Untapped Potential:
Lets get the TL:DR out of the way first. Choo-Choo Charles was a fun experience that lasted roughly two and a half hours. At a $20 price tag, this is a pretty steep ask for the overarching experience, and I would recommend lowering the buy-in to $10 or waiting for a proper sale that gets the price to a more appropriate level to the time you will be investing into the product.
I would also like to make note that this is a solo project, and while I do support these and give respect to the folks that pull these off, I still have to come away with my opinions and takeaways from the game, good or bad.
So as far as ratings go in the game's current form (at time of this writing), wait for a deep to light sale, unless you really want to support this independent developer.
The above being said, this game has UNTAPPED POTENTIAL, and in order to delve into that, we are going to have to dismantle what does not work and why. As usual, this is not intended to harm the developer in anyway.
What it Gets Right:
Choo choo Charles in its short play time manages to tap a very interesting concept that actually plays well together. By mixing rail-shooter with quasi classic adventure gameplay that you can seamlessly bounce between, you are left with almost constant moments of stress as the player attempting to resolve your tasks under the looming threat of a persistent pursuing antagonist. If you are caught out of your train, you are defenseless and that is made clear very early on in the game. Despite the shortcomings that will be discussed later, the game remained pretty engaging from the start to the conclusion of my experience.
The foundation of the game is generally solid, and leaves a lot of potential to work with. It feels really good to go from game to map. Movement does not feel slow when you are walking, interacting with objects in the game feels responsive and there was not a single moment where I attempted to activate or click on an interactable and "missed" due to janky detection.
When the combat segments of the game happen, they are fun to play with. Bouncing in and out of your train was a smooth transition and there is a surprising amount of lore to pine through as you explore the island, read journals and talk to inhabitants.
What it Gets Wrong:
This game, despite having that classic adventure premise of collecting items to solve the overarching problems along the way, really lacks this component in a large way. You are technically correct in saying that it achieves this, but in reality, its no different than saying Doom is a classic adventure by collecting door keys to move you forward. There are only a few places in this game where you are acquiring tools, or assets to solve an over arching narrative. Keys are handed to you, and questing tends to fill in the blanks for weapons, while the only true objective in the game is to use aforementioned keys to open doors that lead you to collect the McGuffins that will open access to the end game. This, is one of the first real missed opportunities that the game falls short from.
When you really look at how this game works, it really appears to pull influence from an old JLN game for the NES: Jaws. This is not particularly a bad thing, as that game is still pretty fun. It does however, not provide any real depth. This game can easily be completed in under 3 hours. My first playthrough was 2.5 hours, and I missed one sub-quest, and a few paint cans (which would have allowed me to 100% the achievements). To boot, I did not even need to do everything I had, and I could have still beaten the game with FAR less power at my disposal.
There is also several segments of the game that involve "Stealth". Stealth in the game functions in the loosest sense of the term. Ultimately, it behooves you to simply ignore stealth and run through the obstacles to your objectives. If you are attempting to use stealth, then you can look forward to movement patterns that take a bit of patience to observe, and enemy sight that seems to be so hyper aware that I was seen numerous times from what felt like through walls, or general distance. Enemies appeared to see me before I was even able to see them in front of me. It just did not feel good to play with, and I ended up either ignoring it, or just baiting the denizens back to my train so I could shoot them.
What Would Radically Improve the Game:
Instead of just arbitrarily allowing the player to mass upgrade the train, you should pace the "level ups" out. Set upgrades enough to beat the game that are easy to come across via the game's questing system. Hide the rest of the components across the map. There is a ton of extra space around the island that parts could be hidden, and there would be thirty-three parts in total to collect to maximize your trains capabilities. Keeping the scrap the way it is makes sense, but having the component search be a factor would increase the game time, while giving the player a sense of accomplishment for each discovery.
Hide components behind quests or loot-able locations, and then charge scrap to install them. Not only do you get more quests to engage with, you will give the player a few extra hours of exploring your game (that they will likely enjoy).
Choo Choo Charles already has a questing system that can be expanded on either by deliveries or otherwise. By adding components as previously mentioned, you could also add additional tools that would grant access to new locations on the map, maybe open up rail changes and such to allow the player to unlock more of the map as opposed to just having the entire map open and available to the player.
Another interesting option to add to the game, is an expansion of the lore.
*Spoilers Ahead*
So if you have gone through the game and read maybe half of the lore dumps that you can find across the various journal pages and such you can discover as you explore the island, you may have noticed something that I did.
Warren MAY not be a bad guy. He very well could be, but depending on how you look at it, it could have been possible that he was trying to stop people from unleashing Charles and making him more dangerous.
Another addition that could have made the game even more interesting would have been to explore the potential alternatives to the story narrative by adding NPC quests/interactions that involve Warren's gang. I suggest something along this line, because adding potential ending alternatives based on how you run through the game, or giving even more options to run around and figure out more of what is happening on the island would have been cool.
On top of that, the "classic adventure" theme that the game starts with, that involves you collecting items to help resolve the game, could be leaned on a little more. Find "artifacts" or "tools" or other materials other than the eggs to figure out ways to damage Charles and prevent him from fleeing, or hobble him or something. Find tools to gain access to key locations, or more railways to take your train. There is plenty of possibility to add to the game with this, that as the above feature.
The Bottom Line
Choo Choo Charles was fun. I maintain that I find with at least adjusting the way you level up the train to the way I recommended, the increased time in the game would add more value for the overarching price. Beyond the two recommendations above, its all clean up. Most of the various issues in the game are minute, and do not hurt the overall experience in a significant way beyond figuring out a correction to how stealth works in the game.
That is pretty much it. I don't expect anything to happen with this title in the future, but it would be nice to see attention given to it that would help extend the play time to add value to the product.
