Norco is a story about returning to Louisiana to find that everything is the same and is changing in frightening ways. The point-and-click adventure begins with Kay learning of the death of her mother Catherine, so she returns to her childhood home to meet her brother Blake and settle her affairs. Things quickly spiral out of control when Blake goes missing, and you discover that Catherine was clearly involved in some shady corporate scheme. It’s up to you to uncover the truth.
The story of Norco is quite complex and combines elements of science fiction and mystery. The game jumps between past and present, and there’s a whole cast of eccentric locals. The player must explore his hometown of Norco, solve environmental puzzles and elicit information from the residents via dialogue trees. Fortunately, the game has a good tool that helps me remember the finer details between locations: the mind map.
Kay’s mind map starts very small and focuses on a few key facts. It looks like a web of connected symbols and can be accessed at any time while I’m playing Kay. If I click on one of the symbols, a conversation arises between me and thoughts on the topic, I can click through the dialogues. When I think about family or friends in my mind map, I can sometimes make simple decisions: How do I remember this person? In what context do I see them? Other characters hover at the periphery of my mind map, out of reach but always present.
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Image: Geography by Robots/Raw Fury via Polygon
As I move around town and talk to people, things expand and more symbols are added to the increasingly convoluted web. I remember a childhood friend of my mother’s; his face begins as an indistinct patch but eventually becomes sharp. I think of the city, my mother’s projects, old friends and new enemies. I can always check my mind map to remember things; It’s a natural way to get a synopsis before diving back into the action and a tool to help me solve puzzles as I progress through the story.
The mind map also makes the pacing of the game feel much more natural. Norco is a linear game that moves fairly quickly, and I barely have time to take in the fact that my mother passed before I have to deal with the loose ends of her legacy. In a matter of hours, I escalated from ransacking my childhood bedroom to sophisticated acts of industrial espionage. The mind map is a good way to take time to process what happened, even if the story is moving in one fast clip.
Kay encounters ideas and people in the world, sure, but I have to make an effort to internalize it all by going through the mind map trees. It’s a nice touch to a great narrative; Even when it’s fast, I never feel rushed or lost. Norco does a lot of things right, and one of them keeps encouraging Kay to stop and think.
