If a train leaves one station heading East at 100 MPH and an indie dev leaves another heading West, how long will it take to complete the goofiest horror adventure game of the last few years? About 3 hours, it turns out, but what a fun 3 hours it is. With completely ridiculous NPCs (Pickle Lady, my beloved), a simply rendered yet eerie forest, and a fairly unsettling horrible train monster, Choo-Choo Charles is about as close as you can get to living inside a theme park ride. Even with very simple controls of forward, backward, and brake, rolling your train along the track in search of upgrade resources and another insane-voiced quest-giver is stupidly fun in a very "Disneyland dark ride" fashion.
There is a small amount of jank here and there, the PC version is a needless resource hog, and using your weapons against Charles feels like a mere suggestion (even fully upgraded, nothing seems to deter him other than an invisible in-game timer), but it moves at such a steady pace that you tend to forgive these shortcomings. Add in the fact that dying simply resets you back at your train having lost absolutely zero progress and it's a goofy little romp that can be easily 100%'d in a single sitting.
Choo-Choo Charles also features one of the absolute best "smash to end credits" moments in any video game, period. I actually cheered when the credits rolled as a perfect button to the game's completely ridiculous ending.
Born of memes and having just enough polish, you'll have a good time with this little demon engine.
There is a small amount of jank here and there, the PC version is a needless resource hog, and using your weapons against Charles feels like a mere suggestion (even fully upgraded, nothing seems to deter him other than an invisible in-game timer), but it moves at such a steady pace that you tend to forgive these shortcomings. Add in the fact that dying simply resets you back at your train having lost absolutely zero progress and it's a goofy little romp that can be easily 100%'d in a single sitting.
Choo-Choo Charles also features one of the absolute best "smash to end credits" moments in any video game, period. I actually cheered when the credits rolled as a perfect button to the game's completely ridiculous ending.
Born of memes and having just enough polish, you'll have a good time with this little demon engine.
I'm not sure I'd call this a true horror game, but it's a pretty good open world survival horror game. This is exactly what I'd imagine an evil Thomas the Train to be. This game is unfortunately extremely short and takes less than 2 hours to finish the game. Normally I wouldn't recommend a game this short, but it is a great game for what it is. I'm hoping that in the future we get a second game that expands on this concept as there are very good elements in this game.
Adding a Nightmare mode added to the replay ability of this game. Nightmare mode is no joke, the atmosphere is significantly darker, Charles is incredibly more aggressive, and will hunt you down faster. There is a lot more strategy that goes into this game mode as you almost have to pre-plan your route to a certain degree. A lot of what you do in this game mode is dictated by Charles and one wrong step spells the end of the run. Having one-life makes it that much harder. After getting my ass kicked 3 times right out of the gate by Charles I finally planned my route and BARELY beat Charles in the end.
Adding a Nightmare mode added to the replay ability of this game. Nightmare mode is no joke, the atmosphere is significantly darker, Charles is incredibly more aggressive, and will hunt you down faster. There is a lot more strategy that goes into this game mode as you almost have to pre-plan your route to a certain degree. A lot of what you do in this game mode is dictated by Charles and one wrong step spells the end of the run. Having one-life makes it that much harder. After getting my ass kicked 3 times right out of the gate by Charles I finally planned my route and BARELY beat Charles in the end.