To all our incredible friends, supporters, and fellow travellers, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for joining us on this ride. Your passion, feedback and enthusiasm have been a gift.
Reflecting on the past two years, we've seen NORCO evolve and grow in ways we couldn't have anticipated. It also sent us into a bit of nostalgic reflection, remembering how Geography of Robots and Raw Fury got together in the first place, leading to the game's publication. It all started here:
Here's to two more years of patches 😁 Much love,
Geography of Robots & Raw Fury
NORCO X Steam Spring Sale
Dive into award-winning adventure NORCO: discounted at 50% Off during Steam Spring Sale!
Explore the haunting landscapes of Louisiana, uncover dark secrets, experience gripping narrative and immerse yourself in stunning art.
Get your discounted copy now!
NORCO LudoNarraCon Stream!
NORCO is part of LudoNarraCon, a celebration of all games with a heavy narrative focus, this we will celebrate with a nice and simple gameplay stream!
NORCO 1.4.5 Update - Steam Deck Verification & More
Hello! We spent the past few weeks making NORCO Steam Deck verified. It's been compatible for a while, but in order to receive full verification, we made some slight UI modifications to support a 16x10 screen resolution. For now, this resolution is only supported on Steam Deck, but we'll make it available across all platforms in the future.
As always, we deeply appreciate the feedback and bug reports that we receive. Because of this community's help, the game has been able to grow and mature since its release. With a team as small as ours, the kind of support you've all shown is invaluable.
The best way to report issues and ensure that they get addressed in future patches is to use the bug reporting form available through Raw Fury's online portal: https://rawfury.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/1 Below are some additional updates and improvements included in the 1.4.5 patch, many of them in response to your reports.
1.4.5 Changelog
Fix "screen flip" bug that occurs if a player simultaneously presses the dive and zoom buttons in the lake.
Fix bug that causes the phone to disappear during choice selections when using the head drive app.
Fix bug preventing controller input after engaging with the pigman hotspot in the lake.
Make input diagram fade from the screen when any button is pressed.
Fix attribution of "Templars in Acadiana" by Wilbur Stiles, which was mistakenly listed as "Templars in Louisiana" in the credits.
Edit script for brevity and clarity, and to address typos in Acts II & III.
Adjust the boat collision sensitivity during the puppet show and lake sequences.
Support 16x10 screen resolution for Steam Deck.
Reset/readjust UI on screen ratio change (this triggers when docking a Steam Deck).
With abundant gratitude, Yuts
Catch NORCO at the Dice Awards and on sale during Steam's Mystery Fest!
We're excited to announce that NORCO has been nominated for not one but TWO categories in the 26th Annual Dice Awards! Outstanding Achievement in Story & Adventure Game of the Year. It's up against some fantastic games this year, and we hope you can join the show live tonight over at IGN to cheer us on!
As an extra exciting tidbit, NORCO is part of the Steam Mystery Fest Sale! Grab a copy for yourself (or if you finish the game and feel like you must have everyone share your experience, get it for friends, too!) on Steam for -45% off!
HELLO! We wanted to do a quick year-end review. A lot’s happened since the game came out in March. Reviews, bugs, interviews, podcasts, patches, vinyl pressing, prints... We're going to forget some stuff, but here's an attempt at a recap.
RELEASE & RECEPTION
We released the game on March 24th. It feels like multiple years ago at this point. Anxiety was high. Being a neurotic group, we chalked the Tribeca win up to a strange fluke, and were confident that NORCO would get shredded by critics and reviewers. We went in prepared for this inevitability, armed only with our personal love and respect for what we created. We were floored by the positive reception from players as well as from Kotaku, PC Gamer, Vice, Polygon, and other outlets. It's been a source of energy and inspiration for the past several months as we move through updates, bugs, and porting.
PATCHES & NEW FEATURES
We’ve also received our share of helpful criticism. We've done our best to address what we can. We’ve added the ability to automate combat encounters in the game, provided an “expert mode” for eliminating signposting for more challenging puzzles, made various edits to pieces of the script that were undercooked or too verbose, added full gamepad support & a “chapter select” menu, improved performance, and more. You can always check the latest patch notes here.
SOUNDTRACK
Not long after launch, the record label Sacred Bones released the NORCO OST as a split with our dear friends Thou. We’d been discussing some kind of collaboration with them for a while, and were thrilled for it to finally materialize. The split features extra material, an album's worth of original Thou tracks, and sleeves that double as pixel art prints.
INTERVIEWS, WRITTEN REFLECTIONS & VIDEO ESSAYS
Following the release, I spoke to a number of outlets, including WWNO, Polygon, Gaming in the Wild, and Waypoint. By the summer, I’d gotten a little tired of hearing myself talk and decided to step back from interviews, but those early conversations were extremely valuable in setting the right context for players to understand the game – its origins, intentions, and how it relates to other regional media. I’m forever grateful for those opportunities.
Youtube creators shared several thoughtful and in-depth video essays about NORCO, such as this one by RagnaRox that brilliantly communicates the spirit of the game:
That Dang Dad also reflects on the game’s relationship to oil and climate, and The Svamp King uses hauntological elements of the game as a springboard for discussing lost and alternative futures.
CONSOLE PORTING
This ended up being more of a job than we anticipated, but as of early December, we’re very happy to be on the other side of it. A lot of the technical debt that we accumulated in the lead-up to release came back to haunt us.
One lesson I learned throughout all of this: avoid crunch at all costs. Not only does it ruin your mental health and your morale, but it leads to messy code that you’ll have to fix in the end. After a couple of big refactors, the code is in a much better place. The 1.4.4 patch should be running more smoothly than 1.4.3 on lower-performance machines. This difference is particularly noticeable on PS4 but should benefit Steam Deck players as well.
We also implemented full controller support for a more console-native experience. You can use the d-pad to navigate discretely, and there are various shortcuts to make navigation and selection easier. This video goes over a few of them:
END-OF-THE-YEAR RECOGNITION & PRINTS
We’ve received a lot of love the past couple months, and I know I’m repeating myself, but we truly are deeply grateful. NORCO’s not perfect, and we have a lot to learn as first-time devs. But the fact that so many of you believe in and support this experiment means everything. We owe it to those who have helped and supported us to express both our pride and our gratitude.
We were excited to learn that we were nominated for the category of Best Debut Indie at The Game Awards alongside Stray, Neon White, Tunic, and Vampire Survivors.
We also ended up on several end-of-the-year lists:
Another welcome development to bookend the year was Lost in Cult’s limited run of NORCO prints of Jesse Jacobi’s handpainted key art. Many people have requested these, but it’s been hard to find the time to order and ship them, so it’s massively appreciated. You can order them here through February.
THANK YOU!
While we still have a few patches and features in store for NORCO, we’ll begin focusing on new things. Future projects are certain to carry many of NORCO’s themes forward. We’ll have more to share on that soon.
One last time: thank you, thank you, thank you for sticking with us. We are extremely lucky to have the kind of thoughtful, considerate, and supportive community that we do. It’s an honor.
More soon! - Yuts
Vote for NORCO at the Game Awards!
The awards season is in full swing, and fans, we have one we'd love to get your votes for!
From Geography of Robots and Raw Fury, we'd love to have your vote. Wish us luck, and have a great awards night.
Nominate NORCO for the Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award!
Thank you to everyone who's supported us from NORCO's release until now. If there's anything we've learned, our story has touched your lives, and we believe NORCO is worth a nomination to the Steam Awards.
Time is short; nominations end tomorrow, so click that button and throw your vote our way.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.
NORCO 1.3.7
NORCO 1.3.7 Note: 1.3.7 will be available for Mac next week.
- Resolve bug introduced in 1.3.5 that was causing difficulty when players attempted to record a voice memo during a dialogue session. - Update localization to reflect minor dialogue edits in 1.3.5. - Adjust vehicle animation speeds at mall canal. - Add timestamps to saves. - Fix scroll wheel in bedroom computer.
NORCO 1.3.6 Patch Notes
1.3.6
CHANGES: - Fix various auto combat bugs. - Edit Act 1 dialogue for brevity & clarity. - Color adjust several scenes. - Also includes 1.3.5 updates for non-steam-pc builds.
KNOWN ISSUES: - Minor edits to the Act 1 dialogue needs to be re-localized. We'll have these changes reflected in all languages in a new patch next week. - We found a bug that was introduced in 1.3.5 or earlier: the mouse scroll wheel isn't working in the bedroom computer scene. Holding and dragging to scroll still works. We'll address this asap.
