Test for Loco Motive – Nintendo Switch – ntower

The dark season often invites you to deal with darker stories. Maybe that's why the murder mystery genre is booming, because in the bookstore alone you can come across countless new titles. The game Loco Motive fits in very well, because even though it is basically a detective game with a bloody murder at the center, it still feels a bit cozy. I have summarized how this can be in this test.

We begin the journey on a train and feel transported straight back to the time of the legendary Orient Express. Because after a short time, the glamorous party that is being held turns into a real crime scene because Lady Unterwald is murdered on stage. However, since the train travels through a tunnel and the action disappears in the dark, the murderer is able to escape unnoticed.

Good thing Arthur Ackerman is on board. He is Lady Unterwald's real estate lawyer and takes on the case directly, because there is much more to the murder than meets the eye. In addition, the succession must be clarified, because Lady Unterwald's heirs seem to have just been waiting for her death. This is recorded in the will, but the document escapes through an open window and disappears. The task now is to find out who the rightful heir and the real murderer is.

A short time later, however, we observe an interview with the police in which the three protagonists Diana, Arthur and Herman tell their side of things. We repeatedly switch between the police station and the crime scene on rails, so that we gradually immerse ourselves in the story, which is not only told to the police, but which we can also experience live. Although the timeline is always the same, the story is told from different perspectives and you learn how the characters are connected and what influence they had on the events.

Since Loco Motive is a point-and-click adventure, the gameplay is unsurprising. We can move quite freely through the environments and interact with different things or characters. A keen eye is very important here, because even the smallest details could become significantly important later. Therefore, you should patiently explore every centimeter and the detailed pixel style of the game regularly invites you to take a close look at the corners, no matter how unimportant.

Because the beauty of Loco Motive is the incredibly good humor that is hidden in every single line of dialogue. The different characters are incredibly well written and the conversations are a lot of fun. In addition, the game is completely voiced in English and the individual speakers bring so much atmosphere to the game that you might think you are watching an exciting film. This is an absolute plus point for the game.

Also typical of a point-and-click game are the different items that you can collect and combine. This sometimes gives rise to really absurd and funny ideas for maneuvering yourself out of situations and it stimulates your own creativity to think outside the box several times. What makes it exciting is that you play different characters over the course of the game, all of whom of course have their own inventory. In the moments where you play all three protagonists once, this proves to be incredibly useful, as their items can also be swapped with each other.

Many of the little puzzles are solved by combining objects and if you don't know what to do, there is always a telephone nearby that you can use to call the famous detective Dirk Chiselton. He will then give you hints if necessary, so that you will often point your nose straight to the solution. In rare cases, however, it also manages to confuse you because the solution to the puzzle is not so obvious. It happened to me a few times here that I was directed in a completely different direction.

Another small negative point is the dialogue, which is actually great. You basically have four answer options with which you can answer the other person, but in some conversations the conversation feels artificially drawn out. Although the conversations are always well written and show how great the game's humor is, many questions in a conversation are repeated again within a slightly different sentence structure, which means that you have to dig deeper for information from the other person. However, this is rarely effective, which is why I found it a bit pointless.

I wasn't able to find any bugs myself, although I did notice one or two typographical errors. However, it is well known that some puzzles cause you to get stuck because you cannot solve things in the required order. Then it is recommended to restart and save regularly. Otherwise, the game runs well on the Nintendo Switch and looks very nice thanks to the really great pixel graphics. The touchscreen also helps enormously when it comes to controls, because it can get fiddly when you're standing in front of a lot of objects that you can interact with.