Your mother is dead. After an opening road-trip montage that establishes the dreamy prose style and a world similar to, but not quite the same as, our own, it’s with this gut punch that Norco’s story really begins. News awful enough to draw you back home, just five years after fleeing it forever. Back to the town of Norco, Louisiana, where a mystery awaits.

It’s not a murder mystery, as such – you know from the outset that your mother was lost to cancer. But still there are a lot of blanks to be filled in, a process that’s achieved in point-and-click fashion: roaming the town one screen at a time as you try to track down your missing brother while also piecing together the details of your mother’s final days. Along the way you meet locals and engage in conversations that are by turns heartfelt, funny and absurd. Occasionally you even pick up an item that grants access to the next location.

A classic format, then, but don’t expect anything too involved on the adventuring front. Puzzles are light enough that you might not notice they are there, were it not for the heavy hints dropped into dialogue, often handing you the solution before you’ve even had chance to tackle it yourself. (So much so, in fact, that the one time the game does attempt a classic inventory puzzle without supporting hints, we’re completely stumped.) It dabbles in other modes, too: a detective-board mind map for connecting plot information, a combat system built on a Simon Says-like memory minigame, the odd bit of topdown boat navigation. But in truth, mechanical depth is not the reason to play Norco.