Halloween Season may be a challenge for gamers looking for seasonal ambiance without the gore. If you try to find recommendations for creepy games suitable for October, you'll likely come across list after list terrifying horror games with more extreme levels of violence. This isn't exactly useful if you're looking for something more family-friendly. Sometimes you just want cute vampires who aren't trying to suck your blood.
For Halloween there, Creepy Express arrived at the station at the right time. Available now on Windows PC and mobile devices, this delightful new puzzle game is perfect for this season with its cute ghouls and goblins. It's a great choice for kids who aren't quite ready to head to Raccoon City, and older fans of the genre will die for its mind-bending puzzles too.
Developed by Draknek & Friends, a puzzle publisher that has made a name for itself in the genre over the past decade. Creepy Express all about the horrors of public transport. Your task is to transport the monsters to their destination by laying tracks and creating a train route in each level, just like in the excellent game of 2022. on the railway. It's tactile gameplay that lends itself particularly well to mobile devices, where I can drag my finger to make tracks in small, grid-based levels.
The goal is simple enough, but each of your passengers is… well, let's just say, special. Zombies need to be taken to their graves, and vampires need to be placed in coffins. Demons and vampires cannot coexist, as the former will incinerate the latter if they come into close contact. To further complicate things, sometimes you'll need to pick up a person along the way, but the monsters don't play well with them. People may get scared of your train as it passes by the monster, or worse, turn into zombies. A successful route must take all of this into account, ensuring that every monster makes it to its home and the humans reach their destination safely.
Challenge and joy Creepy Express arises from figuring out all these clever interactions through experimentation. It's a game full of silly discoveries that go much deeper than you'd expect. Eventually I find out that I need to intentionally turn some people into monsters to make sure that every coffin or grave on the board has an occupant. Scaring off vampires with demons becomes a must-have strategy when I need to manipulate monsters in and out of the train to move them around the grid. Each level presents a challenge, requiring me to draw winding paths that meander across a grid.
While it's all decked out in fun, kid-friendly visuals, Creepy Express offers some very challenging puzzles that will continue to stump seasoned veterans of the genre. That's par for the course for Draknek & Friends, which has built its reputation on publishing smart games that are easy to pick up but challenging to master. (Don't sleep on last year's phenomenal LOC Digital.) A hint system that shows you where parts of the track should go nudges you in the right direction without giving away that all-important “aha!” moments that make Creepy Express so convincing.
Even if I had to look for several solutions out of shame, Creepy Express successfully got me into the Halloween spirit. It's that October charmer I look for every year, wrapped up in a damn clever puzzle game nestled comfortably next to Is this seat taken? on my iPhone screen. Give me a game like this and I'll eat it like treat or treat every time.
Creepy Express now available on Windows PC. It is also available on iOS and Android devices where you can try around 25 levels for free.
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