Reader reviews for NORCO

An entertaining Visual Novel/Adventure/RPG mixture with fitting old school graphics in an fascinating dystopian world. Some extra weirdness added to set it apart from many of the vanilla sci-fi adventures out there, plus some occasionally thrown in humorous dialogues to spice it up further. Pretty unique on its own, but like said, Primordia and the Steel Sky games are the most comparable titles that spontaneously come to mind, also authors like Michael Swanwick.
The Visual Novel part predominates, so don’t expect many puzzles. There are under a dozen I’d say, but those puzzles and minigames offer some variety to a genre I usually find way too generic (Visual Novels). As for the RPG part; there are a couple of turn-based battles, but nothing overly challenging.
All in all a fun ride for about 7-8 hours. Looking forward to see more from the developer team in the future - maybe with a bit more gameplay.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Just Right

Norco is a visually appealing game with some great music and an immersive atmosphere, but ultimately it’s barely more than a slideshow with text.

I found it quite immersive to begin with and decided to push through the reams of text, but the absence of vocals and limited animation left me feeling quite flat.

It’s difficult to tell if and to what degree the player choices affect the outcome of the game and while the story starts out quite intriguing, it gets more convoluted and less interesting as it drags on.

I found myself sitting there, mindlessly clicking the mouse button, desperately craving some interaction. And yet the minigames are so utterly basic and tedious I just wanted to get them out of the way.

As nice as the visuals and music are, I think I’d rather just sit back and read a book.

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Time Played: 2-5 hours
Difficulty: Just Right