A weird, unsettling, sci-fi noir point-and-click adventure game set in and around a small Louisiana town largely overtaken by a sprawling oil refinery. It’s a ghost story of sorts, with your character retracing the footsteps of her recently-passed mother, learning about the questions that she had been seeking answers to in her final days. I was blown away by the writing and the presentation from minute one (seriously, the vibes in the intro are immaculate), and it didn’t let up from there.
While it initially reminded me somewhat of Kentucky Route Zero, which is also a surreal adventure game set in the American South with a fixation on the damage wrought by capitalism, NORCO feels rawer, grimier, more cynical. It’s the kind of game where you’ll beat up a gas station attendant so you can access the self-service kiosk that’s replaced him, where you’ll do the bidding of an insane AI via its own gig economy app so you can get enough cryptocurrency to afford a rideshare to the next town over. There are conspiracies and cults, but what I remember most was the old man who told me that he risked being charged with trespassing every time he stepped outside of his own home ever since the oil company bought out the rest of the neighborhood. Just a fantastic experience from beginning to end.