How Norco’s creators used sci-fi to paint an honest depiction of Louisiana

polygon.com:

Norco, from developer Geography of Robots,is born out of an experimental, multimedia project that started around 2015 — a series of oral history interviews, archival deep-dives, and video projects, all related to Louisiana’s geography following Hurricane Katrina. Among the videos and recordings was a little side-scrolling game about a robot breaking into an oil refinery in Norco, Louisiana.

“It slowly grew into a point-and-click text adventure,” Geography of Robots developer Yuts told Polygon. “And that’s what we have today.” Yuts uses the pseudonym — “a derivation of [his] grandpa’s nickname” — to keep space between his life and the game’s world, which has some “slightly autobiographical details.” The rest of Geography of Robots, the collective of developers that made the game, includes developer Aaron Gray, artist Jesse Jacobi, and music and sound designers fmAura and Gewgawly I, who came on in 2020 after publisher Raw Fury signed the game.

Built from the side-scrolling robot game, Norco is described by Geography of Robots as a “Southern Gothic point-and-click narrative adventure” set in South Louisiana, its “sinking suburbs” and “industrial swamps.” Norco shares its name with its setting: Norco, Louisiana, a community within St. Charles Parish, a place backlit by a Shell oil refinery. It’s where Yuts grew up, several blocks from an oil refinery, one that exploded and “somewhat wrecked” his childhood home.

“It’s this giant, fire-breathing dragon that exists in your backyard,” Yuts said. “It’s hard to ignore.”

Ahead of Norco’s full release in March, the game won the Tribeca Film Festival’s first-ever games award in 2021. And following its release, Norco is living up to that honor: The game has largely been a critical