GamesAdventureThe developer of exceptional 2022 sci-fi adventure Norco is following it up with a ‘narrative micro-adventure’ about an android exploring an AI-haunted oil refineryWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesAdventureThe developer of exceptional 2022 sci-fi adventure Norco is following it up with a ‘narrative micro-adventure’ about an android exploring an AI-haunted oil refineryWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
We absolutely lovedNorco, the haunting 2022 southern gothic cyberpunk point and click adventure, so we’ve been eager to see what would come next from developer Geography of Robots. Now we know:Silenuslooks to be a smaller-scale, but no less striking adventure, and its free demo comes with a funky tie-in to a Louisanna metal band that supplied some of Norco’s music.
Silenus casts you as some kind of android exploring an abandoned oil refinery—the installation’s shadowy new owners have laid everyone off in the name of AI automation, with strange missives from management and surreal new workplace initiatives (like mandatory dance breaks for the now-nearly nonexistent staff) implying something more sinister is afoot. We’re hitting some familiar Norco themes—the metal titans of fossil fuel extraction carving up the coast, vaguely threatening yet absurd transhumanism, the crushing boot of capital flattening all—but from a fresh new angle. I can dig it
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(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
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(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
(Image credit: Geography of Robots)
And then there’s the music tie-in: Doom metal bandThou’s latest album,Umbilical, has been released 11 days early through Silenus' demo. You can pick up individual tracks as items in the world—I found one as a puzzle reward in my short sampling of the demo—and you can listen to them in a separate menu.
It’s my kind of music, and also a delightful, incongruously whimsical way of releasing an album given how inherently grim both doom metal and mournful sci-fi adventure games about the gulf coast are. This is also not the first time we’ve seen a nice indie game/alt music release tie-in like this: last year,Health released a new single through the boomer shooter, Ultrakill.
Geography of Robots says it will keep Silenus' demo up for two to three weeks following the release of Umbilical on May 31. The full game has no set release date, but you can check out the demo for yourself and wishlist onSteam. If you haven’t yet played Norco, you’re in luck: that particular adventure game heateris just $6 on Steamuntil May 23.
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