In “Norco,” a sci-fi, point-and-click adventure game, players will “encounter rogue androids, sentient ecological networks, ghostly swamp lights and other supernatural elements,” writes Emily Price in The Washington Post’s review of the game. But “the main antagonist is all the more horrifying for its mundanity: ‘Norco’s’ villain is the company, the boss and the bottom line, and its greatest threats are directly born of the environmental damage that those have caused.”
It’s set in a dystopian version of the real-life town of Norco, Louisiana, and, despite being a fictional tale, the game “is in equal measure a loving and brutally honest portrait of the struggles of the people who live there.” “Norco’s” themes of man-made pollution combined with the supernatural brought to mind genre touchstones such as “Kentucky Route Zero” and the NieR series, Price writes. But the game’s primary achievements are its specificity, texture and complexity. The result, Price writes, is a “robotic story, disturbing, personal and fresh, [and] an experience that should not be missed.”
