Gnosia (2019)

Gnosia is a relationship simulator woven into many, many games of a social trust game. I played a little over 15 hours to get the true ending after having nearly given up half way through. The game in the game is akin to Mafia and recurs as many times as you'd like (called a "loop"). They can take 5–15 minutes to complete. I played 151 of them. By the 10th loop I understood the core mechanic, by the 20th I understood the upgrade system, by the 40th I understood the meta game, and by the 70th I was looking for an exit.

I ended up searching for a spoiler-free guide to the trickier parts of the game and wished I had started using it many hours earlier. I've played World of Warcraft for almost two decades and have appreciated what's been added in that time to make quests more obvious and attainable: waypoints, more descriptive quest text, an organized quest log, automatic quest tracking, minimap markers, visual outlines on quest objectives, etc. So when I realized I needed to rely on RNG over and over again just to get the opportunity to move the story ahead in Gnosia, I was frustrated. Thankfully, the guides that pop up at the top of the search results give let you know what your objective is, roughly how to get there, and—most importantly—how to know when this game loop isn't going to move the story forward so you can restart it and try again. While I took 151 completed loops to beat the game, I probably started well over 200 loops looking for the conditions I needed.

I went in with no expectations and left having enjoyed the hook of the gameplay, appreciated how quickly the controls allow you to move around the game UI, and loved the visuals. I think they could have made the ending more achievable by making the objectives more obvious, but a community-driven spoiler-free approach works regardless.

There was a game loop right at the end that mixed the story and every game mechanic into a single loop that was truly a challenge. As I was playing it (over and over again), I felt it must be what the designers had hoped their players would get to experience. And I did!

I started Gnosia as my 2nd time loop game and was immediately skeptical of the gameplay. It feels like a much more complicated version of the party game Mafia (AKA Wink Murder), which is unfortunate because I don't like playing Mafia as I'm quite bad at it. Thankfully, the game eases you into its rules while kicking off the story.

I wasn't sure if I was going to find the fun but then I realized I kept starting a new game. "Why?", you may ask. Well, there's a clever leveling up mechanism in the game loop that's simple yet powerful. At the end every game, you get experience points, but you can only use those points to level up and pick new attributes after the first round of the next game, when you're already invested in winning the game. I probably played 10 games before realizing that I had intended to stop playing an hour earlier.

I'm staring at the HLTB estimate of 18.5 hours for this and am not sure if I'll hold on, but then I'll probably just accidentally start 100 more games and finish it before I know it.

Gnosia is an adventure/visual novel game with a really interesting twist: the main character is trapped inside a loop, and each loop consists of a round of Werewolf-like gameplay: you have to discover and remove, via majority vote, the infected crew members.

Being a single-player game, you'll face off against NPCs, each one with their own personalities and behaviours. Between rounds you'll get event scenes that flesh out each character's backstories and the overall narrative.

You'll get experience points after each round, which can be used to level up different stats (like charisma, stealth and logic), and unlock abilities that make your life much easier (like asking for support, denying accusations, detecting lies, etc.).

I think the game overstayed it's welcome slightly, and by the final hours it was too repetitive. Even so, I enjoyed how unique it was, and I am pretty satisfied overall.