Choo Choo Charles is a game on Steam in which players are chased by a giant train of spiders. The trailer for the crazy horror game went viral in 2021, but what many didn’t know: behind the hype was a young solo developer.
On December 9th, 2022 horror game Choo Choo Charles was released on Steam. The open-world game lets players explore a secluded island while being chased by a spooky spider-legged train.
Behind the game is the young solo developer Gavin Eisenbeisz, who started developing his own games at the age of 13. As it turns out, Choo Choo Charles’ viral success was by no means accidental, but precisely planned by Eisenbeisz.
Choo-Choo Charles – Release Date Trailer
More videos
How to make games with limited screen time
This is how it all started: As a teenager, Eisenbeisz began developing his own games on his parents’ computer. Instead of learning a programming language, he used blueprints to build games using the Unreal Engine.
In 2017, Eisenbeisz published his first computer game on Steam: Behind These Eyes, he described in retrospect to the YouTube channel Noclip as a “terrible game”, but it brought him “a few hundred dollars”.
The young developer released other shorter titles, most of which belong to the horror genre, and are available for free on Steam.
His parents supported his passion, but there were limitations: As Eisenbeisz tells Noclip, they limited his screen time as well as his “developer” time. However, he regularly exceeded these times in order to test and gamble his games, his father reveals.
How did the hobby become a career? At the age of 16, Eisenbeisz began work on his first “proper” commercial game, My Beautiful Paper Smile. The horror game is about children who always have to smile and be “perfect” and comes in a unique hand-drawn style.
But the young developer had a problem: his parents wanted him to secure himself with a proper education before he plunged fully into game development. Eisenbeisz should go to university and study first.
He evaded this requirement by signing a publishing contract for My Beautiful Paper Smile – so he was contractually bound to finish the game and had no time for studies at first.
But what Eisenbeisz needed was a hit that would convince his parents that he could have commercial success with his games. When My Beautiful Paper Smile was released on October 14, 2021, the now 20-year-old had already started working on his next project.
How to create a viral hit
Here’s how he built the hype for his game: The young developer deliberately started work on Choo Choo Charles with the goal of going viral. It all started with the design of the game’s eponymous antagonist.
Eisenbeisz explains the well-known horror formula of taking something sweet and innocent and making it spooky. However, he noticed that not many games in the genre are inspired by children’s series – but everyone watched them as children.
He chose Thomas the Tank Engine, which he says was his favorite series as a child. The talking train with the friendly face was already the subject of numerous memes at this point, some of which alluded to a certain creepy factor of the locomotive.
Eisenbeisz was also inspired by the videos of animator Tom Coben, who gave the little engine long spider legs and turned it into a monster as “Thomas the Nightmare Engine”.
Thomas the Nightmare Engine was an inspiration for Choo Choo Charles
So the young developer had a basic game idea and a villain with high recognition value and meme potential. Within a month, he put together a trailer that showed off the game’s world, some gameplay mechanics, and of course, the creepy antagonist.
Did his plan work? His considerations paid off when Eisenbeisz released the trailer on October 1, 2021 and it immediately received thousands of views. At this point he didn’t have a game, just a Steam page and a video that was about to go viral.
The day after its release, the trailer racked up a million views on Twitter and Choo Choo Charles landed on the wish lists of thousands of Steam users. Eisenbeisz was now faced with the difficult task of developing a game that could live up to the hype.
How to make a game in a year
How did the development of Choo Choo Charles go? In order to get his game ready on time, the solo developer had to make some decisions and cut corners. Eisenbeisz explains that many developers consider features necessary that are actually not that important.
He always asked himself: “Will people write a negative review if I omit this function? Or will they write a positive review if I add it?” In addition, he did not install too many extras.
His goal was to meet expectations and surpass them a little, he tells Noclip.
Eisenbeisz put a lot of work into the horror train’s AI, but kept the actual gameplay loop quite simple and entertaining. He also had to cut back on points like the facial animations of his NPCs.
What problems did you have? Eisenbeisz reports several problems during the development process. Choo Choo Charles, for example, caused difficulties because his size and the uneven terrain made him prone to getting stuck constantly.
In addition, the developer had to ensure that the player encountered the antagonist on the large, open island.
There were also a few times during development when Eisenbeisz found his own game to be bad. Concepts were changed or discarded and new ones were added.
The developer then dedicated the last few weeks before the release to marketing. He contacted content creators, produced videos for his channels on YouTube and TikTok and prepared the big moment.
How to publish your game
This is how the release went: Finally, on December 9, 2022, Eisenbeisz started a stream in which he shared the release of Choo Choo Charles live on Steam.
Contrary to his fears, there weren’t any major bugs at release (apart from the giant spider train itself), so the developer could sit back and watch his game hit the ground running. He spent the release weekend watching playthroughs and reading reviews.
How was the game received? The enthusiasm of critics was limited. On Metacritic, Choo Choo Charles received a score of 56, while IGN only gave the game a 4 out of 10. But that was never the target group that Eisenbeisz had in mind.
The developer describes his work as “half meme, half serious.” So it was meant for an audience that could relate to that mix. And it was precisely with these people that Choo Choo Charles resonated.
Fans created a working likeness of Choo Choo Charles
Content creators such as Markiplier or the German YouTuber HandOfBlood showed the game, the latter of course in proper style in a train driver’s uniform. And Choo Choo Charles was also well received by the players. On Steam, it’s rated “very positive” with 92% recommendations.
Eisenbeisz explains: The people who were supposed to like the game did. He even describes the reactions of his fans as “phenomenal”. There are numerous comments from his subscribers on YouTube, which praise him and the game.
He felt like a bomb had gone off, the developer said in a video six months after the release. Fans created mods, songs, their own animations and even recreated the horror train in real life. Most of it was pretty cool, says Eisenbeisz. However, some of the fans’ work was “questionable,” he says. Apparently no one is spared from rule 34, not even a spider move.
So, the solo developer has been able to prove he’s capable of creating a viral hit and hopefully assuage some of his parents’ worries as well. However, it remains to be seen if he can repeat the hype surrounding Choo Choo Charles for his next game in this form.
What’s next for Choo Choo Charles? For the time being, Eisenbeisz is still busy with Choo Choo Charles: After minor bug fixes kept him busy at the beginning of 2023, the developer wanted to devote himself to a console port and a content update over the course of the year.
In a mid-July 2023 stream, he explained that he is currently working on bringing the Spider Train to PS 4/5 and Xbox Series X|S. Eisenbeisz did not want to commit to a period of time, but he is cautiously aiming for the end of the year for a console port.
According to the developer, it will still be a while before his next game. He doesn’t rule out a sequel to Choo Choo Charles, but fans will probably have to be patient for quite a while until then.
Solo Developer Lands Hit With New RPG – Gets 90% Positive Reviews on Steam