A monster hunter arrives on an island where a mining boss shelters three indestructible spider-eggs while the beast, half train and half spider, stalks the rails. The pulp-B-movie setup is played entirely straight, and the premise alone carries the whole game: a sentient spider-train slasher, Thomas the Tank Engine reimagined as a villain, hunting the player along actual rail lines. The notes-and-dialogue lore (mutineers, a temple prism, a trampled lighthouse keeper) is charmingly over-the-top, and the cast includes a pickle-obsessed islander, a swamp monster and a witch’s salt stew.
The train-as-home-base is the genuinely novel loop: weapon rack, upgrade bench and respawn point all ride with the player, and the scrap-driven upgrade track (speed, armour, damage, health) maxes out comfortably if every mission is done. Weapon unlocks give the combat texture: the Boomer rocket launcher hits hard but drags, the AA gun might be the best all-rounder, the flamethrower and bug sprayer fill niche roles, and the stat cards and recoil make each unlock legible. Guns have infinite ammo but overheat, keeping the rhythm honest.
Route planning around the rail network, jumping out to flip track switches, gives the loop a puzzle layer beyond driving and shooting, and the island’s eerie quiet, broken by the monster’s whistle and hissing, sells the atmosphere between encounters. The lighthouse repair, bridge bomb-laying, tower-climbing files fetch and boulder-field drawings are the standout missions. Dying costs a percentage of carried scrap and respawns at the train, a fair penalty that never stalls progress.
The monster himself fizzles as a threat: omnipresent early, when being caught means getting boned, he becomes a wandering non-event that can be outrun or shot through the player’s own train, though the finale’s baited showdown, three eggs placed in the temple prism to lure a heightened version of the beast onto a trap bridge, restores the menace the middle chapters lose. The Boulder Field quest is the scare highlight, a deliberate Slender homage with escalating music and a sprinting chase, the scariest stretch of the game precisely because it borrows its horror honestly rather than pretending.
On-foot segments are the weak half: stealth is half-baked with instant detection and no crouch, platforming punishes with leg-breaking fall damage, and the islanders carry no weapons outside the train, leaving every dismount a vulnerable stroll through hostile camps. The control layout fights the whole way through, with jump and inventory buttons trading places in the fingers and mis-presses constant. Switch presentation is muddy but playable, with less foliage and murkier textures, a caveat softened by overclocked hardware that may be flattering the performance.
Small oddities accumulate: NPCs stand statue-still and talk without opening their mouths, a telepathic presentation that never stops being odd, paint colours look bad (black worst of all), and the map does not pause the game, a near-fatal oversight once forgotten. None of it matters much in a completion that runs about four hours on an optimised outside-in route, every mission done and the train fully maxed, a complete and mindless good time.
Overall, exactly what its trailer promises: a short, silly, genuinely fun horror game about shooting a spider-train from the cab of an armed locomotive, carried by a premise-driven loop of upgrades, unlocks and route planning. Misbehaving controls, shallow stealth and a monster whose menace fades until the finale are the costs of a cheap, complete one-and-done that is worth it for the concept alone.
