Gnosia

Game RevolutionJason Faulkner

9/10

The social deduction game genre has seen an explosion in popularity over the last year due to the success of Among Us. It’s a formula that doesn’t seem like it would work outside of multiplayer. After all, it’s the unpredictability of other people that creates the tension which makes these games so appealing. However, Gnosia manages to do just this.

KeenGamerKenzie Du

9/10

Can you play a game of "Among Us" all by yourself? Gnosia brings the identity deduction genre to a futuristic horror landscape, setting players against a colorful cast of characters with their own goals and motivations. Unravel the mystery of your doomed spacecraft again, and again, and again...

RPGSiteJosh Torres

9/10

Petit Depotto's unconventional, social deduction RPG is outstanding; it encapsulates the best features of what time travel stories can offer by letting players fully experience the burden of a time traveler themselves.

TechRaptorKate Mitchell Jewett

9/10

Gnosia is a mind-bending time-loop adventure which blends social deduction and visual novel elements to create a truly tricky, engaging mystery.

GameGrinArtura Dawn

8/10

After narrowly escaping the Gnosia-infested planet of Liu-An, a group of misfits find themselves in the interstellar cruiser, the DQO.

Checkpoint GamingLuke Mitchell

8/10

The runaway success of Among Us last year proved that people love a good social deduction experience. The unique online take on the classic party game Werewolf works so well because of the ability to share your thoughts on who is lying, try to decipher who the imposters are and cross your fingers that you’re correct and not one step closer to ruin. As an imposter, it’s exciting to be sneaky and pick off your friends one by one.

WayTooManyGamesHeidi Hawes

8/10

I’ll admit that I hadn’t heard of Gnosia until just a short while ago. When I was approached with taking on a visual novel styled “whodunit”, I wasn’t over eager to accept. However, something about the trailer made me reconsider looking into it. I felt like there was more to Gnosia than met the eye. So I decided to take a chance on it, and let me tell you, I’m so happy I did.

Game RantCallum Williams

8/10

But Gnosia overcomes these issues because it's such a well-put-together package. Combining the visual novel and social deduction game and attempting to turn the pair into a poignant, single-player, narrative-driven adventure feels like a nigh-on unachievable goal. Yet, Gnosia somehow manages to make the unorthodox blend work. From its compelling characters and unique gameplay hook to its stunning art style and engaging story, Petit Depotto has created a wholly original sci-fi thriller that's worth enduring a few late-game pacing issues to experience.

GameSpotHeidi Kemps

8/10

Gnosia mixes social deduction gameplay with great characters and a visual novel presentation for a memorable experience.

DestructoidCJ Andriessen

7/10

Ultimately, Gnosia is worth playing through to the end thanks to its strong narrative. The story goes in unexpected directions, and the revelations I learned along the way were compelling enough to push me past my frustrations. Make no mistake, I wanted to give up on this game multiple times. But every time I considered quitting, I’d start one last loop that would pull me right back in because all of the elements were in place for another bit of tasty narrative to reveal itself.

StartMenuMichael Beckwith

Unscored

Petit Depotto deserves a great deal of recognition for successfully making one of the most enjoyable and intriguing games we’ve had the fortune to play in years. It’s already a game of the year contender and it’s frankly a miracle that it was able to escape from being a Japanese only PlayStation Vita game and make some sort of impact in the West. With any luck, it will receive a PC port too down the line.

Gnosia might not be a new concept – there are so many video games out there that feature death games with deception at the core of them. Last year’s Quantum Suicide even set the scene in space and had a less-than-benevolent AI pulling many of the strings, just like Gnosia does. But Gnosia is something rare: it is really, truly different. The developers wanted to take this common-enough concept and craft something that was truly their own, and not only have you got here a game that you won’t forget in a hurry, it’s also going to have you actively thinking about just how smart it is for…