A reader discovers that combining Pennywise the Clown with Thomas the Tank Engine results in one of the strangest and creepiest indie games of recent years.
I discovered this game purely by chance while searching for something else. The promotional imagery of Choo-Choo Charles looked weird and vaguely horrific, which are both big ticks for me. Seeing that the game was available on the PlayStation Store for a good price I decided to give it a go.
Played out in a first person view, Choo-Choo Charles begins with a silver-haired gentleman by the name of Eugene taking you out on a boat to Aranearum Island. Shortly afterwards you’re presented with a well-worn steam engine. This steam engine is both your main means of transport and your only weapon. I say steam engine, in the 10 or so hours that I spent playing this game I never once shovelled coal into my locomotive or saw any deposits of coal waiting to be used on Aranearum Island. My old steam engine didn’t issue a whiff of steam either, but then again logic can take a backseat if you’re wandering around inside somebody’s nightmare.
And that’s what Choo-Choo Charles feels like. A playable representation of a bad dream. Aranearum Island isn’t the happiest place. Wrought with despair and decrepitude, a notorious monster stalks and effectively rules the isle. That monster goes by the name of Charles, and it’s your job to take him down. Initially, to me, Charles looked like the result of a bad AI prompt. What I mean by this is that in its formative period artificial intelligence would take every instruction literally and so go on to fuse disparate elements together when a real person never would. Charles is two of these disparate elements, in that he’s half giant spider and half blood red steam engine.
Digging around on the internet I found suggestions that Charles, and the game that he stars in, might have been inspired by a rather good horror animation by Tom Coben and also by the famous and much loved character of Thomas the Tank Engine, and by a Stephen King story.
I don’t know if any of these online suggestions are true. What is true is that Charles is a horrific and relentless beast who can’t initially be killed and whose mournful toot will fill you with dread every time you hear it.
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A mournful toot means that Charles knows where you are on the game’s map and is on his way, so be ready. You make yourself ready by carrying out a series of simple fetch quests for various characters who are located around the game’s impressively large map. Complete their missions and the game’s characters reward you with scraps.
Scraps are the essence of this game. Scraps are the only currency, besides dejection and tears, on Aranearum Island. Gather scraps and you can upgrade your train, with respect to its speed, the effectiveness of its weaponry, its amour, and its operational condition. Busted trains go slowly and fail swiftly against Charles’s attacks. Mended trains are fast and can withstand a fair few monster strikes.
Scraps are small flat piles of metal with, for some unknown reason, two yellow discs in them. Play this game for any length of time and you’ll start to crave scraps. You’ll delight in finding the numerous yellow scrap chests that are scattered around the map. You’ll forage through every nook and cranny of Aranearum Island to find more scraps.
Any trace of civilisation on Aranearum Island brings the chance to find scraps. Walk down that partially overgrown path, search that abandoned building or empty freight wagon, and there might be more scraps just waiting to be picked up. Scraps, scraps, scraps. Scraps give you hope. Scraps could save your life. As you upgrade your train you can start repelling Charles more effectively, and sometimes when you damage him that earns you scraps too.
In visual terms some aspects of this game are a tad low-rent and basic, but a bit of character goes a long way and Aranearum Island oozes atmosphere and character. OK, the crudely rendered characters talk without moving their lips and look several console generations out of date, but their imperfect state adds to the unreal vibe of the game.
And while they might not be conventionally beautiful, the characters are certainly entertaining and varied. Aranearum Island is home to a witch who dresses like a classic witch and an amusing woman who really likes pickles. The game’s bad guy employs whistling henchmen who hide behind strange masks and try to shoot you on sight if you venture into their territory. I especially liked the instances when the game led me underground. Abandoned mineshafts present chances to steal monster eggs, which are integral to the main plot of the game.
From its title alone Choo-Choo Charles might sound like a playable joke or a mildly distracting curiosity, but I enjoyed the time that I spent with it. Driving a train around a forlorn landscape and jumping out of that train to manually switch points; hurriedly getting behind the train’s rear mounted weapon to fight off a train spider monster. These were all experiences that felt fresh and interesting to me. And the game’s final cut scene, triggered after a long and fairly tough boss battle with Charles, was great.
End verdict: I liked playing Choo-Choo Charles, and I appreciated Aranearum Island’s unhappy and haunting atmosphere. To use a railway analogy, a punt on an indie game put me on the wrong side of the tracks and I liked it.
By reader Michael Veal (@msv858)
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