Loco Motive News

We're delighted to announce we've hit another major milestone. Thanks to your support, we've now reached 80,000 outstanding wishlists!

A massive shout-out to you all for adding Loco Motive to your wishlists, sharing feedback and supporting us throughout our development so far. We're a tiny indie team creating our debut game and this means a lot to us!

If you haven't already, consider wishlisting Loco Motive to receive a notification when the full game launches later this year. It’s just one click, but it really helps us out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1709880/

We’ll be sharing more progress as we go, but in the meantime, you can follow us for updates on Twitter or join the official Robust Games Discord.

“Hallo Freunde!”

It’s been a busy few months for the Loco Motive team, but we're eager to bring you up to speed on our latest developments! Since our last update, we've been busy recording voice-over dialogue with our cast, forging exciting new partnerships, and approaching a significant milestone: Finalising all the text in the game!

The writing process involved plenty of typing, ruminating and head-scratching but after 70,000 words or so - I'm glad to say we're almost there. As we worked towards this milestone, it enabled us to better explore our options with localisation.

The adventure game community is known for a strong and loyal German following, and Loco Motive has been no exception. With Germany featuring prominently as a top wishlist region, this was an easy decision for us to make:

✨We're delighted to announce that Loco Motive will be launching with German language support!✨

We’ve teamed up with Marcel Weyers to create the German localisation for Loco Motive, who you may be familiar with for their work on Return To Monkey Island, Goodbye Volcano High & Coffee Talk: Episode 2!

Marcel was happy to share a few words about the project:

Originally posted by Marcel

“Working on Loco Motive has been super fun! There's so much attention to detail in this project, and even though some of the puns were quite tricky to translate, I can't wait for German adventure gamers to be able to play the game and laugh out loud as much as I did!”

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That’s all for now! We're excited to continue sharing updates with you as we reach the final stages of development on the game. We’ll be sharing more progress as we go, but in the meantime, you can follow us for updates on Twitter or join the official Robust Games Discord.

Don’t forget to wishlist Loco Motive for a notification when the full game launches! It’s just one click, but it really helps us out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1709880/

Hello there! It's time for the last Loco Motive blog of the year, so let's get straight to it!

As I write this blog post, we’re winding down development here and preparing to spend some well earned time with our family over the Christmas holidays. It’s a time of reflection, so let’s look at all we’ve achieved, and what’s left to come for us in the new year!

🧭2023 Recap🧭

2023! It’s been a year of highlights, but let’s look at some of our biggest milestones:

We demoed at PAX East and EGX 2023 - the UK's biggest gaming exhibition!
The game became ‘fully playable’ from start to finish Loco Motive was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award We were officially selected to be part of LudoNarracon 2023 We debuted our first playable demo on Steam as part of Steam Mystery Fest Full controller support was added to the game!
We reached over 70,000+ Wishlists!

But that’s not all! We had time to squeeze in just a few more things before our Christmas break..

🎤 Voice Acting has begun!🎤

Many of the questions we’ve received so far have revolved around voice, and if / when Loco Motive will feature voice acting.

I am pleased to confirm that we've recently begun recording dialogue with a professional voice cast, who we couldn’t be more excited about! These talented voice actors have featured in games such as The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, Viewfinder, Genshin Impact, Baldur’s Gate III, Starfield and more!

We’ll be announcing the full cast as we record more dialogue and get closer to launch, so keep your eyes peeled for a future announcement. Until then, we'll be keeping you guessing!



⚙️Accessibility Options!⚙️

We wanted Loco Motive to be more accessible and give players more options. We recently spent some time adding accessibility features to the game, including the following:

• ⏪ Subtitle Speed Settings
  
• 🗨️ Subtitle Backing Settings
  
• 🗚 Bigger Text Size Settings
  
• 📛 Display Speaker Name Option
  
• 📑 Dyslexic Friendly Font Option
  
• 🎉 Confetti Mode! (Removes Blood!)
  
• 🎮 Playstation Controller Support!
  

Here are some new screenshots to show some of these options in action!











This isn’t an exhaustive list, but we intend to listen to feedback and work to make the game as accessible as we can for launch!

🛠️Development continues!🛠️

Loco Motive became fully playable from start to finish in late July, and since then we've all been working dilligently to get more of the written dialogue into the game, adding more music and SFX, polishing the visuals and adding more animation! We've also been able to start exploring those bigger features like voice acting and localisation.

We don't want to give too much away just yet, but we thought we could share some brand new animation work from the game for now!



📅Loco Motive launches in 2024📅

As we mentioned earlier this year, Loco Motive will now be launching in 2024 for PC and Nintendo Switch.

There are a number of factors behind the decision, but ultimately we’re a small but ambitious team who needs a little bit of extra development time to deliver the game we set out to make.

We can all agree that delays are annoying, but we strongly believe this extra time will allow Loco Motive to reach its full potential.

Thanks for your understanding and support. We can't wait to share the full Loco Motive adventure with you, it will be worth the wait!



✨Wishlists!✨

A massive shout-out to you all for adding Loco Motive to your wishlists! thanks to your efforts we recently hit our 70,000 wishlist milestone, and are already well on the way to our next goal! Thanks for all your support so far.



We're excited to continue sharing updates with you as we make progress on the game. We’ll be sharing more progress as we go, but in the meantime, you can follow us for updates on Twitter or join the official Robust Games Discord.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1709880/Loco_Motive/

Don’t forget to wishlist Loco Motive for a notification when the full game launches! It’s just one click, but it really helps us out. We also plan to use this data to decide future language support!


🙌Teamwork makes the dream work!🙌

Before we break for Christmas, we just wanted to thank our entire extended team for their hard work in 2023, and for getting us one step closer to bringing the game to launch!

There's still a bit of work ahead of us, but 2024 will be the year of Loco Motive.

We couldn't be prouder of this team, and consider ourselves very lucky to have this level of talent involved.

Have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!



Adam & Joseph
Robust Games

Hey there, fellow adventurers!

Are you ready for a wild ride? 🙃
Hop on board the hype train because the Loco Motive Demo is steaming into town: from November 2 to November 9, AdventureX on Steam is your destination for all things narrative-driven games, and a fresh Loco Motive Demo is part of the team!

We also want to take this time to say a huge thank you to everyone who has contributed feedback over the past couple of months, whether through Discord, Steam forums or at our live events.

As a result, we’ve been able to make improvements to the gameplay, which we couldn’t have done without you! We'd initially hoped to launch the game in 2023, but we need a little more time to make Loco Motive the best it can be to meet both our own high standards and player expectations!

This means we've taken the decision to postpone the release until early next year, but we hope you'll continue to support us while we work to polish up the game.

🧭 What's AdventureX?

Imagine a place where developers and gamers unite, bonded by their passion for narrative games ‒ a gathering of creative minds and enthusiastic players all under one digital roof: that's AdventureX in a nutshell.
We’re thrilled to be part of the event once again this year, bringing you a brand-new demo for Loco Motive!

🔎 What’s in the Demo?

Play as Arthur Ackerman, our intrepid hero (and an official lawyer). He’s about to embark on a one-of-a-kind adventure aboard the Reuss Express, a journey filled with more twists and turns than your aunt's spaghetti bolognese. 🍝 You'll step into the shoes of this blue-jacketed, square-shouldered hero as he investigates the sudden demise of his employer, the esteemed Lady Unterwald.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Meet and greet the colourful characters aboard the Reuss Express, solve item-based puzzles (brace yourself for some serious clicking), and explore the mysteries in this comical adventure. The demo is available in English and takes approximately one hour, depending on how quickly you can crack the puzzles!

If you're up for a complete narrative experience, you can play the demo in Noir Mode and immerse yourself in the detective atmosphere.



Does this murder mystery contain blood? 'Confetti mode' is on by default, but if you're feeling brave, you can switch back to pixelated blood in the settings menu.



The full game will also feature:

• 3 Playable Characters - Diana, Arthur & Herman
  
• A feature-length story
  
• Full voice acting
  
• Puzzle hint system
  
• Full controller support
  
• Even more jokes & puzzles

💬 "Where can I share my feedback?"

We would love to hear your thoughts about the demo - what you loved, what didn’t work well for you, or anything you’d like to see more of in the full release! You can either share feedback in the Steam thread or chat with us directly in the Loco Motive official Discord or on Twitter.

🛤️“When will Loco Motive be released?”

We're committed to making Loco Motive the best it can be, and that means taking the time to polish every nut and bolt in the game. We want to ensure our fantastic dev team has a healthy, balanced work pace with zero crunch so they can create a game that's as thrilling as it should be!

With that in mind, we've decided to reschedule the launch to Q1 of 2024.
This is something that’s never exciting to share, but this extra time will allow us to fine-tune every aspect of the game, so when it finally arrives, it'll be a fantastic experience for everyone.

Thanks for your understanding and support. We can't wait to share the full Loco Motive adventure with you, and it will be worth the wait!

If you want to support us even more, don’t forget to wishlist Loco Motive for a notification when the full game launches! It’s just one click, but it really helps us out, and we also use this data to decide future language support! :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1709880/Loco_Motive/

Meet and greet the larger-than-life characters aboard the Reuss Express, solve item-based puzzles, and point and click to your heart’s desire.

Jump aboard and discover where those tracks lead you! 🚂

We hope you have a blast with the demo, and don't forget to wishlist the game not to miss any bit!

— Chucklefish Team & Robust Games

Hello there! It's time for another Loco Motive blog, so let's get straight to it!

📣EGX 2023📣

As you may know, earlier this month we took Loco Motive to the UK's biggest gaming exhibition: EGX 2023!

Attendees had the opportunity to play an updated 20-minute demo of the game and meet the developers! We had a very positive reception at the show, and the game was busy for all of the four days - We were very lucky to have various creators and press come by and play the demo!



Rock Paper Shotgun got hands on and it seems we managed to win them over!

"Robust Games have poured a lot of love into making each and every interaction as vibrant and characterful as possible.." "..It's truly lovely stuff, and every moment just oozes with style and slick exaggeration."




Gayming Magazine called Loco Motive their most anticipated game!

"Despite only spending 15-20 minutes with Loco Motive, it quickly stood out as one of the more memorable games at EGX 2023. Its personality is, without a doubt, what makes it shine. It doesn’t just want you to have fun, but walks step-by-step alongside you to capture that spirit itself. All in all, it’s nothing short of a fantastic time. "

We also had the opportunity to take part in a short interview with adventure game aficionado Laura Cress during the show, which you can watch below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

✨Wishlists!✨

A massive shout-out to you all for adding Loco Motive to your wishlists! thanks to your efforts we recently hit our 70,000 wishlist milestone, and are already well on the way to our next goal! If you haven't wishlisted Loco Motive on Steam already, let's make it happen!

We're excited to continue sharing updates with you as we make progress on the game, but that’s all for now! We’ll be sharing more progress as we go, but in the meantime, you can follow us for updates on Twitter or join the official Robust Games Discord.