With murder mystery stories making a sudden return into mainstream focus— think Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion”—now is the perfect time to engage with the genre in the best way possible: video games. I’ve just found a gem to add to my collection.
“Loco Motive” is a point-and-click adventure developed by London-based indie studio Robust Games. As the developers’ debut title, “Loco Motive” shows lots of promise as a witty, charming and thrilling game with ample replayability and few flaws. And with a price under $20, it provides more bang for the buck.
“Loco Motive” follows Arthur Ackerman, a stiff yet friendly estates lawyer; Herman Merman, a washed-up crime novelist turned detective; and Diana Osterhagen, an undercover agent for the fictional Inland Revenue Secret Service. The protagonists work together to solve the murder of Lady Unterwald, the last heiress to the enormous Unterwald estate. The story switches between Arthur, Herman and Diana as players solve puzzles and clear their names as prime suspects to the crime. Along the way, they’ll uncover secret societies, backstabbing cohorts and find out just how clever Lady Unterwald really was.
The game largely takes place on the Reuss Express, a passenger train maintained by the Unterwald estate. The art style–reminiscent of old pixel games–adds to the art deco aesthetic. Everything from the music and outfits to the train itself feels lifted straight out of an old noir film.
The highlight of this game is the engaging writing. One of the biggest shortcomings of many mystery stories is the plot becoming lackluster as it focuses on minor things. In video games, this can be a prettier scenery or more challenging puzzles. But in “Loco Motive,” the plot feels thought out and complete, with a fulfilling conclusion that perfectly wraps up all the loose threads. The dialogue is fantastic, too; the characters are witty and genuinely funny, and all the cheesy one-liners fit with the game’s tone.
“Loco Motive” is also fully voice acted, deepening the player’s immersion into the game. While Arthur, Herman and Diana are all common character tropes from the mystery genre, writing and the voice acting brings a specific charm to each character in a way that doesn’t feel too generic. The voice actor for Arthur, Sean Chiplock, puts in a lot of work carrying across Arthur’s emotional baggage, stuck between this seemingly perpetually cheery guy and a mourner who has just lost a dear friend in Lady Unterwald. Because of this emotional dissonance, Arthur feels fully committed to solving the crime–a characteristic that is easy for writers to mishandle but is executed perfectly in “Loco Motive.”
The puzzles are overall straightforward. They aren’t very difficult but offer a good amount of challenge without feeling frustrating. There’s a little bit of that classic point-and-click campiness that comes with puzzle solving, but not to the degree that it interferes with a majority of the puzzles. The few times I ended up getting stuck came more from the confusion of unclear game mechanics than the actual puzzle itself. Some puzzles need to be solved by having the item in your inventory and talking with the person who will help you with the puzzle. Other puzzles require you to take the item out of your inventory and hand the item to the person to solve the puzzle. There isn’t always a clear indication of what is required to finish the puzzle, so I needed to consult a walk through a few times to figure out the exact mechanics needed to progress further.
The controls, for the most part, are also straight forward. I played the game on the Nintendo Switch and felt the mechanics were easy to understand. Besides the times I couldn’t figure out if I needed to talk to someone to finish a puzzle or hand them something, it’s very easy to pick this game up and start playing.
Should you find yourself stuck, there is an in-game hint system through the use of the phone onboard the train. While it’s pretty useful in helping you find the right direction to solve puzzles, it won’t give you the solution to puzzles. This can be a good and a bad thing; it allows players to explore and makes finding the solution much more rewarding, but it does hinder players where they are getting caught up on mechanical issues, which is what happened to me. Overall, the hint system helps more often than it hurts, but not always to the full extent that I needed.
The game’s biggest flaw is that the plot isn’t evenly divided among the player characters. There are seven chapters and a prologue divided among each character. The prologue and first two chapters feature Arthur as the player character, chapters three and four feature Herman as the player character, chapter five features Diana as the player character and chapter six and the finale giving the players the option to flip between the three characters. As much as I love Arthurs’s awkward charm and Herman’s completely misplaced confidence, I really wish we could play as Diana more. Chapter six and the finale perfectly blends the three characters together, but the lead up to the finale leaves Diana feeling somewhat left out. If we had been given one more chapter on Diana, I think things would have felt more even across the board.
Overall, “Loco Motive” presents itself as a passion project from the developers that mostly hits the mark. It’s charming, witty, incredibly stylish and just plain fun. It’s a fairly quick play, but I’ve only been away from the game for about two weeks, and I’m already itching to pick it up again. “Loco Motive” can be purchased on Steam, GOG or the Nintendo Store.
8/10
