Choo-Choo Charles

My first reaction to Choo-Choo Charles was that the internet hype would inevitably outpace the actual game, and to be fair, the critics who called it a glorified tech demo are not entirely wrong. But here is the thing: I kept thinking about it after I put it down, which is more than I can say for plenty of polished, well-funded horror releases. This is a one-person production by Two Star Games, and the seams show in almost every corner. What holds it together is a genuinely strange creative spine that no bigger studio would have greenlit. The setup plants you on the island of Aranearum as the Archivist, a monster hunter summoned by a friend to deal with Charles, a spider-train hybrid with glossy red lips, beady eyes, and a taste for islanders. You inherit a small, underpowered locomotive and must nurse it into something capable of surviving a final confrontation. The upgrade loop is built around scrap metal: you find it in abandoned huts, mines, lighthouses, and as rewards from the island's handful of NPCs, then spend it on three core stats for your train: speed, armour, and damage output. Optional side quests unlock heavier weapons, specifically a flamethrower, rocket launcher, and an anti-tank cannon, and completing them before the final summoning makes a real difference to how the showdown plays out. The progression is thin by any objective measure, but it clicks within the context of a two-to-three hour game. Charles himself is used sparingly, which is the right call. He weaves between trees and chases your locomotive with single-minded aggression, and his random appearances carry genuine tension precisely because they are not constant. When you are on foot, collecting the three glowing eggs from cultist-guarded mines, you have no weapons at all. The stealth sections that bookend those underground runs are the game's weakest element by a wide margin. There is no crouch, no silent walk, and the cultists move slowly enough that running straight past them is usually the most effective strategy. It feels unfinished in a way the rest of the game does not, and it is the one area where the single-developer constraints genuinely hurt the experience. Everywhere else, the rough edges read as charm rather than failure. The NPCs do not move their mouths when they speak, their animations are stiff, and the island at night looks samey across locations. But Charles himself is a genuinely unsettling design, and there is a post-credits beat that rewards players who stuck around for the full questline. The atmosphere is consistently gloomy and committed, even if the music sits quietly in the background without doing much to distinguish itself. For a game this short, tighter sound design would have elevated it significantly. Steam players have landed at around 91 to 92 percent positive across a substantial review base, which tells you the audience found what they came for. Critics were more divided, with some noting the concept is funnier than the execution is scary, and that is probably the most accurate summary: this is a b-movie horror experience, self-aware and slight, that lands its joke and gets out before overstaying its welcome.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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