The game’s absolutely stunning art would’ve made Norco a shoe-in for a The Art Of... feature too


Those real-life elements of Norco are seen directly in the game. Just as in the real Norco, much of the game’s world and narrative is dominated by the oil refinery from which the area’s name is derived – from the New Orleans Refining Company. In fact, the oil refinery explosion that killed Kay’s father when she was a child is based on a real event, the 1988 Shell Refinery Explosion. The incident took place just blocks away from the developer’s childhood home, forcing them to evacuate. And just as in the real Norco, the region is prone to frequent flooding – Kay’s family home has flooded. It will flood again. One day her home will be gone. While Norco aims to depict the region itself more than any singular perspective, it’s a personal enough story that the developer goes by the pseudonym Yuts, due to some of the more autobiographical details in the game. It is, after all, Yuts’ close ties with Norco that drove him to develop the game in the first place.


PRESERVING A CULTURE “Growing up in the community between Norco and New Orleans, I had such a tight community there,” says Yuts. “Everything that I could ever need socially


May 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 57


and communally was concentrated in that corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. “And over time, various things happened. Katrina happened and displaced people, a lot of my friends and family members moved away and never came back. And then consecutive other flood events occurred, and that displaced more people, and slowly


Norco might be grounded in real-world concerns, but you still get to have a fun android pal, which is nice


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