‘Choo Choo Charles’ Makes Trains Your New Worst Nightmare
You may not be afraid of trains, but this train’s blood-stained grin and spider legs will change that. Prepare to be terrified when Choo-Choo Charles comes to Steam next year.
Some games are beautiful works of fiction with sprawling open world maps and characters you can watch grow and come to love. And other games feature a sentient nightmare train on spider legs with a taste for human flesh. I’ll give you two guesses which category Choo-Choo Charles falls into.
Thomas the Tank Engine has been few a through a few things.
Developed and published by Two Star Games, Choo-Choo Charles is truly bizarre horror game whose trailer dropped on October first.
Appropriately kicking off the Halloween season, it looks terrifying– in all of the best and most viral-making ways possible. The official Two Star Games description of Choo-Choo Charles reads:
“In Choo-Choo Charles you’re given the task of eradicating a monster known by the locals as “Charles”. Nobody knows where he came from, but they know why; to eat the flesh of puny humans. You have a small yellow train, with a map, mounted machine gun, and an exquisite collection of bobble-heads on the dashboard. You’ll use this train to get from place to place, while you complete missions for the townspeople, or loot scraps from around the island. Over time you’ll use your scraps to upgrade your train’s speed, armor, and damage. You’ll grow your arsenal, and (hopefully) become an unstoppable force, ready to take on the great and mighty Charles.”
Navigate the winding and treacherous tracks, upgrade your train, and get help from the townspeople in an effort to kill Charles, the evil-clown-spider-train, once and for all. The aesthetic, tone, not-quite-jump-scares, and single focus nature of Choo-Choo Charles reminds me of 2012’s Slender, but with a much more detailed art style when it comes to the monster.
Immersive background noise, breathing, and a tone setting soundtrack makes the trailer scary right away. But it also doesn’t leave us to our own imaginations for too long, showing us Charles in all of his terrifying glory within the first few seconds.
Does Choo-Choo Charles sounds familiar, but you can’t put your finger on why? You may be thinking of Charlie the Choo-Choo from Stephen King’s Dark Tower. The series also featured a sentient and homicidal train.
Of course, that train was confined to tracks. Charles and his horrible spider legs, however, will have free run of our nightmares. We’re not sure if the reference is intentional or just a coincidence– but either way, it’s pretty great.
Charlie Choo-Choo from The Dark Tower.
No hard date or price has been announced for Choo-Choo Charles’ release, but Two Star Games has an estimated Steam release time of 2022’s Quarter One. In the meantime, you can add Choo-Choo Charles so your Steam wishlist to be notified when the game launches.
Will you play Choo-Choo Charles when it comes to Steam next year? What is your first impression of the trailer? Are horror games like Choo-Choo Charles something you enjoy, or do you prefer fewer nightmares with your gameplay experience? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
