This game has some interesting ideas but it's difficult to recommend when it costs $26 CAD and doesn't even last 2 hours.
The first ~30 minutes were the best part since it was when I was most on edge. Your arsenal is at its weakest which means Charles poses the largest threat here, and you never know when he might appear. Moving around the island by train also makes you feel vulnerable due to the limited control you have. These parts came together well to create a good sense of tension.
However, once you start doing the various main/side quests, the enjoyment really starts to decrease. Every quest is some generic fetch quest and none of them really stand out. Having interesting NPCs can make up for mechanically bland quests but unfortunately that's not the case here. The quests that involved sneaking around cult members were particularly obnoxious. Stealth is extremely barebones and enemies who spot you will chase you to the ends of the Earth. But there were points where I could just try to run past enemies and get the objective before they could kill me, something I imagine wasn't intended and made them come across as poorly put together.
Most rewards for quests are upgrades for your train, either a new weapon or scrap metal to upgrade its stats. There is a sense of progression but in this case I found it really took away from the tension Charles created at the start of the game. Your collective upgrades quickly become more than enough to deal with any Charles encounter. There is the benefit that trying to quickly swap weapons in response to guns overheating and Charles' distance can create a frantic rhythm. However, Charles becomes less like a monster you should fear and more like a mechanic you need to deal with, which really took away any horror for me. And after only a couple Charles fights, each encounter becomes pretty routine. So even if you didn't get all these upgrades, I imagine Charles would still become pretty repetitive to face.
There were parts of Choo-Choo Charles I like and would love to see applied on a larger scale, but unfortunately many of them aren't very developed here. The game taking under 2 hours and costing $26 CAD makes it especially hard to recommend. If the concept is interesting enough you might think it's worth it but I'd look to the many other indie/horror games that will cost less and/or have better quality.
The first ~30 minutes were the best part since it was when I was most on edge. Your arsenal is at its weakest which means Charles poses the largest threat here, and you never know when he might appear. Moving around the island by train also makes you feel vulnerable due to the limited control you have. These parts came together well to create a good sense of tension.
However, once you start doing the various main/side quests, the enjoyment really starts to decrease. Every quest is some generic fetch quest and none of them really stand out. Having interesting NPCs can make up for mechanically bland quests but unfortunately that's not the case here. The quests that involved sneaking around cult members were particularly obnoxious. Stealth is extremely barebones and enemies who spot you will chase you to the ends of the Earth. But there were points where I could just try to run past enemies and get the objective before they could kill me, something I imagine wasn't intended and made them come across as poorly put together.
Most rewards for quests are upgrades for your train, either a new weapon or scrap metal to upgrade its stats. There is a sense of progression but in this case I found it really took away from the tension Charles created at the start of the game. Your collective upgrades quickly become more than enough to deal with any Charles encounter. There is the benefit that trying to quickly swap weapons in response to guns overheating and Charles' distance can create a frantic rhythm. However, Charles becomes less like a monster you should fear and more like a mechanic you need to deal with, which really took away any horror for me. And after only a couple Charles fights, each encounter becomes pretty routine. So even if you didn't get all these upgrades, I imagine Charles would still become pretty repetitive to face.
There were parts of Choo-Choo Charles I like and would love to see applied on a larger scale, but unfortunately many of them aren't very developed here. The game taking under 2 hours and costing $26 CAD makes it especially hard to recommend. If the concept is interesting enough you might think it's worth it but I'd look to the many other indie/horror games that will cost less and/or have better quality.