In case it wasn’t made clearwhen I chose to highlight Wild Woodsover The Lord of the Rings: Gollum in our PAX East 2023 coverage so far, I tend to have what could be seen as weird priorities at times when it comes to video game coverage. For another case, let’s head over to Chucklefish, the London-based publisher who were putting in a rare Stateside appearance at the expo this year. It felt like the lion’s share of the focus was onthe recently-announced Wargroove 2,being a follow-up to2019’s original game,an acclaimed spiritual successor to the Advance Wars series, but all I could think of was how I would finally be able to give the point-and-click adventure game Loco Motive a spin. Granted, this shouldn’t be too much of a shocker, given that we selected the game asone of the show’s best,but I still felt odd.
For the record, I did also give Wargroove 2 a try, especially since it was showcasing its brand-new roguelike Conquest mode. And it was indeed fun, but at the same time, I can’t say what I played in the demo felt all that unique. It was basically the grid-based tactical combat of the original, but with a branching map in between battles where you can engage in events, recruit new troops, and the like. It’s one winning formula combined with another winning formula, but without having played the original or getting a longer session with the game as a whole, I can’t say I feel completely excited for the game yet…
That might sound odd, seeing as how I’m about to sing the praises of Loco Motive, an entry into a genre that arguably hasn’t evolved much over decades. But the strength in graphic adventure games lies in puzzle design, narrative, character, and depending on the game, a sense of humor, and Loco Motive excels in those areas so far. The demo saw us playing as Arthur, one of the three playable characters and the lawyer to Lady Unterwald, a wealthy heiress who ends up being murdered on the Reuss Express, right before giving an important speech. In the present, Arthur is fingered as a suspect, and after an initial puzzle where we help time break out of handcuffs while in police custody, we flash back to their time on the train.
One thing about Loco Motive that does immediately spring out as unique is the presentation. Not just the cartoonish pixel art style, which looks colorful and gorgeous, but also the fact that the game presents the action via a side view with a cutaway for every car, creating an impressive sense of scale as you travel across the entire length of the train and the screen scrolls along with you, in contrast to when you enter an individual room and we have a single screen. The action of traveling across the train even extends to the puzzles, as seen when after thwarting a gambler’s cheating at roulette with a magnet, we see them exiting the screen and simply coming back with more chips. So disrupting them again, Arthur has to run past them and beat them to their room, hide in a cupboard and discover the phony chips they’ve been creating, allowing you to steal them now. Simple stuff, but nice, well-designed and fun.
Said gambler is one of many enjoyable characters found throughout the game, which includes the like of eccentric twins, flirts, the comically upper crust and more. Not to mention our protagonists, with Arthur giving off the vibes of a classic LucasArts character, and standing out with their classic adventure hero design (despite being a lawyer), complete with broad shoulders and huge jaw. The designs also fit the blend of physical and dialogue-based humor well, with even Lady Unterwald’s death bringing terrifically-funny moments with it. Combine these parts the genuine intrigue when it comes to figuring out the mystery, and spread that across multiple protagonists, and the potential for a memorable story here is high.
While it’s easy to say that Loco Motive is a throwback to classic adventure games – which it does feel like – the Reuss Express ends up providing unique, subtle twists that help give the game its own unique flavor, and after ending the demo with the introduction of some sort of shadowy secret society, we can’t wait to see exactly where this trip leads when the game comes out later this year for PC and Switch.
