Norco explores a loss of humanity in our modern world

digitaltrends.com:

With how busy March was with new games, no one can blame you if you missed a few. On March 25 alone, players got Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. But just one day before that, a game that’ll likely stick in my mind longer than any big-budget title launched: Norco.

Spotlighted during last year’s Tribeca Festival, Norco is a southern gothic point-and-click game set in a dystopic version of Louisiana. There’s a twisted mystery at the heart of the narrative-driven adventure, one that weaves around topics such as the oil industry, big tech, and religious fanaticism. All of those forces have destroyed a once quiet suburb, suffocating it in an industrial swamp.

While Norco tackles weighty themes that make it a haunting reflection of our own reality, its interpersonal relationships create its true tragedy. At its heart, Norco is a game about a family that’s been torn apart by the noise of the modern world.

Norco crafts a dense sci-fi dystopia over the course of five hours, but its opening moments are comparatively grounded. It begins in a small bedroom, as golden light shines through a pixelated window. Within a few clicks, we learn that the game’s protagonist has returned to their hometown to sort out some family drama. Their mother has died of cancer and their brother Blake has gone missing. The opening moments are quiet, as players click around the empty house to get flashes of the family’s troubled past.

That stillness quickly dissipates the moment the protagonist steps outside and reunites with the family’s sentient security robot. From that moment on, the personal story is buried underneath a sprawling sci-fi mystery that’s rooted itself throughout southern Louisiana.

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