I have a new game coming out. FOR THE TIME BEING, it is a Patreon exclusive. But you can hear Jenni and me playing it on a new episode of Clash of the Type-Ins and you can stop listening to it whenever you decide you don’t want to hear any more spoilers.
The name of the game is Ryan Veeder’s Agatha Christie’s the Murder on the Orient Express.
10 posts were split to a new topic: Copyright/Parody/Fanfiction/Fair-Use
I would highly encourage anyone tempted to use this game as any kind of precedent or data point in a discussion about adapting non-public-domain works to experience a couple rooms of it first, then, y’know, see how you feel
Well, there’s no such Christie novel as “The Murder on the Orient Express”, so this could be a Predator/The Predator type situation.
From playing some of Ryan Veeder’s “Little Match Girl” games, I suspect nobody will ever accuse him of adhering too rigidly to the source material!
True, those games have nothing like the fidelity of his adaptation of Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
This game is very funny and although I’m not a lawyer, it might qualify as a parody.
I will probably try it out. Knowing the content of the “Little Matchbook Girl” series (which is in public domain) I am aware that Ryan strays so far from the source material that it may be a violation in title only. Titles are not copyrighted (you’ll often find dissimilar works with the same title). Titles can be trademarked. Apparently “Murder on the Orient Express” is trademarked (by the Christie estate), due to expire July 4, 2027
Reference: https://anguskidman.show/2023/10/20/the-agatha-christie-trademark-that-expired/
I am very much looking forward to playing this game!
I don’t care what the reason is–a new episode of Clash of the Type-Ins can only be a good thing.
I am pretty biased when it comes to Ryan’s games, but this one has an excellent structure, an amusing tone, and an ingenious antagonist. I’m a huge fan of Poirot adaptations, and I also particularly enjoy several writers and storytellers referenced within the text (who should remain nameless because I was so delighted to be surprised by their inclusion). If you think you might be a clone of me (or perhaps a long-lost twin), you should probably play this game once it’s available to everyone.
When I was a kid, for the longest time I was sure the word was oh-bee-skwee-us and not ob-seek-wee-us and this podcast episode is reminding me that I still think it should be 
