You know when you're having one of those fever dreams where everything makes perfect sense until you wake up and realize you've been chatting with your nan who's transformed into a robot pelican? That's NORCO for you, except it actually makes sense... sort of.

The story follows the Madère family, and if there's anything more uncomfortable than a family reunion, it's a family reunion in a dystopian Louisiana where robots are having existential crises in rising floodwaters. There's this brilliant bit where a robot starts pondering about glass stars being someone's eyes – proper philosophical stuff, this. It's like that time I watched my cat stare at its reflection for three hours, except the cat wasn't questioning its existence in beautifully written prose.

The art in this game, bloody hell. It's gorgeous in the same way a car crash is gorgeous – you know you shouldn't stare, but you can't help yourself. The developers have managed to make industrial apocalypse look like a coffee table book you'd find in a hipster café in Shoreditch. And the music? It's like someone took the soundtrack of True Detective, fed it through a synthesizer, and let it marinate in a vat of industrial waste – in the best possible way, mind you.

Let me tell you a joke: What do you get when you cross environmental devastation, family drama, and internet culture gone wrong? No, not Twitter – you get NORCO. The game's got these incel characters that are so spot-on it's frightening. It's like they've taken every Reddit thread that's gone horribly wrong and turned it into an actual character. Brilliant.

Every location, every character, every bizarre moment has its roots in reality. It's like they've taken the real world, thrown it in a blender with some tech noir and local folklore, and somehow made it more real than reality itself.

Look, I've played a lot of games that try to "say something." Most of them are about as subtle as a brick to the face, and about as deep as a puddle in a drought. But NORCO? It's different. It's like finding a philosopher in a pub who's actually talking sense – rare, beautiful, and probably a bit dangerous.

To the Madère family and to Norco itself: here's a game that gets you. It's weird, it's wonderful, and it's probably going to give me nightmares for weeks. But like all the best nightmares, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go stare at an oil refinery and contemplate my existence.

i really enjoyed this! an interesting story with characters i cared about paired with beautiful artwork and a banger soundtrack, pulled me out of my current never-ending burnout for now :) i laughed and i cried, i enjoyed the puzzles and mini-games, i got heated about people thinking that something not being up their alley warrants leaving a negative review........... :)
very glad this game exists and will be returning to achievement hunt o7
if you like disco elysium you will probably like this ^-^

good story based game