Gnosia (game)

Gnosia, stylized GNOSIA, is a single-player sci-fi social deduction JRPG created by the Japanese studio Petit Depotto, originally released in Japan for the PlayStation Vita in 2019. On March 4th, 2021, the game was released in English to the rest of the world on the Nintendo Switch. On January 23rd, 2022, the game was released for Microsoft Windows through Steam and introduced a Simplified Chinese language option.

The game is set on a drifting spaceship, where players must attempt to deduce (or get away with being) the Gnosia, a deadly ‘virus’ which causes humans to change and eliminate other crew mates. With your character repeating the cycle every time a ‘winner’ is determined, with the cast, roles, and number of crew mates changing each time, it is an interesting spin on hidden role games such as Werewolf, Mafia, and Town of Salem, and takes the suspicions of Among Us to a single player level.

Overview
The Gnosia lie. Pretending to be human, they’ll get in close, trick and deceive, and then eliminate one victim at a time...

The crew of a drifting spaceship, facing off against a mysterious and deadly threat known as the “Gnosia” and having no idea who among them is really the enemy, formulate a desperate plan for survival. The most suspicious among them will be put into “cold sleep” one by one, in an effort to rid the ship of Gnosia.

Gnosia is a Sci-Fi Social Deduction RPG in which you will engage in discussion with a variety of unique characters, with the aim of identifying the Gnosia among the group. Players will have to use what information they can gather during the discussions to ascertain whom they think is Gnosia and then vote to put them into cold sleep. As you progress, your abilities will improve - but so will those of the crew.

As the numbers of crew members, Gnosia, and various “roles” increase, it will become increasingly difficult to determine who is telling the truth. Work in collaboration with or against other crew members to ensure your survival until the end.

・Repeatedly play through “loops”, triggering special events to unravel mysteries in a uniquely original narrative. Certain events will unlock new commands for you to use during discussions.

・Step into a variety of roles to develop different character builds. Your stats will determine how effectively you can sway the group’s opinion or lie, and will also affect your likelihood of being selected for cold sleep.

・Engage with an engrossing and eclectic cast of characters and experience randomly triggered events, each one unique to its subject. Character events will reveal information about your crewmates in the form of special “Notes”.

Development
WIP


 * Development began in 2015; the game was initially planned to release on the PlayStation Mobile.
 * Was inspired by one of the developers - programmer and narrative designer Shigoto - being displeased with a Werewolf-styled mobile game.
 * Initially intended to be a romance simulation game.
 * The male characters were designed to Kotori's (the graphic designer & illustrator) tastes.
 * The characters were created by first creating different "types" of Werewolf players, distributing stats to reflect different archetypes. The developers observed how the games progressed, then developed the characters and setting around how the AI performed.
 * Shigoto consulted Amphibian - the scenario writer for the game Raging Loop - for advice in regards to writing a time loop story, particularly in terms of making characters.
 * The developers wanted there to be even more events, including ones difficult to find or missable, but cut back due to practicality.
 * Shigoto was responsible for Gina's secret romantic event and intended for it to be extremely difficult to find.
 * The developers avoided making any sort of event viewer or gallery feature (though this was changed in the Switch and PC releases), valuing the uniqueness of each player's playthrough.
 * The developers actively pared back elements of metafiction out of value for the psychology of its players, with Mezukare being particular about "[not breaking] the relationship of trust between the creator and the player". The element of cold sleep was introduced to avoid making players feel guilty about constantly voting people off. Petit Depotto knew players would have to go through between 100-200 loops to complete the game and wanted to make something the player would be comfortable engaging with for so long - and with a happy ending - over something that played up the darkness of the game's setting.

Version 1.0.1
Released on July 12, 2020.

Features minor bug fixes.

Version 1.0.2 (JP)
Released on November 4, 2020.

Features minor bug fixes.

Version 1.0.2 (EN)
Released on March 15, 2021 for the English version of the game.

This update completely relocalized Shower Room - Raqio and Raqio's profile as well as fixing misused pronouns in dialogue regarding Setsu and Raqio. Finally, various typos and grammatical errors were corrected.

Version 1.0.3
Released on March 29, 2021 for the English version of the game.

This updated corrected the remaining misused pronouns and made a few other small fixes.

Version 1.0.4
Released on July 27, 2021.

The changes made in this update are currently unknown.

January 25th, 2022
A provisional fix was released for an error that caused character sprites not to load properly on some devices, only displaying their expressions.

January 28th, 2022
A permanent fix for the character display issue was released in this update in addition to some corrections to the English text.

The update post also claims it "Changed the behavior when entering the room," though it is unclear what exactly this refers to.

February 8th, 2022
In addition to correcting more of the English text, this update fixed a glitch that effected the activation of Skills and Events. If the game was left open for too long, the characters would stop using certain skills. This prevented players from completing the game, as the necessary events for Sha-Ming's 4th Note and Gina's 4th Note would never trigger.

February 17th, 2022
This update made some fixes and adjustments to some of the localized text and made partial adjustments to "key settings".