NORCO is a 2022 point-and-click adventure video game released on March 24, 2022 for macOS and Microsoft Windows. [1] The game is set in a different version of Norco, Louisiana. The game won the inaugural Tribeca Games Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, prior to its formal release.
Premise and setting
The game takes place in an alternate version of Norco, Louisiana, as well as other parts of the state around New Orleans. [3] The game follows Kay, a woman who has returned to Norco following the death of her mother. [4] The game's creator goes by the alias Yuts, which is derived from his grandfather's nickname. [5] Yuts spent his childhood and a portion of his adulthood in Norco. [3] Yuts was "frightened yet transfixed" as a child by the landscape in and around Norco, which has been shaped by the petroleum industry and is home to a major Shell facility that has twice been destroyed by catastrophic explosions.
Development
The game evolved from Yuts and a friend's 2015 multimedia documentary project. [5] The project, which included writing, interviews, and audio-visual elements, focused on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana and its landscape. [5] In addition to Yuts, members of the Geography of Robots development team include Yuts' sister, Aaron Gray, Jesse Jacobi, and pseudonymous musicians fmAura and Gewgawly I. [5] A side-scrolling game in which a robot attempts to enter a refinery in Norco was part of the multimedia project; this game became NORCO, and the first version of the current game was created in 2016. [5] The game was created in the pixel art style by Yuts and Geography of Robots. [3] Yuts learned how to draw the illustrations through internet research.
Gewgawly Yuts' first collaborator was me. [4] Gewgawly I and fmAura collaborated on the soundtrack for the game, attempting to "capture the...mood and ambience" of the River Parishes. [4] The game incorporates field recordings taken around Baton Rouge by a friend of the development team, Matt Carney. [4]
Raw Fury has agreed to release the game in 2020.
[5] Yuts has stated that NORCO will be the first in a trilogy. [6]
Influences
The games Déjà Vu and Snatcher had direct influences on NORCO. [7] Yuts was also influenced by the Final Fantasy series' fictional city Midgar. [8] He has stated that Midgar, a highly stratified city under the control of a power company, provided him with a "framework for understanding how both industry and industrial disaster [sic] are distributed across society." [8] Mike Davis has been cited as an influence by Yuts, who previously worked for the city of New Orleans doing GIS work. [3] Davis, a Marxist scholar and critical geographer, frequently writes about how environmental and social issues intersect.
Reception
Critical reception
Critics gave the game positive reviews. [12] [13] The game received "generally favourable reviews," according to review aggregator Metacritic, and received a consensus 88/100 rating. The game's art was praised. Kyle LeClair described the art as "impressive," particularly the "variety of detail." In a Destructoid article, Noelle Warner wrote that the game's "visuals [were] often gorgeous," but that they could also look "ugly and grotesque" in a way that helped convey the game's message. Warner went on to say that the "risks" the game took with its art "paid off."
NORCO's writing, like the game's art, was praised by critics. [12] [13] Khee Hoon Chan, writing for The Gamer, described the writing as "impeccable" and "accentuated" by abrupt narrative turns. [12] In a review for Kotaku, John Walker echoed this sentiment, calling the game's writing "the brightest...embracing that magical realism theme, often poetic, yet stark and pessimistic." [13]
Critics have compared NORCO to the role-playing video game Disco Elysium[16] and the point-and-click adventure game Kentucky Route Zero.
In a Eurogamer review, Chris Tapsell criticised NORCO for being "overwritten, in places, in the same way Kentucky Route Zero or Disco Elysium could be.
Awards and accolades
Before its official release in 2021, the game received the inaugural Tribeca Games Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. [22] NORCO won the Long Feature award at the Berlin A MAZE festival in 2022.
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