Fight a monstrous spider-train when Choo-Choo Charles releases this December

Remember this nightmare fuel? Well, it's finally coming out. Train-based open world survival horror game Choo-Choo Charles will make its debut on December 9th, 2022, via Steam. It'll come to consoles at a later date.

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We first reported on Charles, who to be clear is an evil train locomotive with a clownish nightmare face and spider legs, last October. At the time, gifs of the train horror went viral all of the normal places people post images and videos of train horrors and video games. At the time, I speculated that Charles may or may not lay eggs. You know, like a spider.

Folks, there are monster eggs in the trailer.

Choo-Choo Charles will be a survival horror game where the player must scavenge parts and upgrade their old locomotive into a mobile war-vehicle capable of taking on and taking down the unrepentantly vicious train-beast that is Charles. The trailer shows off rocket-propelled grenades, heavy cannons, flamethrowers, and machine guns as part of the Charles-fighting arsenal. The trailer also includes spooky people wearing Charles masks, which I can only assume are either a defense mechanism or a Charles-worshipping cult.

Choo-Choo Charles developer Two Star Games is in truth just Gavin Eisenbeisz, a starry-eyed youth who's developing it in Unreal engine and has been very open about the process, posting update videos to YouTube every few months. "It's been a little bit stressful, although I think the stress is mostly adrenaline," he told PC Gamer at the time of Charles' viral debut.

You can find Choo-Choo Charles on Steam, and you can find Two Star Games on both Steam and Itch.io and at a buncha other places via its linktree.

Two Star Games' older works include My Beautiful Paper Smile, a hand-drawn horror game, and the free surreal exploration adventure Cloud Climber.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.