My 100 Video Game Challenge (2024) #26: NORCO

Played on: Xbox Series X, PC

NORCO is another game that I discovered by chance, via the 'Leaving Soon' section of Xbox Game Pass. I'd never heard of it before, but was nonetheless drawn in by its claim of being a throwback point-and-click adventure game with a brooding presentation, and themes of existential dread. It sounded a bit heavy to me, but the point-and-click adventure style was enough to sell me, so I took a chance on it. After all, I didn't want to miss a potential hidden gem in a genre that I very much enjoy.

As it turns out, this was a very good call on my part. NORCO is a brilliant indie game that I'm amazed no one is talking about. It's not only an excellent modern point-and-click adventure game, but also tells one of the most complex and impressive storylines that I've seen out of the genre to date!

Even more interesting is the fact that NORCO apparently originated as a film documentary about environmental concerns in Louisiana, only to eventually make a radical evolution into a fictional video game. Somewhere along the way, it changed into a near-future, dystopian tale about an unfortunate Louisiana family getting caught between the all-powerful reach of a petroleum mega-corporation, and an eccentric fringe Christian cult determined to leave Earth and find a new paradise out in space.

Needless to say, NORCO is filled with hard-hitting allegories about the ongoing issue of climate change, the destructive influence of unchecked capitalism, and how blind faith in a perceived saviour, especially through religious dogma, will only empower and accelerate the very forces that said dogma has declared an enemy. It is indeed a very heavy game, and also a very dark game, ultimately adding up to a predictably bleak conclusion.

Yet despite that however, NORCO also succeeds by presenting an effectively twisted sense of humour, somehow finding the light side in so much scary, cynical commentary. Some of the game's achievements in particular are incredibly funny, and deviously hidden to great effect. These include finding a way to buy drugs from Santa Claus, encouraging a P.I. ally to wear clown makeup, petting a robot cat so relentlessly that it rockets through the ceiling and disappears, or listening to someone's entire account of you tricking them into eating rotten meat that subsequently gave them violent diarrhea, among other examples. As depressing as NORCO can often be, I was surprised at just how much it also made me laugh out loud at some of the bleakest parts of the human condition. Infinite Jest would be proud.

The storytelling and writing throughout NORCO is dense, sometimes a little too dense, though its gameplay is remarkably simple. The game's premise involves Kay, a 23-year-old woman in the near future, returning to her hometown of Norco, Louisiana shortly after the death of her mother, Catherine (whom you sometimes control in extended flashback sequences), only to discover that her brother, Blake is missing. Teaming up with household robot, Million, and potentially a faithful stuffed monkey, Kay undertakes a mission to discover where Blake vanished to, and unsurprisingly, this quest ends up being much more complicated than Kay could ever have anticipated.

Exploration in NORCO is done in classic point-and-click style, with players moving a cursor to interact with objects, utilizing a handful of essential items to occasionally solve puzzles, and open paths forward. Players can also retain information from branching dialogue paths, which gradually unlocks part of your 'Mind Map', a mental account of the story through Kay's memories, which players can access whenever they need extra insight into NORCO's lore, or sometimes to put together the path to a new location.

Most unexpected throughout NORCO as well is that the game has a few instances of turn-based, RPG-style combat, despite there being no RPG elements or character customization in the game. When players are attacked by enemies, they can choose characters that will activate simple minigames, either memory matching or timed clicking, in order to damage enemies, and eventually defeat them. It's an interesting idea, though it does feel a little bit pointless when characters can't level up, or undergo any customization. This leaves battles mostly devoid of real strategy, and it seems that developer, Geography of Robots agreed, since NORCO contains an option to just have characters proceed through battles automatically, without player input.

It's a nice indication of how good a game NORCO is when its worst elements seem to be having too much of a good thing, rather than not enough. Even when NORCO threatens to be tedious, there are often ways to bypass its less enjoyable elements, i.e. combat. Beyond that, most of the game's puzzles and explorations are straightforward, and rarely difficult to get a handle on. A few navigation puzzles might require some note-taking, and paying close attention to some rather heavy chunks of dialogue, but all in all, point-and-click adventure game fans will find that NORCO strikes a perfect balance between feeling challenging enough to satisfy, without ever truly descending into obtuse genre moonlogic. That's very impressive when one can so easily witness how utterly, proudly weird NORCO often is as well.

This being a point-and-click adventure game, you can imagine that NORCO plays a little differently on PC compared to console as well. NORCO even originated as a PC-exclusive game to boot, later expanding to PlayStation and Xbox consoles about eight months after its initial release on Steam. So, the Xbox Series X version that I initially played was actually a belated port, and while it handled fine, looking, sounding and playing pretty well, the sluggish cursor movement on Xbox did make that version feel just a tad compromised compared to its PC progenitor.

Fortunately, NORCO was being sold for cheap on Steam around the same time that I discovered it on Xbox, so I bought the PC version to keep after finishing the Xbox version, simply because I enjoyed the game so much. Disappointingly, this initial PC version of NORCO doesn't support Steam Cloud capability for some reason, so I couldn't take my save files on the go via my Steam Deck, but that's okay; NORCO plays pretty much identically on Steam Deck as it does on Xbox Series X, only with a diminished, handheld-friendly resolution. So, I ended up playing through the entire PC version on my laptop, with a mouse, and I have to say that this is far and away the best way to play NORCO. The mouse movement was so much smoother and more responsive, and this made navigation, along with a few puzzles, much more comfortable and more intuitive on PC compared to Xbox. There's certainly nothing overtly wrong with the Xbox Series X build of NORCO, and it's still a great game on console, but if given the choice, I'd most recommend playing NORCO on PC. The game was clearly designed around mouse movement, plus the PC version's healthy suite of customization options make it the most complete and flexible way to experience NORCO by a significant margin.

It says a lot that I've been on something of a point-and-click adventure game bender in 2024, and even after diving into so many classics from LucasArts and the like, NORCO still stands as one of the most impressive point-and-click adventure games I've ever played, in terms of gameplay, narrative and presentation. Its intentional throwback look, making it emulate the pixel-driven style of classic Sierra-made games from the 90's, only with a dirtier, seedier filter to the character and world design, is icing on the cake for genre fans, making NORCO an excellent coming together of old and new.

If you like point-and-click adventure games at all, or even just games with fantastic, memorably dark storylines, NORCO is required playing. This is a great showcase for how brand new point-and-click adventure game properties can translate into the modern era, without simply recycling point-and-click IP's from the past, like Monkey Island or Sam & Max (maybe I should give those a look for the first time this year). I'm so glad that I took a chance on this game, and while its storytelling is a lot, NORCO is otherwise the whole package when it comes to making you think and feel quite a lot, without sacrificing genuine appeal across its gameplay and mechanics.

This may just be my favourite modern point-and-click adventure game, and it joins Grim Fandango as one of my all-time favourites in the PC-style adventure genre. Not bad at all for a game that was originally supposed to be a glorified student documentary!

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 9/10