Games: Gnosia

A game I’m loving at the moment is ’Gnosia’, on the Nintendo Switch.

To quote the game’s description on the eStore: ‘The Gnosia lie. Pretending to be human, they’ll get in close, trick and deceive, and then eliminate one victim at a time…’

You are on a spaceship full of refugees rescued from their own planets. Unfortunately, your ship has been infected by Gnosia – malevolent creatures whose sole goal is to destroy humans. They take the form of your crew members, so your job is to identify which of your buddies is actually an enemy posing as human.

The gameplay is divided into days. Each day, you realise there are still Gnosia on board, and so you have a group discussion where people accuse and defend one another. Ideally, you gain valuable information to help you figure out who is and isn’t human, and try to convince others to get on the same page as you. At the end of this discussion, there is a group vote to put one person into cold sleep – thus disabling them. Ideally, you’re trying to put the Gnosia into cold sleep so they can’t kill people. If Gnosia survive, however, they will kill somebody each night. If the Gnosia eventually outnumber the humans, they win. If the crew disable all Gnosia, they win.

You are stuck in a time-travel loop, where each time you win – or fail – you get reset into a new loop where roles change. Someone who was your closest buddy and defender in one loop might be a sneaky Gnosia in the next. As loops continue, you get story progression, new hurdles, new moves, and events where you learn more about the characters.

This game is a single-player deduction game similar in concept to Mafia or the Werewolf game. (Mafia and Werewolf are party games where some of the players are villains in disguise. As a group, you have to figure out who the villains are and get others to vote for them in a swirl of bluff, accusation, deduction and persuasion.) I was interested to see how such a concept, based so much on social dynamics, was going to work as a single player game. I think it does work, and well.

So how does it work?

Stats

The game has RPG elements, with stats you can use to achieve success in different aspects of the game. For example, if you are high in ‘Charm’, other people will like you, so they’ll be less likely to vote you into cold sleep. If you are high in ‘Intuition’, you are good at telling if other people are lying. If you’re high in ‘Charisma’, you’re good at getting others to agree with you. And so on.

As you grow in certain skills, you also become able to use different commands. You start off mainly just being able to cast doubts or defend someone; as time goes on, you can do things like exaggerate to draw more attention to someone, encourage small talk to defuse tension, seek to collaborate with others, etc.

Just as you develop your own profile (deciding which stats to make higher), other characters all have their own unique stat profile, not to mention personality/behaviours. As you continue playing and getting to know their ‘style’ more, you can get a better handle on how different characters might act in different circumstances. For example, the reckless but intuitive Comet – if she is hurling accusations at several different people, she’s probably just saying whatever comes to her – but if she’s targeting one particular person, it might be that she’s noticed something off about them.

Characters

You have a collection of different personality types on board. I mentioned Comet. Usually bubbly, honest and direct, she’s bad at lying, so if she’s a villain, you might be able to pick up on it. But with a high intuition stat, she’s very good at picking up on liars herself. 

Raqio is intelligent but obnoxious. It’s easy to cast aspersions on Raqio because other people don’t like them much, and even as an ally they’re not someone you can fully count on to have your back. But with their excellent ‘logic’ score, they are good at analysing the information and identifying when someone must (or must not be) human. SQ is bright and ditzy and two-faced. She always wants to collaborate with you – but half the time, it’s because she’s a Gnosia trying to throw you off her trail. She’s got a great ‘performance’ stat, making her great at telling lies. Remnan is an awkward, nervous teen who isn’t good at expressing himself; he’s no fool, but he’s not much good at persuading others with his terrible ‘charisma’ stat. And Yuriko is cold, ruthless and highly competent – a bad person to have as an enemy.

There are 15 characters in all (including you, the player character), each with their own unique qualities and friends and enemies, so as you can see, there’s a lot to think about.

Roles

To make things more interesting and more challenging, there are a number of roles that can be taken. Engineers and Doctors can, each day, research one person to see if they are or aren’t Gnosia. But it’s also possible for a villain character to lie and pretend to be the Engineer or Doctor, and give their own fake report, thus muddying the waters. But even that’s not all bad – if you have two Engineers or two Doctors appear, you can keep an eye on both of them as odds are one of them is a threat. (If you have loops where there are no Engineers or Doctors, it’s extremely difficult to play, as you’ve nothing to go on; you’re mostly guessing targets and hoping you’re right.)

A Guardian Angel is able to choose one person to protect, so that if the Gnosia target that person, they won’t die. People on Guard Duty can prove themselves human so that they won’t be suspected. An AC Follower is a human who has to try to help the Gnosia win. (Unfortunately, Engineer/Doctor reports on them will legitimately show them as human, so it’s hard to identify this person as an enemy.) And a Bug basically wins if they survive to the end of a loop – and they’ll take the whole universe down with them.

Examples of decision-making

This game really makes you think, especially early on as you’re getting familiar with how it all works.

You always have difficult decisions to make. If the group has turned on one of your allies, when do you also give up defending that ally and pile on with the majority? Should you double down on your accusations of someone you just know is Gnosia, at the risk of being too dominant and annoying other people? If you’re Gnosia, should you take out that annoying person who’s always disagreeing with you – or will that be too obvious? 

If you are an Engineer or Doctor, should you declare yourself as such – or will that expose you to threat? Similarly, if you have a way to prove you are definitely human, should you do it? You’ll protect yourself from cold sleep – but it’ll make the Gnosia more likely to target you. (If you are known to be human by all, then the Gnosia can’t trick the others into putting you into cold sleep.)

The AI in this game is really rather good and the characters mostly act in intelligent ways that match their self-interest. It feels like a genuine challenge to outsmart the others, because if you make a mistake, it’s very likely you’ll pay for it.

My progress

I still have quite a bit of story to uncover. In terms of loops, I’m up to the 70s, and I’m getting a lot better at the game. When I was in the 10s and 20s, I was losing 3 out of 4 loops; now I’m winning much more than I’m losing. This is partly because of my boost in stats (you can still get experience points and level up even from loops that you lost), and partly because I’m getting a better sense on how to play well.

That said, there are times when the vote is just inexplicable to me. For example, when someone who was not mentioned in a discussion, and who didn’t seem to stand out, suddenly gets a bunch of votes and is put into cold sleep. (This can also happen to you, and it’s annoying when you can’t figure out why it’s happened!)

As I went through early loops of the game, I repeatedly failed based on wrong assumptions I made. For example, I thought anyone listed as my ‘Friend’ or ‘Collaborator’ must be human – not so! I assumed that if only one person stepped forward as an Engineer, then they must really be the Engineer – but not so. (If that person steps forward on Day 2, then the real Engineer could already be dead/in cold sleep.) I thought that if the words ‘Definite Human’ or ‘Definite Enemy’ popped up on the screen, then the person speaking was definitely human/enemy – but in fact it’s the person they’re speaking about. I learned each of these lessons through Gnosia death and/or cold sleep!

Conclusion

This is a clever game and if you like this type of thing, it’s very addictive. The story is interesting, the characters are likeable, it’s atmospheric, and most of all, it’s an enjoyable challenge. While the gameplay can be somewhat repetitive with all the time travel loops, you are still making progress – unlocking new commands, progressing in the story, etc – so it still feels like you are looping in a purposeful way.