External Links


Story File
Release 2
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Ectocomp.zip
Contains orient​_express.z5
Contains release 1
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn

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Bloodless on the Orient Express

by Hannes Schueller profile

Horror, Humor
2011

Web Site

(based on 14 ratings)
4 reviews

About the Story

1899: On the way to your well-earned summer vacation, the Orient Express gets stuck in a snow drift – and there is a murderer on board. Time to get out of your coffin and investigate!


Game Details


Awards

1st Place - Ectocomp 2011


News

Bugfix release, leaving the speed IF nature otherwise intact.
Reported by Hannes | History | Edit | Delete
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Number of Reviews: 4
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Most Helpful Member Reviews


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A short riff on vampires, September 21, 2017
by verityvirtue (London)
Related reviews: sanguine

Written for ECTOCOMP, Bloodless is a short game which takes inspiration from - what else? - Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. You play a vampire on board a delayed train. Someone's had the life sucked out of them, but it definitely wasn't you. Time to investigate!

Bloodless may not be hugely surprising, but is a solid, short game, with light-hearted, bare-bones narration along with relative straightforward puzzles, of a variety familiar to IF.

Bloodless, being set on a train, has a spatial layout similar to the long, featureless corridors so beloved to this genre, but grouping rooms into carriages chunks them into more memorable sections. Bloodless is a pretty entertaining, bite-sized riff on the vampire genre.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Dracula: Guerilla Chef, March 9, 2012

1899: a train is trapped by snow, and a murder has been committed; but you are Count Dracula, and identifying the murderer is only one part of the more pressing objective of getting some blood.

Written in 3 hours for Ectocomp, in which it placed 1st of 8, this is essentially a speedIF. That considered, it's an impressive piece of work, if not a hugely distinctive one. It's designed along unadventurous but very solid lines; gather some inventory, assess the situation, solve a straightforward puzzle. The map is well-organised, the puzzles are easy to pick up without being obvious, and you are deftly turned away from red herrings. The terse efficiency failed me at (Spoiler - click to show)lighting the stove, where failure responses don't really signal the correct action; otherwise, for a game written this quickly it's remarkably robust.

Genuinely horrific effects take time to build and a lot of fine-tuning, and few Ectocomp games really attempt to create them; Bloodless is no exception, and mostly feels like a neutral-affect oldschool piece. It does, however, manage to develop a strong, atmospheric setting in a few minimalist strokes; I got a good impression of the creaky, dimly-lit, narrow environment of the train carriages.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Agatha Christie meets Dracula, September 15, 2017
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

This game is similar to both Murder on the Orient Express and Dracula.

You awake from your coffin on a train to discover that a passenger has had their blood drained--and not by you.

This game has many of the usual speed-IF problems (undercluing and underimplementation), but it is in the top 10% of all speed-IF, and quite enjoyable.

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Bloodless on the Orient Express on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Bloodless on the Orient Express appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Ectocomp Games (All English Winners/Entries) by thecanvasrose
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On Tuesday April 27, 2021, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works of...

Polls

The following polls include votes for Bloodless on the Orient Express:

Games about travel by penguincascadia
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This is version 6 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 27 April 2021 at 9:17pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page