Good old trains, eh? They arrive. You get on them. They take you to where you need to go. The scariest thing in England, though, is if the train actually arrives on time. OMG first world problems.

And then there’s Choo-Choo Charles from US indie devs Two Star Games. This horror romp is an adventure game set in an open world, your activities sporadically terrorised by a mortifyingly unfriendly train. Cripes.

Overcome the Spider Train Choo-Choo Charles or Something

The ironic thing with Two Star Games is that name invites all manner of rubbish jokes about bad reviews. Also ironic, then, as IGN gave this game 2/5.

Thankfully for the devs, Steam reviewers have been much kinder to it (Very Positive rating off 14,300 ratings). And we must say we rather enjoyed out brief time with this one—about four hours of gameplay.

Players take control of a character who navigates an open world (set at night) in an old train. You complete tasks, collect swag, and use your loot to upgrade the train.

That’s primarily to fight off Charles.

Charles is a monstrous spider-train hybrid hellbent on getting you dead. The thing turns up from time to time, at which point you must gun the bastard off or face your doom. Lovely stuff. Here it is in action.

It’s a fun premise with a basic survival loop. The idea is to have that sense of “OMG when is Charles going to turn up!?” level of tense spookiness. That works well early on, but then you kind of get used to it.

On the downside, then, yes Choo-Choo Charles is a bit repetitive in its gameplay loop.

Where it wins out is with that brief gameplay time. As with many indie games, this one is short and so doesn’t really outstay its welcome. It’s a short, sharp blast of pick-up-and-play. We consider this the game’s main strength as it poses a daft horror concept (something you’d think Stephen King might have cooked up) delivered with considerable panache.

Including a solid soundtrack that ramps up the atmospherics nicely enough.

Whilst the gaming press hasn’t been overly impressed by it, we must state we found the thing fun in small doses. Which, again, we feel is the point of the game.

You’re not supposed to sink 300 hours into it, you give it a whirl, enjoy yourself, and there we go.

Nothing outstanding, but also just a fun little concept. The downside here is the asking price may well put gamers off, so maybe wait for a Steam sale (as we did). Then it gets a thumbs up from us.

It’s available on PC and all consoles. Choo choo.