NORCO Review – Kickstarting A Genre

NORCO is a brand new point-and-click adventure that just dropped on Steam to much audience appraisal. With an interesting setting and tons of positive reviews, I couldn’t help but give NORCO a try for myself. I had quite an experience in this southern gothic, and I thought I’d share my opinion with anyone looking to get into the interesting adventure game.

First, let me describe what I’m saying when I call NORCO “southern gothic.” Upon first glancing at NORCO’s Steam page, my impression was that the game took place during some kind of Fallout-inspired apocalypse, where nuclear fire is responsible for the dreary yellow environment. As it turns out this was far from the case, and NORCO has one of the most unique settings for a game I’ve ever seen.

See, NORCO takes place in the near-future countryside of South Louisiana. The dreary industrial city and swampy suburbs are all set in a reality close to ours, with technology similar enough to be believable but just far enough out of reach to keep the setting feeling fresh. The world feels familiar, even when you’re talking to a robot sitting in the back of a pickup truck, and that adds an eerie feeling to the whole experience you won’t get in something like Cyperpunk 2077 or Skyrim.

This eerily familiar world is presented to you through beautiful pixel art, which further adds to the sensation I’m describing. The painting-like backdrops of dreary Louisiana leave me with a feeling of both warmth and solemness, which I think is the feeling this southern gothic genre is going for. The game is like a good blues song, but it’s point and click and you can talk to robots.

I’m probably not far off with that description, as the developers described the setting themselves as “petroleum blues.” The world is dank, dirty, and depressed, and it’s a setting I want to see in more video game and movie titles in the future. It makes me depressed, but in a sort of relaxed way.

You’ve got to be relaxed to play this game, too, because it’s not going to throw a lot of heart-racing moments at you. Being a point and click adventure game, the majority of the time you spend in this game is going to be on slow interaction with the world around you. You enter a scene, admire the beautiful art and get a feeling for the setting you’re now in, and then click everything around you to see what allows you to progress and how. You’ll be doing a lot of reading, progressing the story and learning more about the space around you and the people in it.

And what an interesting story it is, befitting of its setting. You play as Kay, and after a sleepless night you go on the hunt for your brother, who has been missing for several days. I won’t spoil any more of the story for you, but its an interesting read and involves plenty of surreal imagery.

A chaotic bayou pirate, bar-stool private detective, escaped security android, and your stuffed childhood monkey are all characters you will meet in this engaging story. NORCO’s worldbuilding is amazing, and exploring the game is where it really shines. Luckily, you’ll get to do this plenty in the first act of the game; everything engaging in this game, from the setting and characters I’ve spent so much time talking up to the sound and music all make themselves known here.

The story in a story-based game is important, and I can’t just keep praising the setting without addressing the problems in its story. As the game approaches the end, the people we met disappear, and plotlines are resolved in a lazy and unfulfilling way or are forgotten about entirely. The story builds to an emotional climax, but instead we’re given something silly and totally off-tone that left me feeling a little robbed.

NORCO feels like a game that wants to have something to say. It tries so hard to build itself up to be the the kind of story it’s inspirations (like Bladerunner) featuring some wonderfully stoic pieces of dialogue like “We’re trapped in this limbo. A long twilight that bleeds out to the edges of time where even the most fantastic things become banal,” but it just doesn’t commit to it enough, so in the end it says nothing and just ends up feeling a little pretentious.

Our NORCO review was written based on the PC version of the game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website!