Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express
"Murder on the Orient Express" is set in the year 1934. The game is initially begins in Istanbul, while the remaining majority occurs within the carriages of the Orient Express, when it is blocked by an avalanche in Yugoslavia. However, the player has some opportunities to venture outside the train into the snowy exterior environment.
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express
Research was a major component of the developmental stages of "Murder on the Orient Express". Most of the research was focused on Yugoslavia in 1934, the game's setting. Sheldon focused on the political and scientific situation of this era, and explained his intensive research, saying "all of the puzzles have to be contextual. They all have to either help character, help story or define period." The developers also drew influence from a train museum outside Miami with an original Pullman carriage - the same as the carriages used on the Orient Express in the 1930s. The museum also contained a locomotive similar to the one the developers were looking for. The developers ended up using the train museum, several books about the Orient Express, the 1974 film version of Christie's novel, and the internet as research resources. With "Murder on the Orient Express" being the first Poirot game produced, Sheldon was careful that the game fitted into Christie's timeline of Poirot's exploits. The television series often took liberties with the time in which stories were set, but Sheldon was determined to keep everything in strict accordance with Christie's work. There are several references in the game to Poirot's earlier cases, all of which are chronologically accurate. This was partly so that Sheldon could use the culture of specific eras of time, and also so that in the future other Poirot-based games will be chronologically accurate.