Norco – the future is not working for everyone (pic: Raw Fury)

GameCentral continues its look back at some of the year’s best indie games, with what is one of the best narrative adventures of 2022.

It’s almost impossible to tell how well modern video games sell. If they get a physical release, you get at least some indication but for games that are only released digitally it’s usually a complete mystery.

Even as we go back through the year, to review games we missed the first time round, we’re still not really sure how successful the likes of Rogue Legacy 2 and Drainus were. Vampire Survivors must’ve done well because it’s something we’ve heard people talk about in real life, but we’ve never met anyone that’s even heard of Norco.

The cryptic name and peculiar artwork probably didn’t help but that’s the least of Norco’s problems when it comes to attracting impulse purchases. Vampire Survivors can be understood and enjoyed within seconds, but you’ll still be wondering exactly what Norco is about long after you’ve finished it. However, if we name drop games such as Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero, and Night In The Woods, you may have some inkling of what to expect from it.

Norco is a small town in Louisiana, which we don’t think you’re supposed to have heard of before – although maybe it’s relatively well known in the US, as the game is inspired by a number of natural and man-made disasters that have plagued the area, including Hurricane Katrina. The name is derived from the New Orleans Refining Company (they must’ve thought NORC sounded too silly), with the area still dominated by a gigantic Shell facility, which suffered disastrous explosions in both 1973 and 1988.

The game started off as a multimedia documentary before evolving into what could broadly be described as a point ‘n’ click adventure, although it’s first person, so it more closely resembles Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher and MacVenture games like Uninvited than it does Monkey Island. The whole thing is controlled with a pointer and was clearly only ever designed with a mouse and keyboard in mind, which proves a constant source of minor distraction on consoles.

Despite all the real world references, Norco does not take place in our reality. The story opens with initial protagonist Kay returning home, for the first time in five years, after the death of her mother and the disappearance of her brother. From the first moments, the kitchen sink realism is interwoven with peculiar references to wars in the US, the presence of a security robot in the garden, and hints about what Kay’s mother was investigating before she died of cancer.

There are no information dumps to explain what’s going on and so you slowly piece together not only the mystery surrounding Kay’s mother but the nature of the strange, yet still partially recognisable, world you find yourself in. Despite how surreal the game can get this is actually a surprisingly realistic sci-fi world, where the really high-tech stuff is only for the rich and 20th century technology is still prevalent in areas that can’t afford anything else.

It’s a grim, nihilistic dystopian, where many of the problems are the same as today – including unchecked capitalism, class warfare, and environmental destruction – while others are merely extrapolated from what already exists, especially for the real town of Norco. In the game’s reality, climate change causes constant flooding and ever more destructive hurricanes, while the oil refinery is, by the developer’s own admission, just as much influenced by Shinra as it is Shell.

No matter how weird the game gets everything is treated in the same matter-of-fact manner, with the game, at least until the very end, keeping itself in check with a wryly amusing script, that takes itself seriously but always has a twinkle in its eye. The opening scene’s staring contest with a stuffed monkey, completely with QTE sequences, sets the tone perfectly and makes it clear the game isn’t interested in preaching and is not above just having a bit of fun.

Norco – lo-fi sci-fi (pic: Raw Fury)

In gameplay terms Norco is very simple stuff, with little in the way of real puzzles and most of your time spent simply scanning the screen with your cursor (window-washing to point ‘n’ click aficionados), looking for interactive objects. Unexpectedly, or not if you consider the monkey encounter as a tutorial, there are combat sequences, which seem unnecessary but are just as easily dealt with.

More interesting are elements like Kay’s ‘mind map’, that echoes ideas from Disco Elysium and effectively allows you to think things through on your own, working out connections between people and events and allowing you to cross reference earlier events. Dialogue choices are frequent and difficult, with the game never allowing you to sit on the fence.

It’s sometimes hard to tell whether the graphics are purposefully low-tech or if that’s just all the developer knew/could afford to do, but it matches the off-beat tone perfectly, as does the equally low-fi electronic soundtrack.

If there is a serious flaw with Norco, it’s that it comes close to going off the rails in its final hours. By that point things have got very fantastical, but it’s the increasing emphasis on the religious elements of the plot that begin to seem overblown.

Some will accuse Norco of being pretentious and it’s true that perhaps it could have made its final points in a more accessible manner, but this is clearly a very personal narrative for the creators and ultimately that’s its most admirable element. Big budget games like God Of War might get all the awards but as has been the case for a long time, all the best stories are told by indie developers.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £11.99
Publisher: Raw Fury
Developer: Geography of Robots
Release Date: 17th November 2022
Age Rating: 16

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GameCentral continues its look back at some of the year’s best indie games, with what is one of the best narrative adventures of 2022.