Games developed by Smoking Car Productions, Inc.
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The Last Express
The Orient Express is about to leave Paris for Constantinople. As the train begins to slowly pull away from the station, a brave-looking young man jumps onto it from his motorcycle and makes his way inside. This man is an American doctor named Robert Cath, who is on the run from the authorities as a suspect in the murder of a policeman. On the train, he finds the body of the person he was supposed to meet. Now he has to act quickly. The only way to avoid arousing the suspicions of the police is to disguise himself as the murdered man. A very dangerous investigation begins, and the hero soon becomes embroiled in a deep web of personal intrigue and political conspiracies.
The Last Express is a real-time adventure game set in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the World War, in a specific historical and geographical setting. The game uses a simple point-and-click interface to interact with people and objects, and navigate the character from a first-person perspective through pre-rendered backgrounds. From the moment the player takes control of Robert Cath, time begins to flow. If the player fails to solve a part of the mystery until the train reaches the next station, certain events that the player was meant to avoid will occur, ending the game prematurely. It is impossible to die permanently in the game, as the player has the ability to rewind the clock to replay a specific time period.
The player is mostly free to explore the train, and the story progression has a certain degree of non-linearity. Characters follow their own schedules, moving frequently between locations, talking to each other, and generally acting independently of player intervention. The player can choose to interrupt conversations, go unnoticed, or openly follow the characters and witness their activities. For example, at a certain point in the game's timeline, two characters will perform a classical sonata for violin and piano; the player can choose to stay and listen to the performance, or take advantage of the time to explore other locations. Along with detective work and some logic and inventory-based puzzles, the player's main task in the game is to listen to people's conversations, talk to the characters, and solve the mystery by finding out more information about the strange case. There are also several time-oriented fight sequences in the game.
The visuals in the game resemble the 'art nouveau' style, which was prominent in the historical period depicted in it. The similarity to the style is achieved through the rotoscoping technique. The actors, with their characteristic make-up and costumes, were filmed against a blue screen, digitized, converted to black and white stills and hand-colored. The game is also notable for including authentic dialogues recorded by native speakers of several languages (French, German, Russian and others), with English subtitles.
