In “Norco,” a sci-fi, point-and-click journey sport, gamers will “encounter rogue androids, sentient ecological networks, ghostly swamp lights and other supernatural elements,” writes Emily Price in The Washington Post’s overview of the sport. 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 model of the real-life city of Norco, Louisiana, and, regardless of being a fictional story, the sport “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 air pollution mixed with the supernatural dropped at thoughts style touchstones reminiscent of “Kentucky Route Zero” and the NieR sequence, Price writes. But the sport’s major achievements are its specificity, texture and complexity. The end result, Price writes, is a “robotic story, disturbing, personal and fresh, [and] an experience that should not be missed.”