Nothing quite reignites my love for our beloved medium than a game that bucks the trend of regurgitating endlessly recycled ideas. Genesis Noir is one such game. And there’s good news for those of us who’ve been waiting patiently since developer Feral Cat Den first brought it to light four years ago: the wacky, charmingly surreal cosmic point-and-click adventure launches on March 26.
At the core of Genesis Noir is a lovers’ tiff responsible for creating the universe and, if the player has their way, its destruction. Earth is shrapnel from The Big Bang, itself a slow-motion cosmic gunshot fired by a scorned godly lover. The target: the fragile heart of a god known as Miss Mass.
Genesis Noir – Lovers’ Tiff Turned Cosmic
In Genesis Noir, you’ll jump in as protagonist No Man, ‘a watch peddler trapped in the deterministic cosmos’ on a mission to stop The Big Bang and save his love, Miss Mass. Interactive storytelling and striking generative art blend with clever vignette-style tactile puzzles, simple interactions, and exploration that will take you from the infinitesimally small to the cosmic by way of jazz cafes and black holes. Time is at play as well as you’ll travel to before, during, and after The Big Bang.
As Feral Cat Den eloquently puts it, in Genesis Noir you’ll:
Witness the birth and history of mankind. Find comfort in a glass of gin. Become acquainted with the massive, the microscopic, and everything in between. Dial a rotary phone; destroy a civilization; plant a garden; improvise with a musician; create life—all in your search for a way to save Miss Mass.”
As basic premises go, the one underpinning Genesis Noir sounds pretty fantastic and seductively removed from your typical clash between a gruff, vengeful villain and a morally impeccable hero. Whether the ambitious scale or the detective noir aesthetic, there’s plenty here to be excited about.
So, March 26 it is. Genesis Noir lands on PC – via Steam, the Epic Game Store, GOG, Humble, and Xbox Game Pass – Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.