Spooky Express is part of Thinky Direct 2025! If you missed it, Thinky Direct was our very first games showcase that gave a spotlight to a bunch of highly anticipated thinky games you'll love to solve. There were big announcements, exclusive trailers, brand new demos, and more! If you want to view the showcase, right here on the website, on YouTube, and on Twitch.
What's more stressful than building a railway line? Building a railway line for the undead! I've never had to engineer train lines in real life, so I can't say this for sure, but I imagine that trying to stop passengers from eating each other would definitely add a layer of complexity to the job. Well, it's time I found out in the demo for Spooky Express!
In Spooky Express, you click and drag the train to lay tracks and create a route, picking up and dropping off passengers where they need to go. You'll have a limited amount of space to work with, and you'll need to be careful not to block yourself off from the exit. It starts fairly straightforward and builds in difficulty, as you would expect. Even simple-looking levels can throw a spanner in the works when you're trying to get to the exit after dealing with the passengers. If you take a wrong turn, you can just drag the track backwards to delete it and try another route, and sometimes it takes quite a lot of experimentation to get the track to work for everyone.
If you've played the previous game, Cosmic Express (released in 2017), you'll know what to expect in terms of puzzles. Only instead of aliens, you're dealing with other creatures, those of the monstrous variety. The demo introduces zombies and vampires in a spooky theme park, who need to be returned to their graves and coffins, respectively. This is a simple, narrative-light puzzle game you can pick up and put down whenever you want to test your brainpower, but the theming is pretty cute, and allows for some interesting puzzle dynamics similar to Cosmic Express.
Later, you'll also be picking up regular passengers, and they can't go anywhere near the monsters lest they die a horrible death (or rather, become a vampire or a zombie themselves). So, planning a route becomes much more complicated. Sometimes, you'll find a spare platform, and your regular passengers will hop off if a zombie or a vampire gets too close, which is understandable. Other times, you'll have no choice but to zombify everyone, so you can neatly deliver them to their graves before moving on to the next stage. Planning a route involves taking stock of everything you can see on the level, so if you notice four graves and two zombies, for example, you'll know that your regular passengers are going to have to bite the dust. Sometimes, in the pursuit of the perfect train line, sacrifices have to be made.
Having played Cosmic Express, I can tell you that the cute exterior is deceptive; there are some genuinely difficult puzzles tucked in there. There is a hint system included, which lays down a 'ghost' track (appropriate!) for you to copy, which provides a useful jumping-off point when planning your own route. But even with a hint in place, it can take a few tries to work it out. Figuring out how you can use every single square without doubling back on yourself is surprisingly tough at times. You can choose to unlock all levels, which allows you to keep progressing even if you're completely stuck on one particular level. This is a nice option if you want to play around without any restrictions, or if a puzzle has stumped you so much that you need a break.
There are four worlds in the demo, which will see you building a track through a graveyard, a pumpkin patch, a crypt, and a forest. The full game unlocks over 100 unique levels, and presumably, new mechanics (and possibly new monsters) will be introduced as you move through each world. The question is: is it different enough from the previous game to bring former players back again? I think that remains to be seen. The early levels do feel very similar in terms of gameplay, so it'll be interesting to see how the puzzles switch up in later levels and if they introduce new types of passengers to keep things fresh. But if you loved the track-laying puzzles of the first game and you just want more, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.
I'd say if you're looking for a new and simple puzzle game to get your teeth stuck into (pun intended), then it's worth checking out the Spooky Express demo while you can. It's surprisingly generous in terms of the number of puzzles it gives you, so it will definitely whet your appetite while you're hanging on for the full game. The release date is sometime in 2025, so hopefully, we won't have long to wait for spooky railway fun.