Norco (stylized as NORCO) is a Southern Gothic Point-and-Click Adventure Game with Cyberpunk elements, developed by indie developer Geography of Robots and published by Raw Fury in March 2022.
The game places you in the shoes of Kay, a young woman who is forced to return home to her childhood neighborhood Norco, a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana, when her mother, Catherine, passes away from liver cancer. Not long after her return, Kay makes some troubling discoveries: her younger brother, Blake, has gone missing, and prior to her death, her mother was doing some undisclosed research for a mysterious client. The two mysteries seem to be interconnected somehow, and so Kay sets out to get to the bottom of both.
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: Catherine's half of the game involves her running errands for Superduck to make some money for her children before her cancer claims her. This ends up being disastrous for both parties - her cancer was in remission but came back with a vengeance due to the latent radiation around Superduck, killing her weeks later, and the Orb she claimed for Superduck ultimately overloads and destroys the network. Adding insult to injury, she was paid in Superduck's personal cryptocurrency, which was never spent and then rendered worthless by the network's destruction.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Versioning centers are used to create digital replicas, or "forks", of existing persons, allegedly to bring people some comfort after the loss of a loved one. In practice, the AI that results is often glitchy, fragmented, or even psychologically unhinged as a result of being a copy of a person in a non-physical body. This is particularly notable in the case of Superduck, a particularly boastful and callous fork who's set his sights on expanding himself into nodes across the country. He even calls himself Superduck specifically to screw with his original self, Duck.
- Animalistic Abomination: Superduck
- Beware the Silly Ones: Various goofy side characters quickly prove themselves to be far more dangerous than they initially seem.
- The Garretts. A Scam Religion catering to lazy, disaffected teens who just want an excuse to get high and play video games. They're also happy to use the power of numbers to harass locals and take over territories for themselves. Also, they're also the ones who kidnapped Blake.
- Pawpaw the Ditch Man. A strange, hyper-religious vagrant who playfully teases the nicer Garretts and seems to genuinely care for Catherine and her children. He's also a violent Blood Knight who locked a Garrett in a vase for an undetermined amount of time, stalked Kay and Catherine across the country, and repeatedly threatens to kill Kenner John in horrifying fashions. A promise he commits to, upon which he takes over the Garretts for himself and cements himself as the Big Bad.
- Lucky's a friendly, bearded hunter who bears no ill-will to anyone and just wants to spend his days playing with his dog. He's also a fugitive on the run for his regular attacks against the Shield Refinery and easily decimates two robot guards that both Kay and Million struggle to fight off.Lucky: Lucky ain't in nobody's way. Everybody like Lucky just fine.
Kay: Didn't you blow up an oil pipeline?
Lucky: Lucky done blown up all kinds of shit.
- Big Bad: Pawpaw, the Ditch Man. Its suggested he was the one who manipulated the Garretts to kidnap Blake. He ultimately decapitates Kenner John to take over the cult for himself, directing them to new violent ends. His persistent stalking of Kay's family is all to fulfill his demented belief that they are descendants of Christ who can lead him to a new life in the stars.
- The Big Bad Shuffle: Several different factions attempt to make plays to take over the Norco environment and take the Something In the Lake/the Orb for themselves.
- The Shield Refinery, run by Laura Saint Claire, owns almost the entire Norco area and economy, and has acted in opposition to Catherine's research for years. They have ample reason to have kidnapped Blake and LeBlanc confirms that they robbed Catherine's home after her death. Ultimately, the company's investors consider Laura's hunt for the Orb to be a waste of a resources. She commits suicide merely hours before she's forced out of the company. Her father's attempt to steal the Orb through Million also fails, leaving him irrelevant to the remainder of the story.
- Superduck. A malicious virus built from a copy of Duck's brain, who's gradually expanded his network across the state. He's hired various forces including Catherine herself to find whatever was in the lake and use it to build his own power. After eating the Orb, the entire network malfunctions and he's left an irradiated husk in the lake.
- Kenner John's cult of Garretts. Seemingly harmless geeks, their expert knowledge on the bayous allowed them to snatch the Something In the Lake faster than the other factions, all to propel John's claims of divinity. After John is murdered by Pawpaw, they quickly splinter into factions and in-fighting.
- Brick Joke: During the Catherine sections, Catherine has the chance to meet the father of one of the Garretts (identified as Bruce in the game), and can record the man pleading for his son to come home. Catherine never meets Bruce to deliver the message before she dies. Kay later inherits Catherine's phone and, provided she has not deleted that recording, finally has the chance to play it to Bruce in the finale.
- Captain Oblivious: Kay's brother, Blake, is often distracted by his near-constant browsing of the Internet. To wit, when his and Kay's grandmother observed Blake glued to a tablet, she remarked that Blake was too oblivious to ever amount to anything in life. Kay thought it was really hurtful thing to say about your own grandchild, and asked Blake if it didn't make him upset that grandma talked about him like that. A confused Blake just looked up from the tablet and asked her if grandma had said anything.
- Disappeared Dad: Kay and Blake's father, Blue, disappeared from their lives pretty early on. When thinking about him, Kay admits that he is only a distant memory to her.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Kay has a chance to experience a vision of whatever awaits the cast after the game's climax. After escaping Norco, Kay will once again abandon her brother and return to her wanderings across the nation. If rescued, Blake will settle in Salt Lake City and eke out a form of independence for himself.
- Dying Alone: Kay was out traveling, when Catherine fell deadly ill, and thus missed her death. Blake, somewhat ashamed, admits to her that he wasn't there either when Catherine drew her last breath.Alone with the morphine drip and the rattling glass. That's how Catherine died.
- Fallen States of America: Downplayed. While a Federal US Government still explicitly exists, its de facto control over much of the country, and the South in particular, has been severely diminished. It is no longer in any state to maintain infrastructure, and as such it's effectively not recognized outside of urban centers, which is left to the control of local homegrown militias.
- The Food Poisoning Incident: Catherine can help a hot dog vendor unload some very dubious meat on the French Quarter. You can later meet the victim and press him into re-telling a very embarrassing story about the aftermath.
- Funny Background Event: When Catherine is using an augmented reality app to learn about Kenner John, while scanning in the drainage ditch, Pawpaw will casually slide into frame and interrupt her.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Kay has her trusty companion, Monkey, though he is a bit of a twist on the trope, having elements of a Creepy Doll with his Thousand-Yard Stare.
- Manchurian Agent: Million was intentionally sent to Catherine to spy on her research. Million is aware of this, but has no control over her actions once "the hunter" decides to exert its power.
- Mental World: Kay's "Mindmap", which includes a gallery of the places and people she has encounter along the way. It can be accessed at any time by the player, giving them some more background on Kay and her life.
- Retro Universe: Norco is stylized in a way that resembles the "Neon Noir" of The '80s, such as Thief, Manhunter, and Blade Runner.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: A group of them will show up looking to avenge Kenner John in the finale, and Kay must trick them into shooting an insane Garrett in order to access the rocket ship.
- Robot Buddy: Million is a security android that decided to abandon her post, rendering her a fugitive. Kay's mother took her in, and she has remained an unofficial member of the family ever since, spending the time she isn't in stasis repairing stuff around the house.
- Shout-Out: Early in the game, Kay can encounter a film crew shooting what is clearly meant as a parody of True Detective. She can troll them by feeding the director nonsense lines as local flavor.
- "Simon Says" Mini-Game: In order to "recruit" Monkey, Kay has to pass a short one in order to meet his Thousand-Yard Stare. It later gets expanded on, as you get to use Monkey in battles with other characters, and his "battle phase" requires to complete another short round of "Simon Says" to boost his attack.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Private Investigator Brett LeBlanc is perpetually convinced everyone's thinking about him. He's fully convinced that Catherine secretly loved him, even if Kay asserts that she never mentioned him. His first response to hearing that an old friend died in a shoot-out is to wonder if the friend did it "because he was mad at me." He also repeatedly insists that he could have easily fought off any of the threats that appear in the story, despite neglecting to put in the actual work to actually help out. His boasting does prove to be somewhat warranted when he sobers up and joins Kay's party as her new heaviest hitter in Act 3.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Pawpaw the Ditch Man speaks almost entirely in religious tones, but will happily slip into cruder insults or slights just to piss off the Garretts or their leader Kenner John.Kenner John: Your vanity is blasphemous.
- The Unfavorite: Due to his quiet and somewhat oblivious nature as a child, Blake was frequently looked down upon by his family. Kay's feelings about him are apathetic at best and dislike at worst. It's part of why she had no second thoughts about leaving him behind to drift across the US even when he asked her to stay. If she manages save him at the end of the game, she ditches him a second time to continue her wandering.
- Walking the Earth: What Kay did prior to the beginning of the story. She wandered around for a while in the collapsing United States, and as such, she knows quite a bit about what goes on in the hinterland of Louisiana and beyond. If she escapes, she will resume doing this.
- You Killed My Father: The Ditch Man turns out to be responsible for the explosion that killed Kay's father. Subverted in that while Kay alone can thwart his plan, killing him, it seems, may not ever be an option.
- It's also possible to find out that Kay's mother's cancer was in remission during the flashbacks and that exposure to a Superduck node brought it back and ultimately killed her. Also subverted in that he was already doomed to die by the time Kay retrieves the Orb that was killing him.
