Ryan Veeder's Agatha Christie's the Murder on the Orient Express

Ryan Veeder's Agatha Christie's the Murder on the Orient Express

This is Schroedinger's game to me, an uncollapsed wavefunction of a game that is simultaneously vexatious and amusing.

First the vexatious. I had formed an image in my mind of what this game could be, and this was not it. The game also did some things that I thought games and stories should not do. However, this was a pre-conceived rubric imposed by my own desires that does not respect an author's creative expression; it is as if I had decided what I thought a 'proper adventure' was and yelled at others for not reaching my arbitrary standards.

Let me enumerate my unfounded complaints. The game is a Poirot parody/pastiche, but I've heard it said (and agree) that parodies are most enjoyable when they evince an affection or love for the original material. This game gives me the impression that the author despises Poirot. It focuses on little except his exceptional arrogance and pride, his belittlement of women, his membership in an elite ruling class that he treats with favoritism. His manner of speaking is more Veeder than Christie; it reminds me of a recent X skit I saw where a couple were haunted by the ghost of Michael Jackson, but the ghost wasn't really MJ and didn't know him well so he speaks with a Puerto Rican accent and says "Pingpung" instead of 'hee hee'.

The other main issue is that the game discards traditional elements of mysteries. Instead of finding clues we find 'clues', which, like Fallen London, have no real description and just serve as a virtual currency. Also, there is no true ending to the game, as we can (Spoiler - click to show)simply accuse anyone we want of murder and have it be true, robbing us of real agency and showing the game never had a real plot.

BUT!

What if my norms didn't matter? What if I had never heard of this author, and I had played very few adventure games or read much Christie, and I saw this game. What would I think?

The game is very well polished. At one point I tried talking to myself and it had a great custom response, and I realized how many actions it had covered. The numerous endings are all individually well done. The thought that went into the transportation and movement system is also apparent.

Yes, the game Poirot is very little like the real one, but that makes it like Little Match Girl, which bears essentially no resemblance to the Hans Christian Andersen original. We even have a similar mechanic whereby we teleport to different locations depending on which train car we leave from. This game then becomes more like Agatha Christie La Croix, with the original serving as a vague guiding direction for the story. This makes the ending mechanism a clever twist on the ending of the original game.

The 'clue' system becomes a funny way of implementing a kind of clicker game/metroidvania (okay, it's not like either of those, but still I needed something involving plain numbers and gated doors) where you just make number go up to go through locked gates.

I enjoyed the variety of puzzles and the running gags such as the corpse-related clues. I appreciate how the author was able to make 'high class socialite that is Poirot's dearest friend' into so many distinct and interesting characters. I loved the writing and the map structure.

So I could either stick to my desired ideal form of 'game' and think of this game as flawed, or abandon my preconceptions and enjoy the game. I'm reminded by a quote from the song Giorgio by Daft Punk:

Once you free your mind about a concept of
Harmony and of music being "correct"
You can do whatever you want
So, nobody told me what to do
And there was no preconception of what to do

Edit: I did find one more ending that could be considered true, but it doesn't substantially change my feelings above.

If you've played Ryan Veeder's previous "adaptations" of existing work (The Lurking Horror 2, The Little Match Girl) it won't be a surprise that this only connects to the original murder-mystery in the loosest sense. Yes, there is a murder, yes, you're the great Belgian detective, yes you start on the Orient Express. Beyond that, anything goes: Poirot can exit and enter the train at will, it stops at Calais, the great pyramids are now in Morocco, Vienna is famous for its canals. Poirot's personality is hilariously dialled up to 11, a fearless, hyper-competent egotist eager to tell other characters (and the player) how great he is. Gameplay-wise, there is no mystery to solve, just "clues" (i.e. points) to collect by exploring, examining everything, and talking to everyone thoroughly. A small number of inventory puzzles and locked doors are sprinkled about to keep traditionalists happy. You can eventually "accuse" any character in the game to get one of dozens of unique, lengthy, very well-written endings.