Setsu: We have factual evidence that SQ is Gnosia [Definite Enemy]
Yuriko: I support Setsu's statement, you all should as well [Seek Agreement]
Raqio: So, logically we should vote for SQ immedia-

SQ: CURSE OF RA 𓀀 𓀁 𓀂 𓀃 𓀄 𓀅 𓀆 𓀇 𓀈 𓀉 𓀊 𓀋 𓀌 𓀍 𓀎 𓀏 𓀐 𓀑 𓀒 𓀓 𓀔 𓀕 𓀖 𓀗 𓀘 𓀙 𓀚 𓀛 𓀜 𓀝 𓀞 𓀟 𓀠 𓀡 𓀢 𓀣 𓀤 𓀥 𓀦 𓀧 𓀨 𓀩 𓀪 𓀫 𓀬 𓀭 𓀲 𓀳 𓀴 𓀵 𓀶 𓀷 𓀸 𓀹 𓀺 𓀻 𓀼 𓀽 𓀾 𓀿 𓁀 𓁁 𓁂 𓁃 𓁄 𓁅 𓁆 𓁇 𓁈 𓁉 𓁊 𓁋 𓁍 𓁎 𓁏 𓁐 𓁑

Yuriko: Actually, I think I saw Raqio vent [Exaggerate]
Setsu: Raqio is mad sus lol [Obfuscate]

Raqio was sent to cold sleep

I usually wait a few days before reviewing a game to let it settle in my mind and reach a more objective emotional distance, but this game has gotten me heated enough to where I had to capture it on paper. Specifically, it’s because this might be one of the worst designed games I’ve ever played.

Gnosia is a hybrid between a visual novel and a social deduction game, where you’re on a spaceship with 14 other people who may be sneaky aliens who want to kill everyone. A discussion happens each day, the humans decide who to put into cold sleep, the aliens decide who they want to kill, and the humans win when all the aliens are sleeping, or the aliens win when they’re at least 50% of the crew. It’s a well-tested design for a party game, but remember, this is a single-player experience. You’re playing against AI whose emotions you can’t read, and whose personalities only come out through a very small selection of dialog lines for each situation. Instead, the socializing that forms the core of the design is simulated by random skill checks: each AI character has a set of stats that are rolled whenever they tell lies, which are then rolled against perception stats. At the end of each round, you get XP to level up your own stats, and the game begins again. And again. And again. And again and again and again. To finish the game, it took me one-hundred and sixty-three rounds of playing the same game over… and over… and over again. The reason why is because you can only truly complete the game if you’ve seen all the character events, which randomly happen between nights depending on unspoken criteria like who’s alive, who has which roles, who trusts who, which events have happened previously, and so on. They’re usually just very short dialogues that give you new personal trivia, and don’t build into characterization you can use in the daily discussions.

So, let me recap the design of this game for you:
You’re playing an inherently social game against emotionless robots.
Your ability to deduce who’s lying is up to random chance.
Other characters believing you is random chance.
Being selected for cold sleep or elimination is random chance, which can prevent you from finishing events.
Events are based on criteria you’re never told of, and appear by random chance. Luckily, they’re only rarely affected by winning or losing, so your gameplay performance is of no consequence.
If you engage with the game by piping up and influencing discussion, you may be told your excessive talking is suspicious, and sent into cold sleep despite being correct. This is due to random chance.
If you stay quiet to avoid the aforementioned suspicion, it may be seen as, in itself, suspicious. This can happen by random chance.

It’s utterly baffling. This game should have choices and deduction, but every mechanic is oriented in a way that takes agency away from the player. You can’t participate in discussions until you’ve grinded stats, and even then, it's up to chance. You can’t choose a character who you want to learn about. You can’t decide how the story goes. It’s all random. The game just happens in front of you as you sit there powerlessly. I re-bound my controller to mash the A button so I could blast through the entirely irrelevant gameplay, which made me finish it 5 hours faster than the average completion time. That may seem like a weird thing to bring up for a visual novel, but again, there’s no story progression or development in the discussions which take up 95% of your time. If you put all the story moments together, they would probably be less than an hour in total, for a game which takes at least twelve hours to beat. If I had to give one begrudging compliment, it’s that some characters can be likable in their events, but when in the next iteration they may hate you because of random chance, I just can’t feel a kinship or build a relationship with them. It’s all so pointless. Even in a game as bad as Heavy Rain, I could at least tell what the point was, why someone would play it and what they were supposed to get out of it. Not with this one. I don’t even know how to conclude this review. The game has no thesis and no point and neither do I. I just hate it.

This game is part of the reason I came out as non-binary.

Setsu and Raqio are my enby heroes.

Amazing music and art. Tight "Werewolf" gameplay.

My only complaint is that it's a bit unclear how to get the true ending, which caused the game to drag on for almost 10 hours more than I think it should have.

Gnosia me foi vendido como "visual novel de Among Us". A premissa é simples: 15 pessoas estão presas em uma nave espacial e alienígenas estão infiltrados na nave disfarçados dos membros ali presentes. O seu objetivo é participar de discussões, encontrar inconsistências nos discursos dos personagens e descobrir quem é o impostor.

A premissa me pegou muito e inicialmente eu pensei que seria algo como Danganronpa, um jogo de mistério com foco em narrativa. Acontece que Gnosia é algo completamente diferente disso. Gnosia é muito mais próximo de um jogo como Lobisomem/Werewolf que, pra quem não conhece, se trata de um jogo de cartas onde cada jogador tem um papel, e o objetivo é descobrir quem é o lobisomem infiltrado na vila.

A ideia de fazer um lobisomem single-player é interessante e o jogo tenta colocar coisas novas em cima do conceito original, como stats similares a um RPG em que você pode aumentar coisas como carisma, charme, lógica, etc. O problema é que conceitualmente, lobisomem é um jogo muito sobre você tentar ler as pessoas, identificar se uma pessoa está ou não mentindo por meio de como ela age e se comporta. Claro que existem outros elementos lógicos por trás, mas o elemento humano é muito importante também. Esse elemento humano se perde bastante em Gnosia onde é impossível detectar uma mentira por meio de uma caixa de texto e um portrait estático do personagem. Se guiar apenas pela lógica muitas vezes deixa o jogo um pouco tedioso porque se resume a esperar que alguém diga algo inconsistente e pronto, você já sabe quem é o culpado. Muitas das nuances do jogo se perdem aí.

E o que difere ele de outros jogos com premissas semelhantes é que, estruturalmente, ele não segue uma narrativa linear, ele tem uma estrutura semelhante a um roguelite, em que loops ocorrem e a cada loop, novos papeis são dados aos personagens. É como se o jogo fossem várias pequenas partidas que duram 10-30 minutos. Em um loop você é um engenheiro, no outro um tripulante normal e no outro um impostor. Cada loop é como uma partida diferente de lobisomem, então narrativamente... não importa muito quem é o impostor. O jogo não tenta criar um mistério em cima de "quem matou tal personagem?"

Em resumo, o foco é bem menos em mistério e bem mais em um jogo onde o seu objetivo é buscar por inconsistências para vencer uma partida.

Mas então... onde exatamente entra a história nisso? E aí que vem o ponto que Gnosia peca um pouco. Não que a história seja ruim, gosto muito dos personagens e a escrita no geral é interessante. O problema é que, por conta dessa estrutura, o jogo não tem exatamente uma narrativa com início, meio e fim, com personagens bem definidos e motivações específicas. A história é contada basicamente por meio de lore. Durante esses loops, algumas coisas acontecem que podem gerar eventos relacionados a esse personagem.

Por exemplo, caso você esteja jogando de tripulante e perca a partida para um personagem que era um impostor, no final da partida você vê uma cena que envolve alguma informação sobre aquele personagem sendo um impostor. Ou então, caso você e um personagem sejam tripulantes e sobrevivam ao loop no final, você vê um diálogo específico com aquele personagem. Vários desses eventos vão te dando pedaços de informação sobre aqueles personagens e sobre aquele mundo.

No geral é interessante e eu queria constantemente descobrir mais sobre os personagens que eu gostava. Mas a forma como a gameplay e a história são pouco integradas me incomoda um pouco. Eu sinto que a gameplay é só uma forma burocrática de chegar às informações e no final uma coisa não tem exatamente a ver com a outra. As duas coisas separadas no geral são boas, a gameplay é divertida (apesar de repetitiva) e os personagens são interessantes o suficiente para fazer você se interessar neles. Mas a forma como o jogo se estrutura me deixa com um gostinho de potencial desperdiçado, sabe?

No geral eu me diverti com Gnosia e acho um bom jogo, mas pelo quão interessante é a sua premissa eu sinto que o jogo deixa um pouco a desejar. Talvez eu só fui jogar com uma expectativa errada e acabei me decepcionando um pouco que o jogo não era exatamente o que eu queria, mas ainda acho que é um grande problema o quão desconexos são a história e a gameplay.

With the amount of Among Us jokes thrown at killing game VNs I was expecting this to just be another Danganronpa-esque social deduction type game, not an actual single player Among Us game. You got the roles on a spaceship with aliens indistinguishable from humans randomized in each match and the voting period to eliminate whoever is being sus. Since most visual novel readers are all lonely fucks who don't have enough friends to fill out a 10 player lobby in among us, this was the perfect game for me.

The most striking thing about Gnosia definitely has to be the art style and the diverse cast of characters, they are all very unique and leave you interested on their backstory, but unfortunately it's the sort of mystery story where the mysteries are a lot more thrilling than the reveals.

There is a meta element to the story about every match you play being a loop you're stuck into and the only way to progress through the real story is to see through all the events the story has to offer, which is fair enough if you want to see these characters being developed, but since the game is automated in a way where anyone at any time during the amogus match can die, some events are so obtuse and hard to get to the point where I pretty much gave up and looked for a guide to fill out the last 5. It surely starts out happening randomly enough without you doing much to trigger them, but the fact that absolutely everything is up to chance, means that you'll be seeing the same 20 dialogue boxes for hours without progressing the story for the sake of playing the game instead of the game within the game.

The first 100 or so loops are actually pretty engaging, the matches don't take longer than 5 minutes once you know what you're doing and the progression system of slowly acquiring more skills and having more weight and presence when voting helps it balance the early game where you're constantly saying "STOP VOTING FOR ME YOU FUCKING IDIOTS I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU SQ IS THE GNOSIA FOR THE PAST 3 ROUNDS!", but I clocked in at around 160 loops and I feel like it could have been 80 if the game actually did better use of it's runtime, I'm no scientist but 5 minutes times 160 adds up to a lot of unneeded time. I don't know how intentional the absolute eye-rolling, dreadful state of being stuck in constant loops trying to find the needle in the haystack to fill out the completed files was, but everything past loop 100 felt like busywork because the game required you to 100% it to finish it, which is always a lesson in endurance and patience. It felt like grinding out a season pass for a singleplayer game.

Once the credits rolled I was disappointed that I did not even get a better look at this game's world, lore or characters because again, the way it's structured is optimized to waste your time, and all the info you get from the cast is reduced to checklists with only a handful of them having a semblance of a character arc, whatever information you get from their skill graphs don't help in making the game faster by knowing if they're lying or not, more so than just tell the abilities that they're capable of using.

Could have been fantastic, ended up being just fine. Still somehow slightly more fun than playing among us or reading Danganronpa 2.

Mi juego Favorito de lo que va del año.
Una VN Rouge-lite y con mecánicas de RPG basada en los juegos de rol tipo "Mafia" o "Werewolf" (la amongus vn para los entendidos). A pesar de sus limitaciones como puede ser la ausencia de doblaje, lo compensa enormemente con cientos de imágenes detalladas para situaciones que solo aparecen una vez; con personajes carismáticos, bien definidos y con un diseño precioso; una historia engimática, no lineal y que provocó que siempre quiera volver una vez más por un nuevo bucle. Además de contar con un final contundente y redondo y sin embargo, deja espacio a la imaginación.
Gnosia es de esos Indies que merecen más reconocimiento. Valió cada segundo para platinarlo, porque al final.
Gnosia me atrapó en un bucle.

Gnosia is the best game about a guy with a cat living inside of his neck ever made.

A Visual Novel lives and dies on its story and characters, its art and music, and its VIBES. And in all these ways, Gnosia sings the sweetest song you'll ever hear. A social deduction game where everyone is certifiable and your strategies are ever changing, because so are the rules.

What makes Gnosia realltly stand out among its contemporaries is how it handles progression. Not only do you level up your stats as you play, allowing you to build out your character like an RPG, but the world of Gnosia and the lunatics trapped therein are rife with mysteries and riddled with secrets. As you learn more and more about the gameplay systems and how to manipulate the other characters onboard the ship, you become more able to use that knowledge to advance your understanding of the backstories of the characters and world of Gnosia, and that knowledge will further enable you to manipulate the characters in search of the results you're looking for with every round you play. Gnosia's "final boss" is a spectacular culmination of these mechanics, forcing you to execute every skill you've learned over your 20 or so hours with the game with peak precision against a terrifying threat. It's one of the most memorable boss fights I've played in a game this decade, and Gnosia is a visual novel. It's awesome.

Gnosia excels in its presentation as well. The art is excellent and unique and oh man, the music is blissful. Tense, exciting, nerve-wracking, and always enhancing the mood of every scene. The only fault to be found within Gnosia is that locating the game's final secrets may become a bore, but even that feels thematically and mechanically appeopriate. It's a very unique game well worth seeing through to its poignant and memorable conclusion. Cannot recommend it enough.

Gnosia's design premise--a single-player randomized Werewolf with stat progression--is both its most intriguing asset and the source of its violent downfall. It works for a certain amount of time, as you're still getting used to how characters act, still discovering new skills through leveling stats, and likely seeing healthy amounts of new story content. But there comes a point when certain events are required for story progression, that require specific interactions with specific characters in specific configurations, and the game will allude to what's important but fights against itself by how it's set up.

God help you if a story event is locked behind SQ or Raqio, because keeping either of the most suspicious characters alive long enough to trigger events [and hoping that you don't need to meet other hidden variables], while also praying that you're not selected to get murdered or put in cold sleep yourself is not only unideal, it can often feel like downright trolling on the game's part. And since doing this may actively fight against a win, you're possibly not going to get much experience either, so I guess you could just play randomized games and try to win with the impression that increasing your stealth by 2 or 3 points will actually matter for your "story runs" whatever the hell those are.

What's even weirder is the game has a built-in "event finder" mechanic after you've done a certain number of loops, where the game will select randomized settings for you that "guarantee" to satisfy requirements for at least one event you're missing, and yet it's not like I'm going to know what event they have in mind [you would hope they'd prioritize story-mandatory ones but who can say] and it ultimately feels as though I'm selecting my own random settings anyway.

There was only so much of the same dialogue over and over that I could personally take, whether I was actively pursuing story progress or just hoping to level up. Just because a game operates as a loop narratively doesn't excuse when design repetition sets in, and the alarming speed with which this feels repetitive does a great disservice to whatever sci-fi tale they wish to tell. While there are some red flags [great treatment of your one trans character by the way] I won't ever know what that tale's finale is, and part of me wanted to know, but oh well.

"Don't doubt. Don't be afraid. And know.
Knowledge will save all".

Gnosia presents us with a very interesting premise. Social-Deduction RPG which is basically what it meants, deduce who is the enemy or lie your way to victory. Main objective is to eliminate all threats upon our way to victory, we can either play as the "Threat" (Gnosia, Bug, AC Follower) or "Human" (Crew, Doctor, Guardian Angel, Engineer, Guard Duty). Each class has their own tutorial while going progressing through the game and each is explained in detail. I won't go much in detail for the mechanics here, they are explained very well in the game.

You take the role of an unknown crewmate in the ship. Again, your main objective is to survive discussions in the ship, alongside the Gnosia threat, depending the class you choose to take part in. As an RPG, you'll start as a pretty tame individual, my recommendation for first time players is to not take much part in disscourses and limit yourself only to vote what people think is the real enemy. As you progress more, you'll level up and learn more abilities to add to the set discussion making surviving much more easier, even being to 180° most situation.

You can say there is a story here, but is underneath layers and layers of "special events" throughout the game. These events let you progress through the story and slowly start to piece all together. Yeah, which means there is no linear story here. I was in a loss at first, events kept occurring seemingly in no particular order, and that's a given. You won't experience the same events in the same order as myself, it's RNG most of the time.

It's really lighthearted in tone, and I'm use to visual novels to go absolutely hogwild at some point, but this isn't much the case. It feels very honest about what it wants to tell. And I'm very thankful for it since, in my opinion this game doesn't need to go that far and touches most topics again, in a very innocent way with it's characters. Talking about characters, they're really charming. Everyone is different from one another, not just in aspect but in personality and this is reflected in all sort of places; during disccusions, during events and even their stats. Everyone has their own stats, some are better than others at disscusions and some have abilites others simply don't. Though, I wanted to know more about the them. This is strictly tied to events as I said before and every characters has more than 4 events to explore from 14 characters in total, not including the main character which we know close to nothing about.

The presentation in this game is wonderful and full of life. If I'd had to give it a name it would be something like: "Alien, but welcoming" and that's knowing you're in a ship with a bunch of alien and humans. Muisc is like goofy-esque silly drama most of the time and calm and weirdly sentimental when it needs to, that I thought suits this game very well alongside the visuals. Every character is separated by a color palette wich makes each one standout more from the rest and is easier to recognize everyone as soon as you see their portrait on screen. I don't personally have a favourite but if I have to choose, I'll go with Shigemichi. He's a pretty funny fella.

My favorite moment of this game when I decided to trust a certain crew member while Gnosia just to cover mysef of any suspicion since she was against me and picking on me constantly on discussions. The idea was to make her support me on the debates trusting each other on the act. An event triggered after finishing that day, then she asked me if I was lying this whole time to again, cover myself as Gnosia. Said yes, but she didn't mind as a Human and even knowing I was Gnosia she decided to support me on those debates just because I was honest with her. It was honestly surprising. Then "Aster" starts playing in the background, one of the very few vocal songs in the game only reserved for moments as special as this one.

After Loop 30 or so you're free to do whatever you want. I'm a bit sad to say this is where this game starts to get worse. Before each gane a menu is presented, you're able to choose everything; from the amount of people that are in the ship and gnosia quantity and the class you want to take part in. You main objective now is to search for these events to advance through the story. Some are really difficult to trigger and activate and some require very specific instances to then activate.

Personally I probably would never have found some if it wasn't for a quick internet search and I'm quite sad for it because I loved this game before it forced me to stay as away as possible for it. And it gets worse, I started to not care about the characters and only focus myself on getting these events activated. Remember the RPG aspects? You'll start to level up like crazy after each loop and become untouchable for the most part by level 100. Days and days, searching for these events to trigger. Some didn't, some randomly appear and some luckly were triggered as well. And I hate to say this, but you better off watching the ending(s) on Youtube.

Wish this game gets a sequel soon, with a new row set of characters because I feel there is a lot of potential wasted here. Mainly to fix how you progress through the story. I'm quite sad seeing how things turned up for Gnosia because I really liked it at first but then my love for it started to go downhill as loops went on and on, until the very end. If these things gets fix in the future, I'm sure this game will recieve more international praise and not be just relegated to be only known by some people. I'm sure of it.

as much as i'd love to crack a few among us jokes i'll refrain from acting sussy for the time being because what's here is a really solid and well-crafted experience wrapped up in a time-looping murder mystery that while exhausting at times triumphs in spite of its shortcomings. it's one of the few exceptions where i'd excuse giving it a lower score because the payoff is pretty darn worth it all things considered! well not like it's insanely long to begin with considering it took me a total of exactly 150 loops to finish over the course of 25 hours which i spread across several smaller bite-sized sections late at night which made my experience all the more enjoyable. i do think the game is best enjoyed doing a few loops a day but your own mileage might vary and i'm just suggesting what i think leads to less burnout in the long run.

anyways, onto the gameplay! one of the biggest reasons i love what the team at petit depotto have put out here is how well integrated the gameplay aspects are considering the medium gnosia actually is. although there are a few other notable visual novels that utilize the functions of the medium to better enhance the experience gnosia's left me, a rpg and visual novel enthusiast, rather pleased! i do think the stat system here is a bit tacked on seemingly in the beginning as it isn't until later loops where you'll really feel the significance of these numbers help in discussions. the real meat of the experience however is how gnosia takes the normal conventions of most visual novels and integrates it pretty seamlessly into the core mechanics of its social deduction style gameplay that fits snugly into its visual novel trappings.

now for the story, i'd like to acknowledge that due to the spoiler-heavy nature of it i'll refrain from saying too much as always but i'll just say that it's a typical sci-fi mystery in structure supplemented by plentiful twists with ideas touching upon existentialism, the human desire to connect with one another, and of course the dichotomy of humans and gnosia, all presented in a intricate blend of genres culminating in a compelling narrative that knows just when to let you breathe and when to land its more emotional gut punches.

as for the dialogue itself, i do appreciate the fact that these characters all have some very strong introductions as well as pretty well-contained mini-story arcs given the progression being tied to triggering these flags that leads to these character-specific events. HOWEVER, due to the time loop structure of this narrative, this also means a lot of repetition and i found myself at the end often skipping through the dialogue often only pausing to either to help guide the vote or actually read new lines in the flags i was looking for. contextually it makes sense but it's not something i wouldn't say makes some of the later loops a slog. the triggers are also pretty well handled with a designated event search that personally curates loops that will guarantee flags but as you fill out more and more of these flags the non-linear structure of progression wears thin with some requirements for specific flags being obtuse and also incredibly difficult at times to determine what exactly was the cause. i'll reiterate here though that the new events, ESPECIALLY the later ones, are really darn compelling given how they revolve around solving the mysteries of the narrative and also serve to add more characterization to gnosia's cast. (setsu? she's just like me frfr!)

with all that aside, the real icing on the intricate multilayered cake that is gnosia is the art and music! firstly, the art direction here is pretty incredible given how despite the somewhat typical sci-fi environments, the character designs really breathe life into the setting and overall look pretty great with each design being reflective of a character's personality. the music here too is pretty solid but the one gripe i'd have with it is that some really good tracks barely play for their total length. there's definitely stuff here that's pretty great to listen to and compliments the atmosphere of gnosia exceptionally.

all in all, gnosia isn't a perfect experience but it's still an enjoyable one! your mileage might vary depending on how much you love the time loop structure and its cast but i think most who played it will be willing to agree that this is a pretty darn solid first attempt at a vn and for the four-person team at petit depotto to have such a solid grasp and understanding on how to utilize the visual novel medium, i'm honestly really excited to see what's next in store from them! despite my exhaustion near the end given the repetitive dialogue and constant restarting of loops to trigger flags, the story still remained tantalizing as ever and by the end of it all i might as well have been emotionally exhausted too given how the true ending of it resonated with me. gnosia also got me to use my switch for once too, something i can hardly say given my general reluctance to use my nintendo certified drifting lap warmer for anything other than youtube so that's saying something about how compelling i found the overall experience to be! "ryukishi could never"/10 .

additional notes:

if you've finished gnosia and are looking for a game that also utilizes the vn structure pretty well i recommend "13 sentinels aegis rim"!

Truly unique and perfect and would've been enough just to be a weird single player roguelike social deduction game even without the amount of personality it has.

I didn't think it was possible to simulate this kind of thing in single player much less have a round where a sequence of bonkers events occurred layering on top of eachother until I spent like two hours in pepe silvia mode trying to figure out several logic chains and gave myself a headache.

I love it. Great if you miss werewolf type stuff but can't be bothered with all the organisation anymore too.

los primeros 80-100 loops de gnosia son una experiencia sin igual. reconfiguran las bases construidas por juegos como ace attorney o danganronpa para orientarlo en el contexto mismo que recoge virtue's last reward, e incluso de death games previos de Uchikoshi y co. para apelar constantemente a preocupaciones habituales del género que tan fácilmente dialogan con el sci-fi y el transhumanismo. es interesante, se deja leer con gusto, y el formato crea una constante sensación de deriva en la que descubrimos cómo juega cada une de les personajes a la vez que la asignación aleatoria de roles obliga a siempre estar alerta y relacionarte de formas dinámicas con el resto del elenco

lastimosamente, la teoría acaba cayendo por su propio peso. el sistema de stats que en un inicio otorga opciones para afrontar los encuentros pronto se revela como el factor que los trivializa. llegado un punto ni es necesario jugar, el propio loop te reclama que por favor termines ya con la historia y no lo dejes, que ya has avanzado bastante así que aquí vienen una seguidilla de regalos, de anclajes arbitrarios donde los personajes uno tras otro se encadenan (fruto del event search) para contarte a las prisas qué pasa con ellxs, qué necesitas saber para desbloquear el true ending. esta derrota de su propia capacidad para mantener el interés en lo mecánico para volverse en una urgencia por apurar variables a ver si con esta combinación no nos extendemos otros 10 loops de nada son lo que para mí acabó manchando el trato

no es realista esperar un cast de tantos personajes donde todes aporten lo mismo o estén siquiera desarrollados, y aunque autores como Kodaka pecan aún más fuertemente de esto, Uchikoshi al menos sabe que debe centrarse individualmente en estos si quiere llevar sus arcos dramáticos hasta el final. Gnosia acaba cayendo en el mismo sinsentido de tener a cinco personajes cruciales para su propuesta central, y luego un montón de secundarios a modo de excusas para elevar la sensación de conflictos secundarios insertos en el tronco. pero resulta que difícilmente lo están, y si bien ninguno de estos acaba siendo realmente un cascarón vacío, como buena obra sci-fi hambrienta por demostrar que es capaz de tratar todos los temas existenciales posibles, acaba sintiéndose en la necesidad de que cada dupla de personajes sea el símbolo de un tema, que ni siquiera busca proponer ideas nuevas sino que ya pareciesen exigidos como mínimos del género, asuntos que tienen que siempre estar ahí. si le sumamos un final que en lo personal ha parecido bastante insatisfactorio y una serie de directrices que mueven a los personajes pecando de solo moverse por el parafraseo o la escena pretendidamente icónica, como si aquello fuese suficiente. me quedan a deber, y la sensación final es de que el título no supo medir bien cuánto realmente quería que te comprometieras con su propuesta

como ejercicio de trasladar los hombres lobo a un entorno numérico encerrado en las paredes de una novela visual resulta brillante, tanto es así que para su correcto funcionamiento necesita sacrificar lo que con tanto ahínco busca esbozar como su sustancia (no vaya a ser que pensemos que es otro 'simple' juego sus) al grado en que reduce mucho a mero envoltorio

SQ did nothing wrong tho

Bawling my eyes out about the he/she/they shawties you don't get to bang after the hundred plus loops 😭

If we're being real though this one of the most expertly crafted and designed experiences I've seen out of the indie scene for a minute. Every step of the way you learn about a system of rules and characters, which in turn you are given the tools to perturb the system to move in your favor. At first it plays the hidden role gameplay straight so you can learn the roles and understand the AI. Over time though you learn how to predict the AI, and can move things in your favor easier and easier. The more you play the more you learn but it never gets repetitive because the whole system of AI is carefully balanced to create incredible variety loop to loop.

The challenges are simple until you hit about the mid game, where the goal is often not to win the individual rounds of Werewolf but to instead focus on smaller more unique objectives. Ensuring certain characters survive or trying to eliminate particular targets early, things that exist outside the typical win state/fail state mentality built up in the beginning. One of my favorites is when playing as the killer, you have to make sure the only people who survive are you and a specific crew mate. In order to do so you must eliminate everyone else, teammates included. All these challenges are met with small underlying changes that never make it unfair to get your desired outcome, yet can pull the most out of your understanding of the group and their behaviors.

In many ways a peak science game where using the scientific method will lead you to the fullest understanding of the game and allowing you to perform at ease. Legit I could probably write a grad paper on how this game uses cognitive behavioral theory so competently but they ain't paying me to do that.

On the other hand, the unfortunate part in all this is the narrative is little more than self agrandizing fluff. There's nothing here that uses the sci-fi setting well. You spend lots of time learning about characters but only as a service for useless trivia that only occasionally feeds back into the gameplay. Most of the story plays around different scenes where the extremely anti-social protagonist gets flirted with by people of all genders then treats these same people as nothing more than pieces in the game to win. The repeating patterns give such a dissociative feel to the narrative the scenes meant to evoke an emotional response feel empty. They definitely could've done something with this but in the end it focuses on romantic tragedies and pointless, unanswered questions. C'est la vie I guess.

Overall though the game is hella magnificent. From top to bottom cleanly designed with only a rare few rough patches. Plus you can live out your pansexual fantasy, and what other game gives you that?

I love GNOSIA. I love the vibes, the mystery, and the characters, who are all unique and fun. I loved gradually gaining bits of information to see how the characters tie into the mysteries.
Even got a couple of great, explicitly non-binary characters (notably, the player can also play as non-binary).
I almost didn't take a chance on this, as I'd never gotten into any games categorized as "roguelite", and the concept doesn't generally appeal to me. I feel that there's narrative utility in the repetitive gameplay loop, in really feeling the situation wear on the player. For me, it was a somewhat immersive aspect.
For anybody who enjoys this gameplay despite the repetition, this game has a lot of replay value. After one full playthrough, I'm still coming across a lot of new things. It's kind of amazing.
The computer AI is "smart" and well designed (as a single-player social deduction game necessitates). Catching subtle hints based on NPC behavior is fun, as well as developing one's own strategy in order to influence the NPCs (lying gave me such intense anxiety though, LOL). The different characters each have unique ways of behaving in different situations, and varying inherent (and circumstantial) affinity towards other characters, including the player.
I wish they would allow for a multiplayer mode (separate from the story)!! I would love to play simultaneously with both the computer AI, and a friend.
I also wish I could casually spend more time with the characters. There's so much to work with here!
Cotori's lovely artwork, and the unusual music are the perfect dressing.
It's exciting to see such a cool game come from such a small development team.

Im sad that this kind of flew under the radar for so many people because this concept is REALLY fucking cool. Youre basically playing a deduction visual novel rpg with stats to upp the odds of your success and survival ala Murder/Werewolf/and yes... yes its like Among Us.
Single Player Among Us.. but still in A WAY among us

EXCEPTTT THERE;S NOT REALLY LIKE A FOCUS ON TASKS AND SUCH and its more like the raw 1:1 deduction and conversational aspects of this game are what youre playing it for which can be a mixed bag, I absolutely love the music and the art style and how many different roles you can play

Youre one of several poor gay assholes stuck in a time loop with universal fuckery happening bc of this entity called Gnos, a gnosia is a being thats caused by infection of the host and they really just only try to kill humans but they can throw other Gnosia under the busssss and really throw the group off of shit.

Infact, the more you play the game the more it feels like you get for wiggle room with what can happen and theres an insanely high chance that the person thats gnosia wont be it again twice in a row

The loops are very fun but I think that,,, once you start not coming across interactions organically.. once you hit a certain point iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiits... magic starts to wane for me babe
The game thankfully lets you be able to have preset settings for things that will inch you along in the story and all that jazz when getting to one of the endings, but youre still at the bane and mercy of the biggest nigh cosmic spacial threat of all beyond Gnosias, Bugs and Gnos... RNG lmfao

Sometimes you can get lucky!! and sometimes the skills really do make a massive difference in upping the odds as ive said before but!!!! there's a double edged sword thing going on here that may make or break it for a lotta people
I loved this game i found it even hard to put it down despite it flickering between being really freeflowing and then becoming some planeswalker to-do list matches that may or may not pan out how you want
and then the endings can vary in satisfaction but... i honestly just kinda went "damn. that sucks." for the bittersweetness but you dont see BEYOND that with... hm nah im starting to get into spoilers and i want ppl to be able to see atleast most of this soooo yeah thats all i can say

all in all its one of the coolest visual novels ive ever touched but i think it technically doesnt succeed very well with some ofwhat its going for with the story and narrative because i felt like i wanted M O R E.. more directness with the narrative and conflicts that get overcame tht make me feel MORE but instead i just wound up liking the taste enough to keep sticking my fingers in and going onnn and onnn and on with random matches and trying new things anddddd it got entrancing but i wouldnt say that makes it GOOD design
more like that it hit a nice chord for me at the right time

Some other little things thatre nice are the designs and whole alien/human things going on with these people so theyre not all just the exact same age and species, it makes the crew feel more interesting and learning more abt them is fun
Props to this game's devs for also not only letting you make yourself explicitly nonbinary, but there's two actual nonbinary characters ingame thatre (sharp exhaling.. sayin these nowadays makes me feel like a robot sometimes) amab and one that was afab, and theyre both really cool characters thatre different and not just total 1:1 copypastes or anything not even in design they contrast each other almost completely :) i just think thats very cool

shoutout to SQ the poly cis sapphic ally of all time <3 love her up and down

so yeah grab it if its on sale and the pitch seems really cool to you but if a mystery murder game had no extensive puzzles and was solely debating and levelling up and time fuckery to get more sides of the pie cut out doesnt sound like your thing, then thats okay :)
i just think its pretty rad

Very interesting game, and I think it's solid, but it is far too repetitive by the end. It doesn't help that my game either bugged out after the first trigger for an event, or I just have to keep doing these loops over and over for it to pop up again, so I can watch the event and get the true ending. Because to be honest, I wanted to stop actually playing these loops like 40-50 loops earlier than that. It's just too much

After 120+ loops I just decided to watch it on YouTube because I don't have faith the event will actually show back up. I don't think the game's story is particularly great either. It's great relative to the structure of the game and it works far better than one would expect, but when I step back and think about it, I think it's just not the most interesting story. Interesting characters though. I will give them that.

uhhhh i mean amogus