3/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Choo-Choo Charles.

Choo Choo Charles is the first train type horror game, at least to my knowledge. This game was originally meant as just a one off gag, but after catching some popularity, pushed the creator of the gag to develop the concept into a full length game. A lot of people have been calling this a “meme game”, but I honestly don’t feel that’s giving Choo Choo Charles enough credit. Outside of its tongue in cheek nature throughout most things in the game, nothing really shouted “hey this game exists just so Twitter can give me more clout”. It feels a lot more sincere than that, even if the polish or mechanics of the game aren’t all there. This game is incredibly easy and simple but I’m not entirely sure if that’s intentional. Throughout my entire play through I only died maybe 2-3 times. When I did die, I never felt punished or set back in any drastic sense; I was exactly where I left off prior to dying. That’s not to say I want to lose tons of progress after dying, but as it stands now there is hardly any downside to dying. The entire game is focused around collecting scrap to upgrade your train, but it’s also used to upgrade your trains health. This very important resource is found everywhere, it is so overly abundant that I ended up maxing out everything on my train in a little over an hour. There’s several sections in this game that just don’t work as intended, particularly the stealth sections. During multiple points, the game expects you to sneak around a bunch of quick enemies with a wide view sighting. I attempted to stealth these sections, but I always ended up just running full speed and hoping for the best, which completely worked. Another big gameplay mechanic that doesn’t work as intended is Charles’ spawn rate. Over my entire play through, I might have encountered Charles a handful of times, and then he’s just gone for the next 15-20 minutes. This wouldn’t be as big of a problem if the game didn’t take me less than 2 hours to not only beat, but nearly 100%. This is a $20 title, and for 2 hours of content? I’m not sure if that fits the label. If the entire game revolves around Charles, and I only see him a handful of times throughout the game, what’s the point in even playing? It’s not like it’s a bad game, but it’s not all that I’d hoped it to be either. Check this game out if you want, but maybe wait for a sale.