Choo-Choo Charles is not a good game, but you already know this. Choo-Choo Charles is the epitome of a meme game, one so intentionally janky that it just about comes around to being a good time. I mean, how serious can a video game about a demonic Thomas the Tank Engine spider monster meme be? It’s meant as a big joke, and while not in the slightest scary (unless you make money off 9-year-olds on YouTube for a living), it is surprising well made.

In the game you are called to a small island where a demonic train by the name of Charles has come to life and is terrorizing the small population left by eating them alive. What we have is an open-world action title that sees you working to uncover where Charles came from and must work to take him down with the help of the locals and a little magic. In order to accomplish this you are given an old train and must use this to help you traverse the island and fight off Charles.

But you aren’t limited to only the train as you can take off on foot at any time that you want. You’ll be doing this a lot as you are required to track down “scrap” that you can use to upgrade your train and fend off Choo-Choo Charles that is scattered across the island. Inhabitants will also hand out scrap if you complete quests (usually retrieving something for them), or give you new weapons that you can mount to the rear of your train to help fight off the monster.

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What’s interesting is that Choo-Choo Charles seems to be running around the island, and because of his spider body, he isn’t tied to the track like your train is. This means if you come across him on foot you are a dead man unless you can find someplace to take cover until he gets bored and takes off. These on-foot sections can really ramp up the tension once Choo-Choo Charles’ music kicks in. But Charles isn’t the only one out to get you as the islands big baddie has a cult of shotgun-wielding goons that will try and kill you, mostly in story specific areas.

These creepers aren’t a problem in the open-world areas as the are easy to avoid, but even if they do catch you it’s easy to outrun them back to your train. You’ll have to do this as it seems the enemies are programed to chase you until you kill them using your trains armament, or they kill you. Choo-Choo Charles also features a stealth mechanic, but it doesn’t really work. The segments of the game where you are underground and trying to locate a specific story-related item are some of the worst sections of the game since you are forced into really bad and very un-fun stealth.

But Choo-Choo Charles himself is where the real action happens and where the fun is. During your adventure you’ll hear him approaching and when he locks in on you you’ll have to fend him off with your trains weapons; weapons that you’ve hopefully upgraded as he can kill you by doing enough damage to your train. The different weapons all have their own stats, but they all work about the same. The slower ones are more powerful while the faster one are weaker. After you do enough damage Charles will run away to regenerate his health.

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These battles are fun and don’t feel overplayed. The team could easily have had Charles attack you all the time, but instead they implemented a good system that helps to keep you on your toes. I often questioned if I should stop the train to explore a new area, or how deep to go, knowing that at any moment death could be upon me. That said, Choo-Choo Charles isn’t a difficult experience. Death simply takes away some scraps and starts you back at your train right where you left it and back to working to end Charles for good.

I actually really like this system. Sure, the game isn’t hard and a lot of the tension is taken away, but it means you’ll be able to enjoy the experience and complete the game, but it may be to its own determent. So many of these horror games I simply can’t complete for one reason or another. Maybe they are too scary, maybe they are too hard, but most time it’s because death is permanent and I’m not a fan of losing hours of potential work. Choo-Choo Charles avoids this, and because it’s a meme game, you can enjoy the silly nature of the entire experience. So, what holds it back by this lack of permadeath? Well, the game is only about 2-hours long.

On the visual front, Choo-Choo Charles looks bad, or at least assets look out of place. Charles himself looks utterly fantastic, so I assume the rest of the game was done bad mostly on purpose. Maybe because it’s funnier that way (it is) or because they needed to cut costs, or maybe a little of both. Still, while Charles is great (I want a figure of him ASAP!) the human characters look like Simple Series PS2 era people. None of the characters move their mouths when speaking, most awkwardly shift about when talking, and the connection joints for their shoulders to their torso always show, leaving them all looking like slightly broken Barbie dolls.

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The world itself looks like a stock Unreal Engine forest area, but all the textures for the the buildings and things you can interact with are all hand drawn. I don’t mean something like a photoshop professional came in to create textures, rather, someone got a textureless model and used a sharpie to draw the overlay texture. Edges, bolts, planks of wood, and so are are all squiggles slapped onto meshes. It’s not pretty, but only because it’s really at odds with the overly realistic Unreal Engine assets for the forest and rock outcroppings used.

Still, all of this janky never took me away from the short “YouTuber Focused” experience. I managed to play the game all the way through on my first playthrough, but I did so not out of an obligation for a review, but because I was actually having a really fun, really dumb, time. You really don’t have any sort of expectations when coming into an experience like Choo-Choo Charles, but if you can snag a few hours of dumb fun that will have you wanting to tell all your friends about, you’ve done more than most.

Look, there aren’t all that many games that let you machinegun down a demon spider-train. Add in a pretty epic final battle that might be one of the most exciting final bosses of 2022, and you can a silly game that we can easily recommend. Choo-Choo Charles isn’t a good game, but sometimes dumb fun and a few laughs can trump AAA any day of the week. Hopefully the team get another shot to develop this into something bigger and

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Choo-Choo Charles is a meme-game come to life in the most delightful of ways, but one that feels undercooked for its really cool premise.

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Final Score:

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