!

Very interesting game, and I think it's solid, but it is far too repetitive by the end. It doesn't help that my game either bugged out after the first trigger for an event, or I just have to keep doing these loops over and over for it to pop up again, so I can watch the event and get the true ending. Because to be honest, I wanted to stop actually playing these loops like 40-50 loops earlier than that. It's just too much

After 120+ loops I just decided to watch it on YouTube because I don't have faith the event will actually show back up. I don't think the game's story is particularly great either. It's great relative to the structure of the game and it works far better than one would expect, but when I step back and think about it, I think it's just not the most interesting story. Interesting characters though. I will give them that.

uhhhh i mean amogus

While I don't hate this game, I can't bring myself to actually continue playing it. I actually enjoy the premise a lot, but the gameplay is extremely unenjoyable.

For starters, it was fun re-playing Raging Loop again. Both the looping, the specific humans/wolves killing game, and every single facet of the killing game is present in this game.

As the elements of the killing game are revealed, more and more of your ability to draw inferences based on behavior are eliminated, until eventually there really is no way to draw any useful inferences.

With no ability to draw meaningful inferences, the game ultimately hinges on leveling your RPG stats, as they give you psychic powers like the ability to tell when someone is lying, or boosting your ability to convince people, or your ability to lie persuasively. Because of this, it becomes a grinding game where you loop over and over again in order to unlock these psychic powers.

The first few hours I played, I was enjoying myself. At a specific point, a character unlocks the full game, and it stops being fun. If the grinding took 1/10th as long, I might have stuck through it.

Okay, hear me out here. What if... a social deduction game, but as a single-player RPG? To some, it must sound like complete lunacy. How can a genre of game that is fundamentally about its human aspect have that removed from it? Well, the folks at Petit Depotto took that idea and ran with it, and the result is, simply put, one of the best games I have ever played.

The starship D.Q.O. travels across the galaxy, its crew a mishmash of displaced people from different planets, all of them fleeing from an invisible, terrifying threat called Gnos. This alien presence of unknown origin aims to erase humanity from existence and, to achieve that goal, it infects those who come in contact with it, taking over their minds.

Indistinguishable from their peers, these infected, called the Gnosia, seek to deceive and eliminate their own kin, and by the time the story begins, have caused the fall of entire worlds. Within the D.Q.O., the crew's worst fear comes to pass: someone, or some people aboard have become Gnosia, and they must be unmasked before they can take over the ship.

Taking after social deduction games such as Werewolf, The Resistance, or the more recent Among Us, in Gnosia, a pool of players is split into different groups, each player's role known only to themselves, that must identify each other and defeat the opposing faction. These types of games are common at parties, and are very fun. If you have never played them before, though, don't worry, as the game will carefully walk you through the rules in the beginning loops.

Yes, loops. Gnosia takes place in a time loop that begins as the Gnosia infect a set number of crewmates and a contingency plan is put in place: on each day, the crew will vote to cryogenically freeze a person who they suspect is Gnosia, in the hopes that all of the enemies will be neutralized. So long as there's at least one Gnosia free, during the night, they'll erase one of the humans on the ship. Humans win if they can freeze every Gnosia, who in turn are victorious if they come to outnumber humans on the ship.

Like in Gnosia's inspirations, there are other character roles that are introduced as you progress, all of which change the way the game is played when they're present. What makes the game more fascinating, however, and what I think is Gnosia's greatest achievement, is how effectively they mapped the social deduction gameplay to an RPG system.

During each day in Gnosia, a debate takes place, which consists of five rounds during which you and the other characters can use different commands to steer the conversation. Don't let the initial simplicity fool you: while, at first, it's only possible to accuse or defend other characters, as the game progresses, the discussion becomes more and more complex.

Characters in Gnosia have six stats: Charisma, Intuition, Logic, Charm, Performance and Stealth, all of which allow the use of different commands and affect various aspects of gameplay. As the game progresses, both you and the NPCs increase their stats and, from them, gain access to a myriad of different commands that help steer the debate, commands that can enhance the effect of others' speech, outline logical conclusions, and put other characters in tight spots, among other things.

At the end of the debate, you and your fellow crewmates cast your votes on who to eliminate. Hopefully, you didn't talk too much so to become annoying nor too little so to become suspicious, and were able to guide the conversation to the direction you wanted. Should you avoid the fridge, during the night, you can interact with other characters and get to know them better.

These mechanics form the core loop of Gnosia, which is brilliant for many reasons. First, it's one of those "one more turn" types of games that are hard to put down. So many play sessions of mine were made a couple hours longer because I just felt for going for "one" more loop before stopping, which then became four or five. It might feel random at first, but once you get a hang of the debates, the game becomes hard to put down.

More than that, the stat system in itself is beautifully realized, both mechanically and as a storytelling device. Mechanically, when building your character, no stat is useless: while there are some parameters you might want to focus on depending on the build you like, all of them serve an important gameplay purpose and there isn't a single stat that feels safe to have low.

Stats are also a means of characterization. Much like yourself, each of the NPCs in the ship has a specific build. Some characters easily make themselves loved, while others will find themselves under crosshairs for minor missteps. Some rely on their perception to catch others lying, others use logic to tear a hole in their opponents arguments.

There are also preexisting relationships between NPCs -- and even between them and your own character -- that you'll uncover as you see more character events, but that can be perceived from how they act towards others during debates. Some characters have a predisposition to liking you, and might protect you even if it isn't in their best interest for the vote, while others are the opposite, and you will learn to fear them.

It's important to pay attention to these sorts of details because whenever a character happens to be Gnosia, their behaviour might change, and an attentive player can use this to their advantage and sniff them out. This is a game where mechanics and storytelling are deeply entwined, one feeding into the other,

The overarching narrative that surrounds the time loops is engaging and set up in a way that makes it very fun to uncover. You will laugh, you will cry, you will fall in love with many of the characters, and as the story comes to a close, you'll wish there was more to uncover. Just one more excuse to go looping again in this game of lies and deception.

From beginning to end, Gnosia was a delightful experience, one I will recommend wholeheartedly to others even if my track record of getting people to play quirky Japanese games is... less than positive. I wish I could erase it from my mind so I could do it all over again.

Ending was a bit underwelming but I think I was expecting a lot more story-heavy game when it's really maybe 60-40 Mafia-simulator visual novel.

But the worldbuilding, characters, premise are super fascinating, and tbh I would love to see a normal visual novel in the same universe. The gameplay is also pretty well done - it can get a bit old when searching for the last few bits of information, and I am admittedly already a bit of a social deduction game fiend, but all in all it does a surprisingly good job of adapting it into video game form.

Being one of the most unique visual novels I've played so far, Gnosia plays pretty much like Werewolf, with its unique mechanic being looping. You start the game on a ship with no memories and must find the titular bad guys Gnosia (or the other way around if you're Gnosia, killing every human) among the rest of the crew through deduction gameplay, looping back to the start after each successful or unsuccessful run to repeat this process, each loop adding more characters and events that slowly unfold the mystery of Gnosia.

I really love this as a concept and I had a great time figuring out the story, the different character events and endings but I also understand and acknowledge that the loop system overstays it's welcome at around 30 loops in. And if you're lucky enough with RNG and figuring the requirements to some of the events then you may even finish the main story in less than 100 loops but that wasn't the case for me lol (took me 168). And like I mentioned, I loved finding all the endings and events but man some of them were pretty obscure and actually frustrating to get (one example was one event required me to end the game as Gnosia with one specific character alive and for like 8 times I tried getting this event, this same person kept exposing me as Gnosia even though we were supposedly working together against everyone else, leading me to get put into cold sleep everytime. Nearly drove me insane.)

Art and music were a big highlight for me, just beautiful in all aspects. I enjoyed most of the characters, even considering that they don't really have much depth to them aside from brief characteristics and a few lines of dialogue here and there outside of events/endings that alude to their background. Setsu and Remnan were probably my favorites from the bunch.

Overall, it's a game worth experiencing even though I know the loop system will turn alot of people off from picking this up.

Was originally planning to go for platinum in this game, but honestly I never wanna touch it again and honestly just seeing Sqs face on the cover irritates me.
While the evolving gameplay and slowly progressing story seems as if it would remain enjoyable throughout, this game overstays its welcome. While it’s forgivable the plot is fairly basic and there’s not much substance thematically, the characters dont really have payoff. You’re literally characterizing them throughout the game with the reveals, but honestly it doesn’t amount to shit.
The ai is boarderline retarded at some points and makes it very frustrating.
The highlights in the game are when Yuriko straight up challenges you, and similar events to that, when there’s a specific goal and barrier made to you right off the rip. it feels like you’re actually playing against someone. But for the most part this game is brainless button mashing until youre lucky to get info. Unless you’re using a guide, and that’s bullshit if a game expects you to use a guide to know which events to do