Gnosia

Genre: Visual Novel / Strategy

Players: 1

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Review:

First released only in Japan in 2019 on the PlayStation Vita, later brought to English-speaking territories for the first time on Nintendo Switch in 2021 and coming to PC later the same year, Gnosia is a game that combines elements of a Visual Novel and the social deduction-style Strategy game alternately known as Werewolf and Mafia, made popular in recent years by the acclaimed videogame version of the formula, Among Us. And while Gnosia uses the same formula, the execution here is so drastically different that the two games are very different experiences, even if they have a lot in common. This is done in part with the clever use of a Groundhog Day loop of sorts worked into the game’s story, making repeat playthroughs of the game build on past runs.

The presentation in this game is excellent using some really creative, memorable anime-style character art with a colorful, futuristic twist (the game takes place on a spaceship, after all). This is paired with a really unique synthesized soundtrack with distorted staticky vocals and at time messy timing and arrangement. This works well with the game’s futuristic setting and paranoid themes of the game, and definitely sets this game apart from others in the genre. For some good examples, check out Call of the Ender, Red Alert, Ululo, and Blue Sky Blue Star.

The gameplay starts by dropping players into a straight game of Werewolf/Mafia. For those unaware, your crew has been secretly infiltrated with an impostor (alien body-snatchers called Gnosia), and the group must deduce who it is, voting them out before the impostor gradually kills enough of them off to overpower the remainder of them, with the impostor secretly preying on one crewmate for each vote that’s cast. Players (both real and computer-controlled) must deduce the Gnosia’s identity by looking at their voting history and logically reasoning what strategic steps the impostor would have taken to best improve their chances.

This starts out simply enough – who voted for who and why? As players win or lose, the game kicks off a Groundhog Day loop of sorts that resets things back to the first day and switches out the characters, including who the Gnosia is. More importantly, as the game goes on, new rules are added. New roles are introduced that give crewmates more ways to catch the Gnosia and give the Gnosia more ways to deceive the crewmates, new conversation choices are added to allow players to form alliances, distract impostors with inane chatter, or dispel suspicion from them. And furthermore, there’s an RPG-style leveling system that allows players to increase various stats that affect how others react to you, finding you more trustworthy, more believable, less noticeable… or increasing your own perception to get hints as to when someone is lying.

In gameplay terms, this works somewhat well and provides a fair amount of variety, starting by randomizing each run of the game with different numbers of crew, number of Gnosia, and different roles, and then gradually allowing players to choose the setting themselves (even allowing players to take on the hidden roles or become the Gnosia themselves) while encouraging them to switch it up to unlock access to more of the game’s story content.

While the progression mechanics here are very clever, I wish this game were a bit more clear about how its various stats affect characters’ choices in voting. The game tells you, for example, that a higher stealth rating makes it less likely to be targeted by the Gnosia, and that declaring yourself as the engineer who can detect Gnosia makes you more likely to be a target, but it’s unclear just how those two elements affect one another. Likewise, you’re told that speaking up too often makes you suspicious… but so does being too quiet, and it’s never made clear just what the “sweet spot” is. It really would have been great if the game let players see more clearly how each of these elements increases or decreases the player’s chances.

I also have to complain a bit about the way computer players immediately start throwing accusations in the first round without any evidence. I understand that the game needs to start somewhere, but it’s odd that people immediately start deciding who to vote out based on zero information. It’s also a bit frustrating that the crew doesn’t have an option to vote no one out in each round – something that seems like it would be realistic if no one feels sufficiently suspicious of anyone else to determine that they’re an impostor.

Another element that suffers somewhat from the gameplay is the Visual Novel part of the game. Players get a good feel for each character’s distinct personality very quickly – SQ is a playful flirt, Stella is soft-spoken, Raquio is cold and logical (a cringey choice for the game’s sole nonbinary character), and Sha-Ming is callous and cavalier, to name a few. You get a further idea of these characters’ personalities and their inter-relationships during scenes that take place mostly between voting rounds, but during the voting itself, each character is boiled down to a limited number of possible phrases that often don’t flow together well and seem really artificial and stilted, something that undoubtedly would not be the case if this were a purely narrative experience.

On the other hand, the good part of the game’s story is how the Groundhog Day loop adds intrigue to the scenario. Out of all of the crew, you are apparently one of only two characters who actually remembers each prior run. At first, this hardly seems helpful – the randomized nature of which characters are assigned which roles means that you can’t use your knowledge of the guilty and innocent in subsequent runs. However, as the game progresses, the mystery of just why this is happening, and why you can remember prior runs, begins to deepen. The other character who retains this memory, Setsu, works with you to try to better understand what’s going on, even when you both may find yourself on opposing teams in the Gnosia-hunt. The way the story evolves over a multitude of gameplay sessions feels reminiscent of how Hades used its Roguelike elements. It is this overarching mystery, just as much as the “vote out the impostor!” gameplay, that drives players to keep playing this game.

There are a few other things I should note that this game lacks that are fairly disappointing. Firstly, despite that it seems ideally-suited to the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen, this game has no touchscreen support. However, even more noteworthy is the fact that despite that this game is using a formula born out of multiplayer games, there is no option to play this game in multiplayer, something that really could have added to the game’s longevity and made up for some of the issues with stilted dialogue.

Still, despite the lacking features and the flaws in its gameplay and storytelling, the things Gnosia does well generally outweigh the things it does poorly. The presentation is excellent, the ideas presented here are interesting and do some fairly unique things with an age-old formula, the characters are memorable, and the way the game uses its repeating gameplay loop to tell its story is inspired. If you’re a fan of the Visual Novel genre and/or Werewolf-style social deduction Strategy games, Gnosia should be worth giving a try.

tl;dr – Gnosia is a Visual Novel that incorporates elements of social deduction-style Strategy games like Mafia/Werewolf/Among Us. The combination of the two types of gameplay isn’t perfect – the dialogue in the parts of the story where players discuss and vote out intruders feels awkward and stilted, and the gameplay lacks multiplayer and doesn’t properly convey to players the impact of the RPG elements at play. However, despite these flaws, this is still a unique and interesting implementation of this style of gameplay, and the overarching story is made more interesting by the inclusion of a Groundhog Day-style gameplay loop that provides an intriguing overarching story across multiple gameplay sessions. Players who are enticed by this game’s unique combination of gameplay styles should find it worthwhile to check this out.

Grade: B

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