Robust Games: Loco Motive | Review

Welcome aboard the Reuss Express, a journey of a life-time derailed by an unexpected assassination… On the eve of a landmark speech by the wealthy heiress Lady Unterwald, a straight-laced lawyer, a crime novelist-turned rookie detective, and an undercover spy find themselves embroiled in a murder, a mystery, and worst of all… an adventure! Now stuck onboard a luxurious steam train, within stabbing distance of a cold-blooded killer, the race is on to prove their innocence once and for all!

Loco Motive is a slapstick adventure, packed full of deadly surprises, shocking twists and larger than life characters! Play as Diana, Arthur and Herman to unwrap the mystery and put your point and click puzzle-solving skills to the test…

Time Played: 6 hours
Console: PC / Nintendo Switch / Steam
Recommended For: Fans of classic point and click games

Loco Motive is a wonderful return to the era of pixelated point-and-click games, sarcastic humour and 4th wall breaking turns, with better graphics and some loving nods to the point and click icons of the past.

All aboard the murder express

Loco Motive takes place (mostly) on the luxurious Reuss Express, where the wealthy heiress Lady Unterwald has just been murdered, moments before making an important announcement. The setting perfectly encapsulates the opulent Orient express vibe – moving seamlessly between dining carts and private cabins, with a cast of colourful characters from a competitive family to a secretive cult. 

Your task is to solve the murder, alternating between playing her uptight lawyer, a fumbling wannabe-detective author, and an upstart undercover agent, and their own perspectives in the run up to, and after, the murder. 

Point and Click, with a modern touch

Loco Motive operates similar to a classic point and click – direct your character by clicking on various areas of the screen to examine or pick up objects and talk to other characters. Combine items in your inventory to solve problems and move the story along, gain favour by solving the many and varied petty problems of fellow passengers, and somewhere along the way attempt to solve the larger mystery. 

So what’s the verdict?

I really enjoyed the callback to classic LucasArt games, with witty dialogue and ridiculous scenarios. For the most part, the problems themselves were fairly straightforward to solve, if a little far fetched, though one or two lead me to employ the game’s inbuilt hint system via the detective hotline. The voice acting was fantastic and the art was beautiful.

The alternating timelines was such a smart move too, allowing the game to make use of the same set multiple times, in different ways – it was fun to discover an apparently innocuous object for one character ultimately had a lot of meaning for another, or realise that one character had stumbled into another’s timeline.

For me, the only thing that really let this game down was the mystery! I found it fairly predictable – I was able to more or less predict the ‘solution’ from the start, with our characters not contributing to the progression of the story at all. I think they definitely missed a trick here – as much as I enjoyed the switching perspectives, it was very much underutilised – essentially you play through a ‘chapter’ as each, with only the final chapter allowing you to switch between the three. I would have loved for this to occur in more of the game from the start, allowing you to utilise your knowledge from the other characters more. I also would have liked a slightly more complex mystery that actually involved some deduction, and more active participation from the main characters, rather than feeling like a passenger to the story. 

All that aside, I thought this was a lovely game – I’ve recommended it to multiple friends and I look forward to seeing what else the studio produces in the future!

Find out more about Loco Motive and download it on a platform of your choice here.