Overall I enjoyed the game. The unique art style was what originally drew me to this game and it adds a lot to the lonely sci-fi atmosphere. The game systems gives each character a distinct personality that influences the direction of the story. The story itself is a lot more interesting than it seems as you progress deeper. However, the path to reaching the ending is a long, repetitive, and often frustrating one, which makes it hard to recommend to anyone who isn't willing to play Werewolf/Mafia more than 100 times to see the ending. I bought it on Vita but I suggest the newer Switch version as it adds some missing quality of life features.

It's definitely not for everyone - it's a visual novel and single player werewolf simulator where your success somewhat depends on RPG-lite stats (in fact, some obvious logical deductions like "x must be friendly/an enemy" are locked behind stat gates) - but Gnosia clicked with me immediately and kept delighting me through countless loops.

The artwork is gorgeous, the (sadly short) soundtrack is effectively moody, and the scenarios and dialogue run the gamut from goofy to creepy to tragic. There is an overarching story that unfolds gradually, with more and more lore piling up until various pieces begin to fall into place during the ending (and subsequent true ending). And while this is all happening, the core werewolf simulation is continually satisfying, offering opportunities for deception and sleuthing, alliances and vendettas, and even metatextual lightbulb moments.

If there's one flaw, it's some unfortunate fumbling of one of the non-binary characters during one scene, though that two non-binary characters are even included in the game and presented as complex individuals who drive the story is rare and something I was happy to see.

Petit Depotto are a very small dev team but I will absolutely be playing whatever they put out next.

My #1 of 2021. I'm agog it's made by a 4 person studio - the studio Petit Depotto - this game is exemplary. You play through randomized confrontations out of The Thing or Werewolf, trying to identify and freeze those corrupted by an alien entity. The game does a lot with little, enabling brutal confrontations and betrayals while still building affinity with every character.

Betrayals are ephemeral but still brutal, and you easily slip into and out of love/hate with every character on a loop-by-loop basis. It gestures at existentialism while still being relatable, sweet, and overtly weird. It indulges in the right amount of meta, keeping you moored while still engaging some wtf/"existence is collapsing" subroutes. It lightly undermines the VN gamefeel, asking you to modulate your engagement and only pay about 70% attention (for your sanity). After all, if you were trapped in a time loop with prickly YA's, you'd space out regularly. The game thrives in unexpected trials, the NPC AI just complex enough to keep things propulsive, and the relatively simple core loop still padded out with a shocking # of unique outcomes.

Over time you unravel the exceedingly strange conditions of everyone's circumstance- it's all some very crunchy and mesmerizing lore. The soundtrack and aesthetics are perfect, with stunning character designs and CG's, and the sfxs never falter despite a lot of repetition. Some of the best gamefeel in any VN. It moves lightning quick. It has like, a nearly meditative pace of trial and error. Overall it succeeds not only as an incredibly rapid and engaging 1P social deduction game (the best in an uncrowded field) but as a very specific sim. Absolutely adore this game.

Its a good attempt at simulating something akin to Werewolf or Mafia, but the mechanics are too lacking for the gameplay to stand up on its own. But while story and characters can help to compensate, they both ran into a lot of issues towards the end that left the broader experience feeling somewhat disappointing.

I still like Gnosia overall (and I certainly don't envy the developers here who had to take such a difficult concept and actually make it work) but there's a lot of room for improvement here. I'm interested in seeing what the team behind this does next because they definitely have to the potential to make something great. But Gnosia isn't there quite yet.

I have finished Gnosia and I must inform you that there is an awful glitch in the late-game that kinda hides some of the late-game functions without you knowing. Once you notice that nothing's happening in your loops except the loop itself (and characters aren't using any special commands), do note that that is a glitch and you have to do manually reset specifically by quitting the menu. I did at least 50 or so loops before realizing this and it drove me mad.

Which is a shame cuz it's this late-game stuff that's kinda the most unsatisfying part of the game story-wise and, if you got stuck in endless not-dev-intended bugged loops like me, makes things a little sour for having put up with all that.
Like seriously, some of the "epilogue" stuff (barely existent) is so unsatisfying I thought it was bait for the True Ending, but the True Ending is real short and doesn't actually say much about most of the other cahracters.
But uhhhh yeah good game regardless. Great art, the music really grew on me, the mechanics grew and evolved over time (and you had to both play with specific round settings as well as do some different challenges to progress the story), and the way the mystery unfolded was really cool.
Neat idea, has enough depth that I'd honestly wanna see these mechanics in perhaps another scenario. The mechanics used the character writing to its advantage and you could easily port this same game to a different story.

GNOSIA is a must-have title for any players interested in a thrilling, plot-heavy RPG. The art is beautiful, the music is wonderful, and the plot is thrilling. The gameplay is smooth, dropping players into the next loop seemlessly with plenty of options to tweak. This only gets better once the skills and roles open up a few loops in. Additionally, the cast is incredibly creative, including best girl SQ. Like I said, even the weakest characters are still likable. I’m 100 percent sure that there’s a character for every kind of player.

I ultimately found very little that I disliked about GNOSIA. If anything, I can’t recommend it enough, and honestly, I can’t wait to get back to playing it. In fact, I’m ready to loop through another fight against the Gnosia again.

Read my full review here: https://butwhythopodcast.com/2021/03/04/review-gnosia-is-thrilling-creative-and-beautiful-nintendo-switch/

This is a really strong game with a compelling narrative that can be compared to something in the Zero Escape series.

The gameplay is fun to begin with -- if you've ever played mafia or werewolf, you know the setup. It's classic and it works better than you'd think with AI -- you get to set and build up stats like Intuition that let you figure out when others are lying, or Performance to hide your own lies easier. Different characters have different mixes of these stats, too, so you get interesting games with an ensemble of characters that each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The gameplay is fun on its own, but over the course of the full game sometimes frustrating and repetitive -- I've run through the game multiple times and it took me each time about 100 loops to reach the ending. A lot of these loops end up being spent quickly running through dialogue because I'm very familiar with how the gameplay plays out, and so much is repeated between games.

This is balanced out because the gameplay is at its core fun -- it's classic werewolf gameplay, and even though it's exclusively against AI, I could see myself going back to this to play rounds and bask in how much I love the characters -- as well as how fun it feels to either find out the traitors or deceive the town.

Another complaint is that the events that drive the story forward can sometimes be frustrating -- for instance, one event might require that you keep a specific character alive over the course of a game -- sometimes, fate seems to conspire against you. The Gnosia might eliminate the target -- if you have the ability to defend them, the Gnosia might instead get you, or the AI might randomly latch onto your protective target as a suspect. Sometimes, you have to attempt an event repeatedly just to get the resolution you want.

All this being said, the events drive forward a really beautiful story. As many little problems as I have with little frustrations of the game's execution, the story itself is amazing. Whatever issues I have with the gameplay are well worth getting over to see the story that this game tells.

I could just say: 'omg among us x danganronpa???', but I would be unfair. This game has a charm, the whole time-loop mechanic thing where the roles and the character changes at the start of every loop is really interesting: more so because there's another character who shares the conscience of knowing that they're at a loop. Your relationships changes and the character that you like the most can, well, kill you.

It's a nice game. The art is... charming: not something that you see everyday. The roster is really diverse in terms of color palettes, gender and personality.

But knowing that you have to get, at least, 160~ loops to get the ending (even with a short duration of 5 minutes each) sounds so... exhaustive. Well, I can read online and my reaction would be the same, I guess.

If that's your thing, even being time-consuming, you should at least check it out.

(Probably gonna write a proper review for it on steam)
I feel like this game definitely requires a specific mindset and expectations to truly enjoy it. I'm lucky enough with the former and managed to reframe the latter and by that i mean i bought the game almost on a whim without reading the description which was a mistake solely on my part ultimately leading me to a slight disappointment at the realization that this game is more of an... JRPG in its mechanics rather than, say, Danganronpa or Ace Attorney.

However, after realizing that and reframing my view on the game, i found it pretty enjoyable and even addictive to a degree. While the story might not be anything special for anyone very familiar with the sci-fi mystery genre, i really liked how the narrative and gameplay are interwoven and if you don't drop it after about 2-3 hours for how repetitive it is, it's a pretty interesting experience overall.