I played this game with a friend online. I was immediately disappointed that we were going to have uneven experiences. I played on the PC, meaning I actually got to play the game. He played the companion app on an iPad. For this review, I'm going to refer to the PC version as "the game" and the companion app as "the app". I think it's clear that much, much more attention and effort was put into the game than the app, and it's a shame that two players are forced to choose who will have the lesser experience.

Visually, the art style is very charming and refreshing. It reminded me of Psychonauts / Telltale. However, there are zero graphics settings I was able to find, and the resolution of the game is not good. Combined with the fact that the art has a kind of comic book style, this led to a lot of eye strain for me over time, as lots of things are small and are hard to read or see. Also, I'm not sure if this was just a weird coincidence or bad timing, but I started to get motion sick after playing multiple rooms in a session, which rarely happens to me.

There's a story, but it's kind of delivered in an extremely formulaic way. It's always done right as you start a room, essentially delaying getting to actually play the game. My friend and I didn't really feel engaged with it at all, and I felt like the dialogue explaining the villain's motivation was forced and unnatural.

I think a lot of the puzzles in isolation were great. There were lots of times where I realized I wasn't describing things with the proper amount of specificity or in the proper dimension to help my friend, and vice-versa. I liked that my assumptions of what they were seeing were challenged, and I had to try communicating in a different way. That being said, my friend had a less engaging time on the app than I did on the game. Most gameplay on the app is merely reading information to the other player. There are a few drag-and-drop minigames on the app, but that's about it. The app only has 2d art. For the game itself, there's exploration of the rooms in 3d, which feels much more immersive and allows you to discover things more organically. There's also the fun side-game of finding all the clue tokens. Speaking of which...

The game has a clue system that involves spending these tokens you find strewn about each room. You put them into a machine which then prints out a ticket with the clue. However, the clue is just one word??? The tutorial room forces you to use a clue, but my friend and I avoided clues after this..until the final room. We were stuck on a puzzle, and we decided to use a clue. We got folder. There's no folder in this car, and the answer had nothing to do with one. One of the other clues was search. Really? That's what I've been doing this whole time! Searching for the code!

Another strong negative: this game seems to suffer from poor English localization, which really becomes a problem when it gets in the way of solving puzzles. One puzzle involves matching symbols to a diagram of a computer chip. There are logical rules that you have to reconcile to figure out where all the symbols go. However, the language used here is very ambiguous and not natural. They use the phrase "X is in front of Y" to mean "X is across from Y". My friend and I assumed "in front of" meant "before". This led to tons of confusion and frustration before another friend guessed that it could have meant "across from". This puzzle took so much longer than it needed to, simply because we didn't understand what it saying.

I don't regret all my time spent on this game, but there are a few major issues I have that prevent me from recommending it. Clues need to be better, localization needs a second pass, and the game should provide more graphical options. Please let us increase the resolution.

Deeper issues such as the uneven nature of the app being far inferior to the game are not easily fixable, but I think this can be overlooked and is possibly not even an issue, depending on the people playing. For me, it was a huge bummer. I have faith this development team can do a good job at this genre, and I hope they try again, but I would not recommend this to anyone unless you're willing to put up with everything I described above.

My boyfriend and I have played quite a number of cooperative puzzle solving games, this one we had the worst experience. I feel like in this game we fail to communicate smoothly like we used to. For some of the puzzles we had to get together and look at the same screen and still won't figure out what's going on.

Edit: Now we finally finished the game with the help of walkthrough, both feeling exhausted and confused. Can't really say we enjoyed this game. Sorry:(

I WILL VOTE POSITIVE WITH A BUT cause its a nice premise with the phone/PC playing. its a neat idea, only one person needing the game is cool and i like that.

BUT:

The game is fine up until the last car. While we figured out the solution to all of the puzzles, the game just throws final puzzle at you and its a slap in the face if you fail in the 2 minuet timer cause someone didnt talk fast enough after being burnt out on the last room, the game just ends on a bad note and if you wanted the good ending too bad, roll credits, try the last car again after and we will change some of the puzzles. Thats not a good way to get your players to play more of the game, it just frustrates them and makes the accomplishment of the last room feel like it was pointless cause whoops do it again.

I WOULD recommend this to friends, but the length of the last car, and the issue above just makes me go..eh maybe not.

NOT WORTH IT! While this game has some decent puzzles that are genuinely fun to solve, this game has way too many issues for me to recommend it.

1. A lot of the puzzles need trial and error on the part of the person using the companion app, leaving me with lots of time to sit on my phone and wait for my gf to solve it without me.

2. There are some times where you know the answer to the puzzle with every fiber of my being and it doesn't accept my answer, and after 45 minutes of doing other puzzles and retrying the answer multiple times it accept the same answer as correct. This happened with THREE DIFFERENT PUZZLES.

3. There are four different audio puzzles in this game, all but one of them deserve to burn in hell where they came from.

4. Do you want to be yelled at by a Reddit moderator obsessed with trains that's following in John Kramer's Jigsaw killing style? Then you'll love the story of this game. Does he say anything to confirm that your two characters are as bad as he says? No. Do your characters say anything in response to these claims? No. After the opening scenes you might as well been mute.

5. We had an instance where I completed a timed puzzle and my gf didn't and because I had completed it on my end I couldn't help her complete it, so we had to wait for her to try and guess the right puzzle on her own to complete it. Luckily she was kicked out of the puzzle after a while or we would have been softlocked.

6. The ending is abysmal, the last two puzzles were so infuriating that we did not want to try for the better ending, especially after having to retry the entire Locomotive car to get to it.

This has to be the most infuriating escape game i have ever played and i am really sad to say this because it actually started off really good.
i played on PC, my husband on his phone. At first the puzzles are rather short and working together works well, everyone has something to do (either describe or puzzle). The further you get, the worse it gets though. The levels take longer and longer (you have over 2 hours to solve the last one!), the puzzles more and more complex, and each player has more and more stuff they have to do on their own, making the other one sit there waiting. The puzzles also get less and less satisfying. They are more and more connected to each other, so you have to do increasingly more before you are rewarded for it. You often have to jump between puzzles and make connections that feel very farfetched.

The hints are utterly useless and mainly tell you what you already know. If you don't get to the solution with the three hints, you are fecked or have to look up a guide.
The last two levels i played solely with a guide because we couldn't figure out what the hell we were supposed to do and even with the guide that tries to explain the solution before showing it to you, it didn't become any clearer.

Now to the story. At forst we thought that it would be exciting and mysterious but everything is pretty much revealed in the middle of the game and then just dragged out. The whole reason for the escape is really boring and bland, the "cutscenes" are boring and don't add anything to the game.

All in all a very disappointing and annoying experience that would not recommend.

Came in as Einstein, came out as Kanye

Decent game. Not great, but not a total time waster either. Some good puzzles mixed with some meh puzzles. Maybe coming from the "We Were Here" series, I had much higher expectations.
Recommended only for genre lovers, if you have already finished the better ones already.

A well constructed escape game with nicely flowing puzzles. The gameplay is fun, I never played this format, me and my mate went on switching places on the App and the Pc game between each rooms so we could both see the differences of gameplay on both device.

The main thing that did it for me is the artistic direction, a nice choice of colors mixed with a gloomy and eery atmosphere, really blends well with the enigmatic feeling the game want to convey.

Looking forward for more of this !

Okay The European Continent is IMPOSSIBLE to guess, I got the start at somewhere near England as my start, and the whole area on the globe is shattered, all the tutorials I watched are paths not including England, brilliant! I guess all England related route gamers have uninstalled the game then. I can't randomize it by choosing continue, and I can't choose the chapter I haven't finished, terrific, I'm stuck with this England nonsense forever, thanks, play you never.

I love two player asymmetrical puzzle games, and this one certainly has a lot of outstanding points! I absolutely recommend it!

The environment (the train) and the puzzles all work well together, and the general escape premise is of course very strong for these types of games. The audio and visual art work rare very nice and a great fit, and I enjoyed the overall style. The puzzles were clever and some are quite unique -- all were ultimately nicely crafted for two players.

That said, here in lies the flaw in this game -- the hint system is basically pointless but is necessary in order to ensure that a few of the puzzles do not end up being more than challenging, but in fact absolutely frustrating time-sucks. I personally think rather than changing these certain puzzles significantly, simply refactoring the hint system (which currently tells you absolutely _nothing_ you don't already know) that is already in place, would solve the problem and make for a great experience.

Other than that issue though, the game is really wonderful and a ton of fun to play with a friend!!