NORCO garnered my interest initially due to its setting of a sci-fi magical realist Louisiana ravaged by capitalism and the unquenchable greed of oil companies. It reminded me of two of my favorite games, Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, which have become common comparisons to NORCO. NORCO definitely initially feels like it’s trying to follow in the footsteps of those games and their mix of fantastical elements and grounded themes pertaining to our current world, and initially it does a real quality job as the world is an enthralling and resonant one. The game’s graphics and aesthetic are beautiful in their own beaten down, grungy way, and bring the setting to life. The prose is also mostly of similar quality to KRZ and Disco and be quite evocative and got me into the game pretty well. The puzzles are fine; there’s not a lot of them, but they fit with what you’re doing in the narrative so they’re not moon logic-y. The game also has a combat system where you have to match symbols or time your clicks right. Combat in a point and click adventure game usually ain’t the best idea but it’s mostly alright.

Unfortunately the game gets more and more nonsensical as it goes along; it loses the thematic strength and character writing it had started off with and the whole final conflict just feels so far removed from the initial one of the protag’s mom investigating the oil company’s shady dealings. Both KRZ and Disco had surreal endings too, but they still reinforced and were grounded in the real world themes both games had been building the whole time and tied into the arcs of the main cast wonderfully. NORCO’s ending feels like the devs just ran out of time and ideas. The ending just also throws a bunch of the combat encounters at you in quick succession too which also makes think it was rushed. It is actually frustrating because I feel the game was close to being great, they just really needed a second pass on the third act.

Overall NORCO is still a quality adventure game worth your time but I really can’t help but feel its “The Kentucky Route Zero we have at home” as it were and it could have been more.

A casualty of scope creep, NORCO consists of many methodical and haunting tone pieces and prose paintings that sparsely link well or command time effectively. I really enjoy the narrator writing, the broader strokes of mood, and the qualities of southern Louisiana and New Orleans brought forth, but the adventure game plotting doesn't give space to breathe or reflect in the way that I'd like. Combat feels tacked on and so removed from violence that the larger set pieces become the least exciting.

The most fun I had was zipping around the swamp to different text entries, just kind of getting washed over. I wish the more game-y parts were slower and less desperate to feel like a puzzle or to throw a bunch of character gags that felt out of place with the reflective narration. NORCO is quite fun and I'm happy it exists, but it's a little confused on its own identity and the kinds of politicized and class constructions it wants to discuss.

One of the most beautiful games I've ever played. Great humor, extremely well-written, very knowledgeable on fringe internet communities without coming across as preachy or annoying. One of those games (or books) where you just feel "this guy gets it." I mention books because this could be a novel (or short story) and really hold its own, which is something you can't say for the writing in most games. That's not to say the beautiful pixel art doesn't add a ton to the game. Great characters, great plot. Melancholic humanism at its finest.

Disappointed by how the genuinely impressive specificity of place, atmosphere of dread, and the sharply observed details re: class and encroaching capital are left entirely by the wayside around the halfway point (maybe even earlier?) in favor of it's ok-but-not-revelatory plot, which I found significantly less interesting than the place and context and small glimpses of community around which it initially revolves. Unlike KR0 it is to some extent actually about the region its ostensibly about, at least at first, but also unlike KR0 its formalist and structuralist swings feel...not half-baked but maybe a bit of an afterthought, or at least not consistent enough in implementation to fully land. The 4ch/proud boys/Q analogue stuff is just restrained enough to avoid being embarrassing and is generally p funny but ultimately feels pretty toothless idk.

All that said, the first few hours absolutely transfixed me, and I got more genuine laughs out of the jokes here than I have from any game I can think of in recent memory, and that Thou end credits track fucking shreds so this still gets a rec from me! Extremely keen to see what Geography of Robots do next, they've definitely Got Something here.

Norco feels like a game tailored for me. Geography of Robots made a smart choice by extracting the 90's adventure game pixel art design while leaving the tedious and unintuitive puzzle design.

This game is all about the narrative. Between the dystopian cyberpunk politics and southern gothic tendencies, there's a lot of world building and characters to chew on.

The combat is nothing special, but it was never supposed to be the focus. I do wonder about a version of this game that has no combat whatsoever, but it doesn't affect the overall impression. Can't wait to see what else this studio makes next.

The comparisons are too easy to make. A narrative driven independent game with lush prose that dabbles in magical realism and science fiction as it confronts visions of both the future and past. It also happens to be set in a version of our world (in this case, the American South) that has been skewed, deals with themes of labor politics and the plight of the working class, and draws on and reinvents design philosophies from decades year old games. The comparisons make themselves. That’s why I am doing my damnedest not to say those games’ names, because to do so robs Norco of its own, distinct identity. It’s torture not to draw line after line between its constituent elements to its counterparts for the sake of preserving that identity, maybe especially because I think Norco is experiencing an identity crisis of its own.

Let me be unequivocal: Norco is a good game. I think it’s worth playing. There’s a part of me that feels bad for offering an emphasis on criticism, as if I’m kicking down a darling indie game. So I’m trying to be particularly explicit here: I think Norco is a good game. It’s filled with beautiful writing, unique characters, and potent themes of grief and politics. It has things to say. But I’m not sure Norco is quite sure what those things exactly are.

I have biases, and two in particular that I arrive at here: I care disproportionately about endings, and I care greatly about “aboutness”. Norco’s ending fell flat for me, and I struggle to know for sure what it’s truly about. These are my biases. As I’ve just said, there are so many reasons to love this game. That’s not what I’m going to write about here. I’m going to write about what keeps me from truly loving Norco.

I think I disproportionately weight endings in narratives because they are what stories leave you with. When you walk out of the theater, the thing that is mostly immediately carried with you is the last frames before the credits rolled. Games, historically, do not have great endings. I don’t mean mechanically; there are lots of games with great final bosses and all that. But the narrative ending, the last moments, these are usually unnoteworthy, and it’s usually brushed off. With narrative driven work, however, this is a little harder to forgive. Of course, everyone likes different kinds of endings. I am picky with my endings, I’ll admit, but I try to have a nuanced understanding of what does and doesn’t work with me in an ending. Enter Norco.

Norco’s ending, by which I mean the exact final moments before the credits roll, feel rushed and incomplete. It is in desperate need of a denouement. It’s ironic, because the climax of this game is flanked, quite literally, with two beautiful moments on the left on the right, one of which is perhaps the game’s most beautiful sequence. I will not spoil it, but it is an ethereal, melancholy, and haunting image of memories and home. I almost wish moment was positioned as the Norco’s last moments, because this potency is immediately undercut by the climax, which felt bereft of catharsis. And I think the reason this climax fell so flat for me is because it relied on the motives of the main character, whose identity and desires are opaque and indistinct.

Kay, the protagonist, never feels like she is given the opportunity to become a character of her own. Blake, her brother, almost feels like one, but is mostly off screen. The companions you encounter feel like characters. They have motives, interiority, likes and dislikes, quirks. Catherine, Kay’s deceased mother, who you play as in flashbacks, gets to be a character, too. This is welcome; rather than just being a grief object for the protagonist, Catherine gets to be a person. So rarely are stories about grief as much centered on who we lose as how we lose them. But what about Kay? What are Kay’s feelings? What does Kay want, need? What does she like or dislike? I’m not sure I could tell you anything about her, despite having spent hours in her shoes. I felt more empathetic and understanding of its side characters by the end. All I know about Kay for sure is that she is detached.

A detached character is obviously not a bad thing, and detachment serves an important role here. Kay’s detachment, as I read it, is representative of a response to what feels to many young people like the slow march into a catastrophe by modern industrial society. It is very intentional, and the rare moments where Kay’s detachment is overtly characterized, it is felt strongly. But when a game builds up to a climax which centers on the characters goals, motives, and desires, her own specific relations and history, all of which are deliberately muted and blurred… I struggle to be moved by that climax and its ever brief ending.

Kay is neither a cipher nor a character you roleplay as. I don’t know what she’s supposed to be. She’s not me, but who is she? I can neither imagine myself as her or imagine her as someone else. Like the game itself, the player is in a crisis of identity.

Norco is kind of a mess, both narratively and mechanically. It’s modeled after classic adventure games, but the puzzle design is a far cry from that old school style -- which is not something I’m exactly mourning. Those puzzles were notoriously arcane and absurd, an ethos that has aged in quite a way, and it wouldn’t have worked here. Norco’s puzzles are relatively straight forward and signposted heavily, and you can ask for advice. But Norco also has a combat system. And it has mini-games. A lot of them. Most of these mini-game puzzles are fine. Nothing exceptional, but nothing horrible. There is one bit I did think was excellent and well executed, which I won’t get into again for spoilers, but involves a boat. But I truly have no idea why this game has combat. It’s not fun and just feels silly. And this lack of cohesion is also seen in its thematic underpinnings.

The themes are easy enough to identify: the struggles of the working class, religion’s social role, messianic myth, the desire to find meaning under late capitalism, ironic middle class hipsterism, the ever-extravagant machinations of the bourgeoisie, and so on. But these themes are neither explored on their own fronts nor are they unified by any central theme. The “Mind Map”, which is an interior display of the lore and relationships in Kay’s life (again, trying not to make the comparison here) is dense with connections but not with cohesion. There is some fascinating world-building and cool ideas in here. But where do they lead to?

Obviously I don’t think it’s necessary that a “message” be had in art, but when you neither pose questions nor offer answers, it can begin to feel more like these themes are props. Norco mostly acknowledges and maybe comments on its phenomena. Again, that’s not intrinsically bad, but I have my preferences, and the absence of direction doesn’t work for me here. All of it is cool, sure. But I don’t know what to make of it, and not in a way that fills me with giddy curiosity. I didn’t leave Norco with any questions, for either its world or for my own.

Again, I feel guilt, “damning with faint praise”, but I seem to be in the minority here, which is nice, I guess. It makes me feel a little more comfortable offering criticism. After all, I can find plenty of ecstatic analyses of Norco, but not as much where I’m coming from. I see why others have fallen in love with it. But I never got that far. Maybe I’ll grow more fond after reading criticism and other’s feelings. But this was my initial response, and that counts for something.

Norco, at its core, ends up as a collage, so scattered as to almost resemble a pastiche of itself. It’s soup full of scoopfuls of ideas that have been lightly emulsified. Collages can be good. And Norco is good. Its lack of thematic and structural direction does not nullify all the beauty therein, but it is why I don’t think I’ll ever get goosebumps when I think about it.

Norco is a beautifully designed pixel point and click adventure that takes place in the thick of the New Orleans area in Louisiana. It was a decent experience, however I felt like the narrative didn't captivate me anywhere near as much as a game like Kentucky Route Zero, which carried a similar approach to the area around the Rust Belt. The ending of the game lost me a bit, and the combat that is included is largely lackluster and pointless. Personally I didn't feel much of an attachment to the majority of characters within the game, even though I some of them were written with an enjoyable sense of humor and personality.

I'd only play this if you have an active Game Pass Subscription, otherwise I'd wait for a deep sale.

Norco absolutely rules. One of the best written games I have ever played, feauturing a gorgeously realized and mesmerizing setting so confident in every step that you can't help but be sucked into the fever dream it is presenting. I stopped playing the demo after 10 minutes because I knew immediately that this would be amazing and I am glad I was right. Feels right at home next to a Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, which completes an interesting trifecta of games to recommend if you have played any one of these.

Adventure games seem to be making a comeback which is a great thing. My fondest memories of PC games are adventure games with The Longest Journey being my favorite of all time. They are basically interactive novels with visuals, and sometimes voice actinag, to help illustrate the story. Norco is one of the better modern adventure games of late but still fails in a few spots.

The story itself has moments of clarity, but like most text-heavy adventure games of late, it becomes a convoluted mess with few characters to care about and a disappointing ending. You play as two different characters - a mother and a daughter. You play as the mother, Catherine, in the past playing events that lead up to the present daughter's events. The daughter is chasing her mother's ghosts and trying to recover belongings that a corporation took from her. These belongings are supposed to have answers as to why this corporation targeted your family. The whole game is set in a 20-minutes-into-the-future borderline post-apocalyptic New Orleans. There isn't too much world-building, but a lot of poetic metaphoric dialogue that a lot of games right now think is clever and interesting, but just compounds the fact that a more normal cohesive story is what makes adventure games memorable.

There are a few moments where you might enter a combat mini-game, but these are far and few between and it seems almost impossible to fail these. Various typical adventure game elements are lightly sprinkled throughout like inventory items, backtracking, code memorization, but surprisingly no puzzles really. A lot of important clues and context will be shown in green during dialog and talking to your party can give you hints which is helpful. I rarely couldn't figure out where to go. The explorable areas are just still images that you can move your mouse around and click on things to interact with. The entire game is from a first-person perspective. There is a small mini-map in the corner that lets you click around to various "rooms" you've unlocked and then there's a larger map to jump around to the main areas.

The best part about the game is the art and abstract character design. There is some weird imagery here and I really enjoyed the pixel art. The entire game gives off a great sense of atmosphere and foreboding helplessness. You meet weird characters, an occult, strange objects, and overall the game just pulls off a great sci-fi setting, but just the setting. As the game progresses the entire reason why you're doing any of this is lost and it just devolves into just abstract poetry and makes no sense. Sometimes things seemed normal and there was decent character building, but it just wasn't enough to push it to that top-tier adventure game level. I still didn't care about anyone in the game enough as right when things seemed to pick up the game dropped the ball with more abstract poetry, weird imagery, and unanswered questions.

Overall, Norco has great art and super weird characters and settings, but the overall story is just a convoluted mess that devolves into poetic abstractness that seems to be plaguing adventure titles today. I love fantastical stories, but please make them make sense. Poetry isn't making your game more clever, deep, or interesting. It just takes away from a cohesive narrative and likable characters.

I wanted Norco to be more than it was, I think. I was looking for something in conversation with Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, and what I got was good, but it wasn’t that.

The narrative is interesting. The tone is funny and also serious in the way that real life is. The game is stunning to behold. But it is ultimately a tone piece with plot attached.

From the game’s creator: “The narrative in many ways was almost a stream of consciousness.”

It felt that. I get what they were trying to do. Represent Norco and its people in an honest way. It’s “games as vibe” and I love that shit. But I don’t think it came together for me.

I would give it a 3 if it weren’t for several visual and auditory moments that blew me away. It’s really just beautiful in so many ways.

Esse foi especial pq estava na minha lista de desejos antes de ser lançado, e consegui comprar logo na primeira semana. Não é muito comum de acontecer por aqui, principalmente com jogos indies, então fiquei feliz. O que chama muito a atenção é os cenários, a arte, os enquadramentos. Não sou uma pessoa q sabe interpretar muito bem uma cena (mas já fui pior!!), então as vezes imagino como que poderia ser esse jogo. Por que, veja, se eu pudesse descrever, seria sonho febril. Esse jogo é um sonho febril, que as vezes você questiona aquela industria que está ali, as vezes você questiona as pessoas ao redor, como que tudo isso chegou a esse ponto. E você não sabe muito bem, porque as vezes é assim. Achei muito interessante que Norco é de fato uma cidade nos estados unidos, que possui refinarias. Eu gosto de pensar que esse jogo é uma parte do que foi morar lá por um tempo. As lendas urbanas, as sensações, as pessoas. Mas as coisas vão caminhando para o final, e eu fiquei. Só fiquei. Estou aqui até agora. Quem sabe um dia eu consiga falar sobre tudo. Você gosta de uma história mais pro lado do sonho febril, com muitos olhares penetrantes!! e um ar meio sinistro? Então é pra você.

An incredibly haunting point-and-click adventure that feels both human and alien at once.

While the QTE / mini-games feel lacking, and the general puzzle-solving feels fairly route one (which I am not complaining about as a P&C novice), I was absorbed into this world and wanted to explore every last detail and character, and made sure to check every dialogue option available.

It is a game where every character genuinely has their own story to tell - even if they have more than a couple of lines, and it's all wrapped up in some of the most breath-taking pixel art I've witnessed.