I am SO excited for CGA, and not just because we're starting off with my favorite game of all time! Also, BRAVO to @CannibalisticApple for doing an awesome job of being our very first host!

Tips for New Players

• Archive.org has the manual for the game, the official strategy guide, and this quick reference guide for the game's controls and systems.
• Here is a hint guide for the game that can nudge you in the right directions without spoiling things.
• Your framerate isn't broken: it's how the game is intended to be (more slideshow than not)
• You can double click to automatically advance to the next car (super useful when you want to traverse the sleeper cars).
• You can interrupt the double click to stop if you need to.
• Be okay with sitting/standing around and waiting for things.
• If something isn't going on in one area of the train, try looking elsewhere.
• Try to go wherever you can (even places you're not supposed to go), whenever you can.

Version Differences

I booted up the GOG and Steam versions yesterday so that I could compare them in case anyone's wondering about which one they should play. It's also supported in ScummVM but I haven't tested that yet.

GOG Version

This is the original game running on DOSBox. For me, it launched in fullscreen, but the original game was in its low native resolution, making it very small on the screen. I was able to use @3WolfMoon's tweak for dosboxTLE.conf to make it run in fullscreen (changing output=overlay to output=opengl).

Steam/Dotemu version

(Note: I ran this on Linux in Proton, so it's possible some of these errors are due to that and wouldn't show up if running it on Windows)

Positives

• Added hint system, which helps first-time players.
• "Bio unlock" notifications help players learn character names.
• Runs without any tweaking.
• Currently on sale for VERY cheap!

Negatives

• Sound quality seems a little worse.
• Subtitle placement and readability is worse.
• Some of their added text (subtitles, notifications) don't fully display and get clipped.
• There's a bug where the exterior train noise doesn't play when the window is open.
• Notification popups can break immersion.
• Changes the save slots from the jewel at the top of the egg to a menu.
• Changes the rewind/fast-forward from the jewels on the side of the clock to buttons.
• Cursor hotspots are quite buggy.
• Save issues.

Some of these are minor, but there are two that I think people should be aware of.

The first is hotspot cursors.

In the original game, the cursor is very good about showing you what you can and can't interact with. Particularly, it will change to an item if you can interact with a character with a particular item you're holding. In the Dotemu version, this did not happen for me. I tried it with two different characters. In one, the cursor didn't show I could interact with the person at all. In the other, it showed the "move forward" option.

I think this could be confusing for new players because it's not entirely clear when you can/can't interact with a character. The GOG version is MUCH better about this.

The other is that I ran into a save issue. I played the game up through the end of dinner. I exited the game, and when I returned, I was back two in-game hours, to right before I had entered my sleeping compartment for the first time. I then played through dinner AGAIN, exited, and it put me back as well. This is potentially a huge frustration for new players.

Patience and Frustration

As I got back in to the game, I was reminded that this is a slow-burn game. You don't have a lot of direction. Because things happen in pseudo-realtime, the game has a lot of sitting around, waiting, people watching, etc. Be okay with that!

Also, the game is designed around repeated cycles of failure and learning from that. This can be particularly grating to new players, because re-doing things repeatedly, especially when you're not sure what the right way forward is, can be frustrating.

If you are someone who's getting frustrated with the game, I strongly recommend playing it with a guide.

Will that kill the enjoyment? It definitely takes away from some of the investigative and problem-solving aspects of the game, but it'll also alleviate player frustration and allow you to enjoy the game's great story, great characters, great acting, great score, great artwork, etc. I think these things are worth experiencing even if you're not making all the decisions. Heck, I think it's good enough that simply watching a longplay of it is still worth your time.

So excited to play this!! Couldn't wait last night, so I started tinkering around with various versions to see what I preferred method was. Tried the Dotemu version on my Tablet, since I already owned it via a Humble Sale many years ago (Note that this one is technically broken for a few reasons. Namely, it'll only work on older Android (my tablet is on 13) and the servers to download the core files no longer function even if you can get the .apk installed. I ended-up hitting the pirate sites and grabbing the obb folder files from there and then my game worked great.

That said, I also owned the original release via GoG and ultimately decided to play it on my Steam Deck. Mainly because I wanted to make sure I got the original, intended experience.

For those playing on Steam Deck (this would also work for any other Linux)

You can definitely get DOS games running through Heroic Games or whatever your third party launcher of choice is. However, I find this a little clumsy and often run into issues with DOS games, given you're running it through several layers of emulation with Proton. A couple of months ago, I worked on my own methodology for getting DOS games to run via the Steam Launcher via the native Linux DOSBOX-Staging, which runs everything great, plus throws a nice little subtle CRT shader on there for you. It's a little complicated to get setup, but once you've got it figured, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to get something setup properly. It's a little work aroundy and has quite a few steps, but I found this worked best for me out of all the other methods I was able to find by Googling.

Anyway, the steps (All in Desktop):

Presteps:

• In your Home directory, create a folder called something like DOS Games

1. Grab DOSBOX-Staging from the Discover Store

2. Download the Offline Installer (Important, this won't work with your Heroic Games version) from gog.com

3. Add the Offline Installer to Steam, Install the game (Be sure to select a Proton version and not to remove the entry immediately afterwards)

4. Find the compatdata folder at "/home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/" sort by last modified and that'll be your folder. Dig into the folder and find the games folder itself. Copy/Cut it and put it in your newly created DOS Games folder. At this point, you can now remove the installer that we added to Steam in step 3. I recommend changing your games folder name to something easier to manage in DOS; given DOS can only manage 8 characters or so. You'll see this reflected later in my .conf file with my folder "DOS Games" becoming "DOSGAM~1" For instance, I changed my "The Last Express" folder name to just "tle".

5. Open a new Dolphin window, or split your current window as we'll be working in two directories for a minute. Navigate to "/home/deck/.var/app/io.github.dosbox-staging/config/dosbox/" this is our DOSBOX Staging folder. Go back to your DOS Games folder you copied the game to earlier and find the config file. In this case it will be called "dosboxTLE.conf" we can ignore the other .conf file. Copy the .conf file over to your Dosbox Staging folder.

6. Open up the .conf file that you just copied over (make sure you're opening the new one in the DOSBOX Staging folder and NOT the one in the Game folder). Keep in mind, what I'm about to copy is directly from my .conf file so your folder structure may differ if you've changed the names of folders and you will need to compensate for that. Add the following to the top of your .conf file, under the "#" commented out notes:

[autoexec]

mount c "/home/deck"
C:
cd DOSGAM~1\tle
mount d "/home/deck/DOS Games/tle/data" -t cdrom
EXPRESS.exe

Just a quick note, that you can also do this with other games, changing the appropriate directories and file names. In the case of The Last Express, I'm copying what GoG does and just mounting the entire /data/ folder as a CD-ROM, which should allow me to switch when time comes-up. However, I've done other games where I mounted the ISO's seperately, in which case the syntax is

imgmount d "/folder/folder/folder/folder/game.GOG" -t -iso

Note that GoG often renames .iso files to .GOG files, but they work the same either way. You can even rename the extension if you like and it'll work the same

After adding the above to your .conf file, make sure you save the file and now you're done here.

7. Almost there. Now, go back to Steam itself and add a Non-Steam game to your library from the drop down. It is irrelevant what you pick, because we just need the entry itself, we'll be changing everything it points to. So pick anything and add it.

8. Find the newly added entry, right click it and open up your properties, then change the following:

Name the shortcut: The Last Express
Target: "/usr/bin/flatpak"
Start In: "/usr/bin"
Launch Options: run io.github.dosbox-staging -conf dosboxTLE.conf

Close out of there and you're done! The game should now start when you launch it from within Steam.
Don't forget you can also add custom art to the banner and the icon itself, so it looks like a normal Steam game. I'll leave this for you to figure out, as it's a fairly straightforward process.

I want to note that I also made the changes listed in the post by @Kawa, as I had noticed some stuttering with my audio here and there, so hopefully that'll resolve the problem for me. It wasn't too bothersome, as I stopped noticing it almost immediately, but I figure it can't hurt to throw in some more tweaks here and there.

At any rate, I'm excited to get to playing some more here as time allows. I did download the Prima guide on my tablet (as well as actually bought a used copy on Amazon for $21. Ebay also has some sellers with reasonable prices, if you're a pervert like me), though I'm avoiding reading too far ahead. That said, the guide itself is interesting as it gives a lot of historical context to to the time period and I found it very interesting given I'm also currently reading The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman about the lead-up and first month of WW1; the guide isn't necessarily providing anymore insight, but it's interesting in that it corroborates a lot of the information and lays it out fairly quickly. Highly recommend checking at least that part out.

As for my little guide above, hopefully it works for you (if you want to tackle it!) and I didn't leave anything out. I did get distracted a couple of times by my kids, so may have forgotten or missed a thing here or there. It all looks correct to me at first glance, so let me know if it doesn't work if you attempt it.

Got the original CD release DOS version running in DOSBox on my Windows 10 PC. Seems like it is working. Of course I can and will fullscreen it to actually play.

Nothing too non-standard for a DOSBox setup, found some config information on this game online indicating to set the following in your dosbox.conf: (Don't remove anything, just find and change these. I saw a few other suggestions but these were the only ones I changed in my config, and it seems everything works.)

[dosbox]
machine=svga_s3
memsize=64
[cpu]
core=auto
cycles=auto
cycleup=500
[mixer]
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10
[gus]
gus=true
[joystick]
buttonwrap=true

As usual, mount the game installation directory as DOSBox's main drive and imgmount the disc 1 iso as a DOSBox disc drive before running the game as, like many old games, this is one where the disc had to be in the PC for the game to run.

Anyway, aside from getting up and running, as it's late tonight I'm not actually going to start playing right now. As recommended by our host CannibalisticApple, I'll just self-reply to my own comment here to document my thoughts once I get going.

(Edit: I'm an edit function addict this post is like 60% different than when I first hit post comment)

I am very excited for this party because it seems interestingly familiar to a different game I have played before-Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. It also plays out in real time, and there is so much to do you will most certainly fail your first few times. It is of course also trying to be a faithful recreation of a luxury transport that no longer exists. Weirdly though it came out the year before and was a big success with 1.5m copies sold. I suppose I credit that to the ship being a very popular subject at the time; the film would release the year after this game, so it was definitely in the zeitgeist.

They were not developed or published by the same people, but I wonder if Broderbund saw the success of Titanic and expected similar returns on The Last Express because of how similar they look on paper. I will have to report back how similar they are after I try the game out, and if anyone wants a bonus game this month and wants to also play Titanic we can have a little discussion together.

Heads up for Mac gamers: The Steam version is listed as 32 but macOS only. This means it’s a crapshoot if it will run on macOS Catalina and later. Many games have this warning and run without issue. I can confirm that this game does not run on modern macOS. After reading some of the cursor issues with this version, I think I’ll be picking up the GOG version, which should run fine.

Bought it on steam, excited to join the CGA! Will be playing on my laptop running bazzite, so stay tuned for any linux issues.

Jordan Mechner is truly an inspiration. Karateka (1984), Prince of Persia (1989), The Last Express (1997) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003) are all incredible, innovative and truly unique games. I have very vivid memories of playing each, from struggling to make any progress in Karateka on my C64, to struggling to make any progress in Prince of Persia with my friend on his PC, to struggling to make any progress in The Last Express on my own PC, to never finishing The Sands of Time on my Xbox.

As much as I love Mechner's games, I can't say I actually enjoy playing any of them. And so, after numerous attempts over the years, I have made my peace also with The Last Express. I know I adore it, but I also know that I don't want to play it. It's clunky and annoying and repetitive and makes me anxious, but it's also so very beautiful, immersive, mysterious, unique and simply one of the greatest games experiences ever created.

And so, the moment I saw that it was nominated for CGA, I of course had to vote for it. Because it is a brilliant game. Even if I really don't want to play it.

Coincidentally, it's not the only title in CGA's starting list that I have very little interest in playing. There are two other titles that got selected that I have given what I think is their fair share of my time over the years to know that I just don't enjoy them.

But I think CGA will be as good an opportunity as any to check out all three once again. I've been wrong before.

Bought both versions. Playing on Arch Linux. I'm going to be playing the GOG release unless it ends up being too much of a pain.

Haven't started playing for real yet, but was able to get it to launch in fullscreen and start a new game without issue using DOSBox after some minor configuration. Someone else may have a simpler setup, but here are some pseudo-steps from memory typed up quickly before I head out. I'll clean them up some later and potentially write a shell script to automate most of the process (or someone else can if they're up to it.) Don't copy these exactly as they won't work, but they should put you on the right track if you know what you're doing:

[autoexec]
mount C "/path/to/game/folder" -t dir
mount D "/path/to/game/folder/data" -t cdrom
c:
express.exe
exit

edit: I put together a simple bash script that should get the GOG release running on Linux with one command (assuming you have innoextract and DOSBox installed.) The script doesn't really have checks or failsafes because I'm both lazy and a bash noob, but I tested it and it seemingly works just fine. Feel free to manually replicate the steps if you're more comfortable with that.

#!/bin/bash

tempdir="$PWD/lastexpress_temp"
gamedir="$PWD/lastexpress"
autoexec="
[autoexec]
mount C $gamedir -t dir
mount D $gamedir/data -t cdrom
c:
express.exe
exit
"

mkdir "$tempdir" "$gamedir"
innoextract -d "$tempdir" "$1"
cp -r "$tempdir/data/" "$gamedir"
cp "$tempdir/EXPRESS.EXE" "$tempdir/HD.HPF" "$tempdir/Manual.pdf" "$tempdir/__support/app/dosboxTLE.conf" "$gamedir" 
sed -i 's/output=overlay/output=opengl/' "$gamedir/dosboxTLE.conf"
sed -i 's/sensitivity=100/sensitivity=60/' "$gamedir/dosboxTLE.conf"
echo "$autoexec" >> "$gamedir/dosboxTLE.conf"
dosbox -conf "$gamedir/dosboxTLE.conf"
rm -r "$tempdir"

I have started getting setup for a run through this. For portability reasons I wanted to get it running on my MacBook. I can't believe no one has mentioned the latest dailies of SCUMMVM can now run this game - see this post for how to get those setup:

https://www.scummvm.org/news/20250617/

I had to source the original 3CD release of the game and extract the files from the three ISOs (which also included the making of video mentioned in the post). I am not 100% sure but I think all you need are the three 'HPF' files. Got picked up in SCUMMVM no problem and seems to work flawlessly on my Mac (or at least the first few hours seem fine).

Hopefully this will help some of you who want to play along

I really hate to say it but I’m probably going to skip this first session because I have tried to play this game in the past and I just couldn’t vibe with it. It requires the exact kind of patience types that I don’t have. I’ll give it another good faith chance though.

I bought the Steam version of the game yesterday. Booted it up today on Windows 11.

Start up and settings: It doesn't want to go into full screen on my laptop (freezes instead). I'm still playing around with resolutions. Also I was expecting a retro game to be slow but this one has a good 2 second delay between pressing a menu button, the sound effect, then the action. I'm still deciding if that's just how it is going to be or if I need to tweak something. Otherwise no problems out of the "box".

Edit: Follow @BeardyHat's instructions. They work much better than mine, which I'll leave for posterity.

I got the GOG version running on my Steam Deck via proton. It was a bit tricky, but @3WolfMoon's comment helped me out.

The performance seems to be pretty poor, at least on the main menu, so it may be simpler to simply play the Steam version of the Gold Edition.

Nonetheless, here are the steps:

[autoexec]
mount c "/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/<app_id>/pfx/drive_c"
mount d "/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/<app_id>/pfx/drive_c/GOG Games/The Last Express/data" -t cdrom
C:
cd GOGGAM~1\THELAS~1
EXPRESS.exe
exit

"/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/<app_id>/pfx/drive_c/GOG Games/The Last Express/DOSBOX/DOSBox.exe"

"/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/<app_id>/pfx/drive_c/GOG Games/The Last Express/"

-conf "/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/<app_id>/pfx/drive_c/GOG Games/The Last Express/dosboxTLE.conf"

If anyone is thinking about the game's mobile versions, I can report that I bought it for my Android tablet and at least the first part has played reasonably well. It might be a lesser experience on a phone sized device, but the touch controls on a tablet screen feel very responsive and natural.

I grabbed the gold edition and got it running on my steamdeck last night without issue. It's not properly supported, so you're left using the touch screen or trackpads for mouse clicks. Which felt a little clumsy to me in the opening minutes of the game, so I'll probably switch to just playing at my desk on my laptop.

I'll be playing the GOG version of the game. My setup is:

• Nobara Linux
• Heroic Game Launcher
• Wine: GE-Proton_latest
• Graphic Mode Settings:
  • OpenGL
  • Full Screen unchecked (ALT-tabbing causes the game window to un-fullscreen and re-orients between my two monitors)
  • normal3x scaling
  • 1920 x 1200 resolution (doesn't go higher than this)
  • Mouse Sensitivity to 60 (the default 100 is way too fast)

First impressions so far is that the voice acting and general vibe of the game is top notch. Makes me wish I knew more French, but the subtitles are nice when they do pop up. I will most likely be using the tips, manual, and guide @kfwyre posted (thank you for that!) whenever I get stuck, which honestly, will be often is my guess. Also, not sure if I missed this discussion already, but what's the average time to beat for anyone who's played this their first time. howlongtobeat is saying 7 hours but I have my doubts on that...

I've never heard of this game 'til now, but I do love me a point-and-click and for only a couple bucks that's an easy buy.

After I got it, I read that the gold edition is a little hand-holdy? Are there settings for that? I don't mind hints, but I also like at least some challenge.

Ended up just getting the Steam version since it was on sale. It was like $1.39, versus GOG's $6. Maybe I can use that money saved to invest in the stock market! /s

I just read kwyre's blurb on the differences between Steam and GOG. If I get frustrated with the Steam version, maybe I'll jump to the OG GOG version. I'll likely mostly play this on Windows, though maybe I'll give Ubuntu or MacOS or even Steam Deck a try later.

I might record some of this as I've did with the Nov 2024 Backlog Burner. We'll see. Either way, excited to give this a go! Literally about to start the game right now.

I had not heard of this game until listening to an episode of My Perfect Console with Jordan Mechner as the guest. The episode does a great job going through the production of the game and how ambitious it was. Jordan Mechner is an extremely creative person. I'm excited to give this a try as I grew up with a lot of adventure games.