How the 20-year-old developer behind Choo-Choo Charles handles attention
Last week, the Internet responded enthusiastically to the announcement of Choo-Choo Charles, and the upcoming novel survival horror game finally confirmed our long-standing fear of trains with faces. As its release trailer has been viewed millions of times on Twitter, we talked to Gavin Eisenbeisz, the creator and developer of the game, to learn about his background and how he handles sudden attention, and learn more about it The way the game works.
This is a bit stressful, although I think the stress is mainly adrenaline.
Gavin Eisenberg
Eisenbeisz shared some additional game details Qiu Qiu Charles, Including some areas that make up its open world island setting. You will explore forested areas, beaches and mountains, as well as villages inhabited by the paper doll NPC shown in the trailer. When you do this, you will be chased by Charles, and initially you can only escape or repel him.
“My thought is, you know, every 5 to 10 minutes, Charles will wander around and try to hunt you down from time to time,” Eisenberg said. “So at that moment your goal, once he catches you and starts, your goal is to run away or scare him away.”
After upgrading your train with scraps collected from the world and obtained from NPCs, you will finally fight Charles in your own way by summoning him in a “final duel”. When the time comes, he won’t run away again. This will be a “life and death duel.”
Eisenbeisz is only 20 years old and is a self-taught team in his studio’s two-star games. “I started making games about eight years ago, when I was 12 years old,” he said. “I started making games with the Blender game engine and I totally fell in love with it. I have been doing it since then.”
Eventually, Eisenbeisz turned to building his games in Unreal, including Choo-Choo Charles. “I am a big fan of Unreal,” he said.
Eisenbeisz started to release his games as soon as possible-first on mobile phones, then on Itch.io, and finally on Steam in the Era of Favored Light.Two Star Games has released two games this year, including My beautiful paper smile, A hand-painted horror game that will be completed this year, Eisenbeisz explained this for himself. “I have always liked art and painting, sketching and the like,” he said.
In addition to the description, Eisenbeisz also created his own custom 3D assets and textures for his games, including Choo-Choo Charles’ Spider Train horror movie.
A horror game where you can take an old train to sail on an island, upgrade it over time, and then use it to fight against the evil spider train named Charles. This is the first trailer! (Steam link in the comments) #Halloween #Horror #IndieGames #HorrorGames pic.twitter.com/Ug5GHIwXRmOctober 1, 2021
He said that the huge response to the first Choo-Choo Charles trailer was “incredible” and “overwhelming.” “It’s a bit stressful, although I think the stress is mainly adrenaline.”
The teaser tweet released by Eisenbeisz has been reposted more than 13,000 times, and the video has been viewed more than 300,000 times on YouTube. The separately uploaded trailer added another 200,000 views on YouTube.
The only thing I can think of is physical horror/bloody. For this reason, all my games have almost no intense blood of any kind.
Gavin Eisenberg
He said that now that social media enthusiasm has subsided a bit, Eisenberg “has more breathing room.” He wrote the collective memory of the tank engine Thomas (the most obvious source of inspiration for Choo-Choo Charles) and other train-based horror events (such as the monophonic Bryan in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series) as happy reaction. But he did not expect that so many people would be scared away by a train with a face.
“To be honest, I was a little surprised by some of the comments,” he said. “When I was young, I wasn’t particularly scared [Thomas the Tank Engine]. But looking back, I can definitely see where some of them came from. “
Although he himself may not be afraid of tank engines, Eisenbeisz is a horror fan, although he pointed out that this obsession reached its peak in making my beautiful paper smile, and its theme was darker than the more deliberately relaxed Choo-Choo Charles. As for what scares him: “The only thing that scares me is physical horror/bloody. Therefore, there is almost no strong blood of any kind in all of my games.”
Hopefully, on the release date in early 2022, Eisenbeisz confirms that Choo-Choo Charles is in a “very very early development stage” and admits that the level of interest has added some additional pressure. “I am willing to invest more time than I originally expected,” he said, although he does not intend to let others participate in the project.
“Ultimately, I like the simplicity of game development and working alone,” Eisenbeisz said. “I know what I need to do. I know what I need to do. It seems to work best for me, at least for now.”