Review: Loco Motive had so much potential, but the game soft-locked itself out of greatness

Loco Motive is a point-and-click adventure about a murder mystery. You play as multiple people to figure out who killed Lady Unterwald, a train empire heiress. Ironically, she’s murdered on her own train and anyone could be the culprit. You’ll seek out clues, pick up items, combine them, and use them to further your progress.

Personally, Loco Motive was one that I was excited about. As a huge lover of Lucasarts games, I found the art style and humor to be in line with games I’ve previously loved like the Monkey Island series and Day of the Tentacle.

Unfortunately, there are game-breaking and soft-locking bugs that have made this title not just unplayable, but not recommendable. 

Loco Motive: All Aboard the Train to Disappointment

I’ll be honestly morbid here, the hook for me on Loco Motive was just the humor of Lady Unterwald getting stabbed after the lights went out in classic murder mystery style, the Doctor saying it just might be a flesh wound, and then a spray of blood popping out to denote she’s not fine at all. It struck me as perfectly campy.

I was excited to see what the game could deliver and for the most part, it delivered, visually, in spades. Unfortunately, it fell apart at the execution. So, let’s talk about the good before we get into the ugly.

You initially play as Arthur Ackerman, Lady Unterwald’s estate attorney. After her death, everyone is sure that the latest amendment to her will would be the smoking gun that points the finger in the right direction of ‘whodunnit’. Unfortunately for us, Arthur isn’t the brightest crayon in the box and loses the will by opening a window in the train car which the will escapes through.

For the first leg of the game, you inspect some train cars, find some objects, talk to many people, and ultimately get the will back. However, I will say that the team went with a design of convenience when it came to the layout of the train.

As you talk to people and experience cutscenes, it seems like the team decided that continuity didn’t really matter too much. This happens often throughout, especially when new train cars are introduced.

As Arthur, you only have access to a few train cars. You start in the hall where your room is and have to go through the dining car, then the casino in order to get to Lady Unterwald’s room. However, the casino is conveniently missing when it isn’t needed. You went from the dining car directly to Lady Unterwald’s room.

The Mystery of the Changing Train Layout

Later, when you play as another character, you realize the train doesn’t dead end in her room. There’s a whole hallway that you never saw. While it’s not a terribly big issue, it is a little weird. Then again, with a game that simply goes back and forth repeatedly, perhaps they thought one more room would be too much.

Either way, it creates a situation where you’re never really too sure what the layout of the train is.

As far as the puzzles go, it suffers the same way most point-and-click games do. The way that some things are achieved is convoluted and often relies on a snippet of conversation you saw earlier or the description of an item you’ve had for several hours.

This, altogether, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when you have a game that can soft-lock you, it’s an incredibly unforgiving design to progress.

Before I get into the soft-locking, let me just say the great points because Loco Motive is a beautiful package on an empty box.

The pixelated art style is top-notch. I found it charming and nostalgic. The set design and the characters were one of the crowning achievements of this game. Likewise, the voice acting is superb. Even the music, which I’m a staunch critic of in most games, was a perfect accompaniment to the setting.

However, that’s where the praise ends, unfortunately. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t locked out of progress as Arthur. I was able to get through his entire leg of the journey with only a few issues. For instance, I honestly didn’t know that the characters would switch out.

To be frank, I was rather attached to Arthur and his inventory. There were things still in his pockets that I hadn’t used. And, unfortunately, there were achievements through that inventory I missed because I wasn’t expecting the characters to change out so abruptly. A lot of games these days will notify you that if you continue, you’ll lose out on some progress and I wish that’d been the case here. 

The real culprit was Robust Games all along.

Now, I’ll fully admit, I’m not sure if you go back to Arthur. You very well may, but that’s not something I’ll ever know because I was locked out of progress.

Throughout playing as Arthur, you meet a “world famous detective” Herman Merman and he’s truly detestable as a character. So, imagine my displeasure when I’m suddenly at the wheel for him. You have nothing in your inventory and you’re essentially starting over.

While I will say that his leg of the journey happens prior to Lady Unterwald’s murder and it was interesting to get more backstory, he’s where my game went to shit.

There is a moment where you’re backstage talking to the band, encouraging the lead singer to go back on stage so that you can check out the backroom. You hype her up and she says she has to check with her bandmates to see if they’re ready to go back on stage. She asks them and then nothing. She just stands there, I stand there, and the bandmates keep playing poker.

I have no mouse function, I can’t get to the settings menu where you manually save, and I’m left with only the ability to pause. My only choice is to just shut the game down and I’m absolutely not going to spend 2 more hours trying to get back to where I was. Especially when I might get the same lockout.

Thankfully, the game does have an autosave, though I needed it pointed out to me by someone who worked on the game. Maybe I’m blind, but I don’t believe the game lets you know it does that.*

Looking up some reviews, I found that getting locked out of progress isn’t uncommon. A lot of people had game-breaking bugs or were able to soft-lock themselves out of being able to continue.

In case you don’t know what soft-locking is, it’s when a game allows you to get yourself tucked into a corner. For instance, if you need to give something to someone to trigger a response, but something else you did caused them to move from that space, you’re no longer able to interact with them because the trigger was overridden by other elements that happened. 

Error 404: Game progress not found.

Upon further inspection, it appears this game was pushed back several quarters and it seems like it needed to be pushed back even more before release. I’m reviewing this game three weeks after its debut and a huge patch for bug fixes, so the fact that this bug still exists speaks to the reality that there either wasn’t enough quality assurance done or the game was still too far gone for release.

It’s a shame, honestly, because other than some convoluted puzzles that are expected with this genre and a bit too much in the dialogue department, I really was enjoying playing Loco Motive.

Loco Motive is a game where its clear aesthetics and atmosphere are paramount. Unfortunately, it meant that development got left on the floor. As it is, I cannot recommend Loco Motive. I can’t guarantee that you won’t be unlucky to come across a bug that breaks your game and steals your progress.

If you want to test your luck, you can get it anyway for $17.99 on Steam or Nintendo Switch. But, I’d highly recommend that you choose sanity and spend your money on a game that won’t leave you frustrated like Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island.

*Editor’s Note 12-17-24: Clarification on autosaving