Runaway Express Mystery

A well-intentioned but failed effort to innovate on the casual point-and-click adventure formula. The idea is that you are detective who finds clues to solve mysteries. Cool! Unfortunately, there is no real gameplay to it. You just keep finding new objects to add to your “solution” board, and they are always immediately added to the right place. So the mystery will just solve itself. Worse, the classical aspects are handled poorly. Hidden-object scenes involve you using detective tools to find objects, but you just need to click with these tools all over the screen until you find the fingerprints and blood stains. Puzzles are poorly explained: I've played these games for years, and yet was stumped with what exactly I was supposed to do in some puzzles. The graphics are good, but the voice acting is horrendous: it seems that just two actors were employed to do all the voices. Honestly, I don't blame them for doing such a poor job considering the ridiculous script. The story tries hard to be clever, but in the end is an insultingly insipid variation on the theme of “mother trying to save her children.” Only this time the mother doesn't seem to care very much at all. Skip this one.

[h1]Haywire Express...[/h1] A game about some mysterious murders, that happened along a trainride in the past, with each of the passengers telling their story. [b]Graphics: ++[/b] The graphics [i]are[/i] beautiful, some of them outshine others but all of them would also fit nice into a normal adventure game. [b]Sound: 0[/b] Nothing too fancy, the sound is more standard fare, I would have expected a more atmospheric sound for this game. [b]Playability: 0[/b] Normally I would have given one plus, sadly this game has a tendency of lagging, which actually makes the game not working perfectly. At least it didn't crash, but the lags were enervating nonetheless. Genre-Type Scores: [b]Story: +[/b] The story is ok. It's kind of Orient-Express with some more murders, which you have to solve. And at last find the final conflict to get your kids back. The devs could have made more with the story, but it's ok. Not a full winner, but at least a nice story. [b]Technical Realisation: +[/b] Could have been better, but isn't all bad. Strange is the problem with frequent lags, not during the cutscenes, but in the actual gameplay. On the good side is how the HOS were presented, they are like Crimescene Investigation Pictures, you have to use Luminol and Powder, a Magnifier and a flashlight... But actually this was too simple, just spread dust and spray around and you wind up finding the clues... [b]Extras: 0[/b] Sorry, no Extras present. This isn't a collectors edition and furthermore, the game is concluded after playthrough. [b][i]Overall Rating: 4 +[/i][/b] The game isn't that bad at all, just let's say it's a bit of a disenchantment here. The characters you meet during the game are good, the graphics are sometimes very beautiful, the story is ok... it's more the trouble with the protagonist and... well... kidnapping. You've seen this so often now in different games that it too, becomes more and more a burden - especially if the protagonist is kind of... well, Mary Sue... it's so cheesy all the time, but other games also have this problem. [b]Value for Money: Low[/b] Basically a hidden object game with very limited replayability, the seven bucks do actually hurt. There are sales and bundles, if you want to play it try to get it cheap. [h1]Conditionally Recommended[/h1] This game is more for hardcore fans of the genre, it also could be a good starting point for newbies - if they aren't familiar with HOG's. This mostly is the case because there are only a few Hidden Object Scenes around, and there is more sleuthing stuff, but this is better solved by any of the Nancy Drew stories - and Nancy Drew at least doesn't come along as a total Mary Sue. The game feels at times like an adventure light game, or casual adventure. And this is giving most of it's actual charm.

This was surprisingly fun. I'd say it's more puzzle based with some hidden object elements. And though I say hidden object, it's more of silhouette hunting with other mini-tasks! Pleasantly surprised with the detective elements, quite frankly I didn't think this would have it. I came in playing this game with blind (and low) expectations BUT I love detective solving so it's all good! It was very interesting! I felt like the last 2 of 3 murder cases were quite rushed compared to the rest, I had a feeling they wanted to make it big, and do more with the environments but had to cut back for some reason. There's a bathroom area where you only pick up one item and poof, that's it. Nothing else, no HO scene, no mini-games, nothing. Just pick up one (1) object. It was odd. Would be a waste to ask an artist to create this entire background for that one single purpose of clicking something in a half second and leaving forever. As someone who works with graphics, this is way too sad, haha! (Please pay your art department well!) PROS: > Crime-solving! You get to solve 3 different murder cases and you gather evidence and make conclusions (think of AM's Enigmatis series) > Bright colorful sceneries of 1920's Europe! There were lots of areas! Pretty chocful! > Kudos to the design team for making so many bits of papers and receipts, bits and bobs. Always appreciate people who try to use immersive typography! (Drink when you see generic fonts in HO games, you'd lose...) > Fast-travel maps! CONS: > Somewhat weak character models haha! I guess this would double as a comment about weak characters (what was the purpose of some of them? They only delivered one (1) piece of information and that's their entire role). > The minigame with the engineer broke my brain! I can't math at 4am! > A loose hitbox! I found myself accidentally moving/leaving areas or looking at the wrong spot because the hitting space might be too wide. Often times, even though I've collected all the items available, the spot can still open up. It's confusing because I thought I haven't collected everything. Overall, good job! I was really surprised. I didn't actually think this was a detective game, so really that was fun for me. I love anything "investigative". I look forward to more games from Icarus Games if ever, as I noticed this game was made in 2014. Definitely recommend for people who prefer mini-games over HO scenes in HOGs.

A decent hidden object game. Works fine on Linux with Proton (Proton 4.11-10).

I was enjoying it until i hit a bug that literally breaks the game. Therefore i cannot recommend this game. I restarted the game and got passed the part where the bug happened. I then hit another game breaking bug it seems that some of the events arnt triggering correctly. Luckily i found that you can actually delete the event in your saved game and restart that event. Such a shame the developer didn't fix this game. Here is the steam community link to how to fix the events example event is the bank vault. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1657297272 Finished the game nice story and ending however running into those game breaking bugs really destroys the atmosphere.

Bastante tonto. La historia no está mal y es lo único que te impulsa a terminarlo. Puzzles inexistentes, todo mascadísimo y facilísimo. Las EOO una tortura repetitiva con la búsqueda de huellas y rastros de sangre. En fin, normalito tirando a soso.

https://youtu.be/fCYY7dKEPtE Attempting to do it all in one game the narrative falls apart as it struggles to keep focus across rescuing child, solving ghost crimes, and escaping a haunted train.

Good game but full of bugs need to restart it 5-6 time to finish it (game failed to acquire evidence)

Could play the game without the 'Budapest bug'. Maybe it is fixed or I just had luck. Decent game with nice story. No boring riddles or mini games which you would skip immediately. What was really annoying: Almost every door is locked and there are many of them :-)

a very nice and enjoyable HOG with a decent story. pros. good story ok voice acting cons. short a bit more than 2 hours for the main story no bonus story even tho the voice acting was good, it has some cheesy parts in it which i didn't like. some parts in the beginning have no emotions at all -.-" overall despite being short i really enjoyed it. i do recommend this one. tho as always get it on a discount. i give it 7/10