Normality

Normality is a point-and-click adventure by the British studio Gremlin Interactive, set in the dystopian city of Neutropolis, where any creativity and individuality is harshly suppressed by the ruling corporation. The player takes on the role of a young city resident who, against his will, discovers an illegal resistance movement fighting for freedom of expression and gradually gets caught up in a conflict with the totalitarian regime.

The game combines classic adventure-style puzzle-solving and item collecting with a partially 3D-rendered environment, through which the player moves more freely than in the purely 2D adventures of the time. The game's humor draws on satire of consumer society and cultural suppression, with many puzzles set within the mundane, deliberately drab appearance of a city ruled by bureaucracy. On DOS machines, it presented itself with fairly good graphics, fully voiced characters, and a distinctive musical component that complemented the game's satirical tone well.

Normality did not achieve the same acclaim as other Gremlin Interactive adventures, yet it is valued for its unusual dystopian humor and unconventional setting. Today it is more of a curiosity for collectors and genre fans, who will appreciate the atmosphere of the drab city and the exaggeration with which the game comments on the suppression of individuality and creativity. In the mid-nineties, Gremlin Interactive was better known for sports and action titles, so Normality represented a rather bold departure toward a narrative-driven adventure with pronounced political exaggeration. This is precisely why today's players and genre historians see it as an interesting, if overlooked, experiment worth discovering alongside the more famous adventures of the nineties, such as those from LucasArts or Sierra. The shift toward a partially three-dimensional environment also showed where the point-and-click adventure genre would head in the following years, even though Normality itself remained more of a side stop on that road than one of its main milestones.