Loco Motive (Switch) Review

Upfront I am a sucker for a good point-and-click adventure – even better if it is funny. Growing up with Lucasarts and Sierra classics, as many others have and over the years it’s great to see the genre continuing to live on. This time Loco Motive has pulled up to the station and it’s time to see if it has enough steam to get through to the end. 

Loco Motive is a ’point and click’ murder mystery with a lot of humour throughout. The story starts with the rich old rail tycoon Lady Unterwald, who is murdered during the most vital moment of naming a successor to her empire. The events unfold on her flagship train/locomotive The Reuss Express, and with the lights going out during the murder there is a real whodunnit on your hands.

You play as the three prime suspects – Lady Unterwalds lawyer, Arthur Ackerman; Crime writer/detective Herman Merman; and Secret agent Diana Ostman. The story unravels all of the mystery and intrigue as each character gets their own time to shine, their misadventures overlap across the important events that bring them to being grilled by the police. There’s also a cast of characters on board (and offboard) the train that all have their part to play, with several shady parties connected to Lady Unterwald to keep you guessing what happened. It’s fun to see the different characters across different parts of the timeline of the events on the train, as it fills in the blanks in the story.

A comedy-infused point-and-click adventure/murder mystery like any game needs to do well across multiple areas. You want a story worth playing through, especially when focused around a whodunnit or even a whytheydidit. Then there’s making sure all the puzzles and mysteries to get there are enjoyable, or at least not too frustrating. On top of all that, it’s creating something funny consistently. For the most part Loco Motive succeeds and even when it stumbles a little it is where practically every point and click stumbles. 

The story is interesting as each main character adds and builds on the narrative, with more context added as you see events from another character’s perspective. While there is more going on than first appears, there are enough threads to pull at to keep you from guessing what’s going on too early. It also helps that the main characters are endearing, starting with the dorky Arthur who is a big geek for accounting and paperwork. It’s a nice contrast when Herman and Diana take the reins. Herman is intentionally a more grating character, but the game (and the developers) does such a good job of making him likable as his side of the story fleshes out. I can’t say too much about Diana’s part without giving away some of the mystery, but her motivations and presence on the train give a nice outside view of all the madness.

As a more traditional point-and-click game Loco Motive is full of puzzle solving, in fact, it’s a main part of the game. Because it is so vital to the game it’s why it’s so important that it’s good. It feels like a time-honoured tradition for there to be a fair bit of convoluted logic needed, or ‘moon logic’. Sometimes it can be working out the silly way to solve the obvious problem, following the clues and conversations, but then there’s the slightly more frustrating puzzles. These puzzles are where you have all of the items you should need to be able to solve something, but there are another 1-2 steps before you can reach the way the game wants you to solve it. It was exacerbated when it can be easy to miss items when you need to reexamine items multiple times across the different characters. 

While it can be frustrating at moments, I could say that for most point-and-click games. If it all made logical sense right away, puzzles would be much easier to plough through! So what makes it ok for some games and not for others? Personally, for me it comes down to how much of the frustration is unnecessary, for example, how much running around is needed to solve something. How much backtracking and repeating steps are needed? How hard is it to find a pivotal item to progress? 

Loco Motive frustrated at times, just as every point and click does at some point.  Everyone’s tolerance for different types of puzzles varies, there’s nothing too egregious here. There is also a hint system available at a handy dandy phone never too far away if you’re stuck. I found its effectiveness can vary, while it can tell you enough about what is needed, it didn’t help when it couldn’t at least point me to where I could find the necessary item. 

Now for the humour. As always, it is difficult to know how anyone will receive a game’s comedic writing. What’s funny can be subjective to your own sense of humour, but it feels Loco Motive manages to be goofy and absurd in that way a point-and-click game can. Even better is that the game manages to be pretty consistent throughout the story, whether it’s silly situations or witty dialogue. I was really happy to find the small development team behind Loco Motive, Robust Games, was able to capture so many elements of those classic games and make something new and enjoyable. 

I also didn’t want to leave out that after all of those elements, you also have the challenge of looking to evoke old pixel art. Thankfully the pixel art looks nice, doing well to capture the spirit of those older games while also looking great on its own. The story feels timeless, like it fits right in with the 90’s and 2000s era of point-and-click games. Without a computer mouse for the point and click, the job as usual falls on the Switch’s button controls. You can control your character with the L Stick, while the R Stick moves around highlighting the different points of interest on the screen. The POI highlighting works pretty well most of the time, although it can be fiddly when there are some interactive parts close together. There was at least one place where the game would ignore what I was selecting completely and start through the process of talking to someone.

While I have a lot of praise for the game, there were some small glitches and bugs across the several hours of Loco Motive. While some of the more egregious issues were solved, a few visual glitches popped up, along with the rare difficulty with the game not recognising items you’ve selected. Overall these didn’t impact my time with the game.

Loco Motive is a fun and funny murder mystery adventure. For the small quibbles, it is a really enjoyable trip. I recommend Loco Motive in a heartbeat to anyone who enjoys a good point-and-click adventure, or even if you just thought the game looked fun. With such a good first release, I look forward to seeing what Robust Games comes up with after this. One to check out! 

Rating: 4.5/5