Exploring the subversive childhood horror of Choo Choo Charles

gamedeveloper.com:

Choo-Choo Charles is an open-world horror game that sees players being chased by a train from their nightmares. Charles is a mix of locomotive and monstrous spider, and it will dog you all throughout your explorations of a gloomy, mysterious island. Fortunately, you have your own customizable train to fight back with. But to get strong enough to fight Charles, you’ll have to leave the safety of your locomotive to explore.

Game Developer sat down with Gavin Eisenbeisz, the game’s creator, to talk about exploring a horrifying side to Thomas the Tank Engine, what it feels like to try out a more lighthearted kind of horror, and the appeal of giving players a mobile safe haven as well as all sorts of good reasons to leave it.

You mentioned in another interview that Charles came from the idea of finding horror in children's television shows and specifically your own past love of Thomas the Tank Engine. What is the appeal of taking a beloved childhood thing and flipping it to horror? What makes it feel evocative to you?

Doing this is really enthralling to people for a number of reasons, all of which make a game more readable and intriguing. It mainly adds a sense of familiarity which gives people an instant connection to your game, as well as a sense of irony, which people find amusing and memorable. This makes the game stand out and is huge for branding.

What thoughts go into turning something once comforting and fun into something terrifying? As a developer, how did that affect the design of the game and the monster, Charles? How did designing in this way feel different from drawing from a purely new horrifying creature, if at all?

Overall, I didn’t find designing a monster that calls back to familiar things much different from