Loco Motive is one of those games that’s very easy to enjoy and feel like you’re having a jolly good time while you’re playing it. A point and click adventure in the vein of old LucasArts games, this is a funny and exquisitely animated romp across a 1930s Orient Express-alike that delights at almost every turn. It’s a murder mystery at its core, albeit one that isn’t afraid to laugh at its own expense and employ the same kind of daft puzzle logic as Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle did before it. There are so many things I like about it, so why did I feel increasingly indifferent to it by the time I hit the end credits?
Loco Motive reviewDeveloper: Robust GamesPublisher: ChucklefishPlatform: Played on PC and Steam DeckAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam, GOG) and Nintendo Switch
I suspect that part of this is down to its underlying mystery, which mostly boils down to a fairly rudimentary will dispute, a little bit of tax fraud and not a lot else. Inheritance squabbles aren’t the most scintillating of subjects at the best of times, and there’s only so much comedic mileage that developer Robust Games manages to get out of jokes about tax evasion and predictably empty coffers (though to its credit, what it does manage to eke out of this rather dry subject matter is routinely very good and got more than a couple of smiles from me). More broadly, though, it’s also the kind of setup that just makes it easy to predict who its major villains and suspects are going to be. Train puns aside, there is nothing ‘loco’ about anyone’s motives here, and when the big reveal does finally come, it’s the kind of inevitable shoulder shrug you saw coming a mile off in the middle of act two.
Loco Motive – Official Launch Trailer Watch on YouTube
It’s a shame, especially when Loco Motive gets off to such a strong start. Set in and around the murder of the moneyed Lady Unterwald – who’s mysteriously dropped dead during the reading of her own much anticipated and constantly updated will aboard a steam-powered express train – you first take control of her paperwork-loving estate lawyer Arthur Ackerman. As this bumbling giant with a heart of gold gets thrust into the role of a makeshift detective, he makes for a very affable lead as you get to grips with the game’s item-based puzzles.
In that classic adventure game mould, Loco Motive is all about applying the correct-shaped item to any given problem, grabbing and occasionally combining items from your Tardis-like jacket pocket to create new and increasingly silly gadgetry to get round the issue at hand. Most solutions are fairly self-evident, though some definitely stray into that ‘one leap of logic too far’ bucket that will have you tearing your hair out or repeatedly rushing toward the onboard tips phone to help you make those missing connections. Certain puzzle objects can come from all sorts of unlikely places, too, calling for careful interrogation of your environment to root out exactly what you need from it.
Indeed, with some items or information nuggets often lying behind several nested lines of dialogue, Loco Motive uses this opportunity to put its witty script front and centre. The genuinely funny writing does a lot of heavy lifting here, elevating its cast so they feel like they’ve all been plucked straight from the pages of an Agatha Christie novel. Ranging from snarky wealthy widows and idiot sons to sleazeball con artists, crafty accountants and overly stressed chefs to name just a few of the passengers you’ll be rubbing shoulders with here, nearly every single character in Loco Motive works extremely hard to keep you entertained. Every line is beautifully voiced, with even the most minor characters receiving characterful and endearing performances from their respective voice actors – though after a couple of hours of thorough excavation, the appeal of such verbose flavour text definitely started to wear a bit thin for me. I quickly stopped seeking out those extra lines, keeping my enquiries to the topic at hand rather than choosing to spend more time in their company.