Okay: I had a deep, intimate and possibly unnatural relationship with Cosmic Express (Draknek & Friends, 2017) and I’ve already written about how much it meant to me. I’ve also criticised it too, mainly due to my experience with Nova 7, its final level.
But it stands out as a puzzle game that clicked hard for me, more than any other title Draknek head honcho Alan Hazelden was involved in, although Bonfire Peaks (2021) comes close.
It was a genuine surprise to learn a followup had been commissioned: Spooky Express, which is finally out! I’ve already played it and not-quite-finished it. Do I think it’s great? Yes. How does it compare to Cosmic Express? Ah, now. That be a tricky beast to wrestle, but wrestle we must and read more I insist.
Nutshell: Okay, fine, I’ll tell you. It’s better than Cosmic Express.
Initially, Spooky feels very Cosmic. You’ve got humans, who need to catch the train to the exit, zombies who want to be dropped off at a nearby grave and vampires who seek an open coffin. Your train has just one seat and it’s all about threading track in just the right way to get everybody to their correct resting places. I solved the first 30 or so levels at lightning speed.
However, Spooky gradually transforms into a different game which is about, uh, transformations. Humans will flee the train when a monster threatens them and, if cornered, get transformed into a zombie or vampire. Later, cultists and demons deepen the complexity. This isn’t just Cosmic Express returning with a cool, black cape.
I’ve talked about how a rail-placement game like Cosmic can feel like an algorithm-building game in disguise. While Spooky is also an algorithm-building game, it gives off the vibes of a puzzle roguelike because everything can and does change as your train snakes across the grid. Passengers hop on and off your train at different points and sometimes you’re trying to drive a transformation, other times you’re trying to avoid one. The UI amplifies this because the train moves as you draw the track, so everything happens immediately instead of sitting back and hitting a play button – something we still saw in recent Cosmic spinoff Sokobond Express (Draknek & Friends, 2024).
Something I did not twig until at least halfway through the main game was the need to focus on the endpoints not the passengers. You may find, for example, there are three graves but only two zombies – and the level is only complete if all the endpoints have been satiated with a visitor. Naturally, it’s also a problem if you have two graves and three zombies…
This brings me to one issue I have with clarity. On the whole, Spooky‘s presentation is clean although there are a bunch of silly objects around the outside of the playfield like skulls or furniture that you can click-and-squeak. However, some of the endpoints are scattered outside the grid and occasionally my brain parsed them as external decoration, meaning I was solving the wrong puzzle. In time, I learnt to look more carefully but the frustration before this was real.
Spooky has an adorable art style with short comic book vignettes between chapters – although they’re not really telling a joined-up story which is totes fine: I doubt a detailed story would noticeably nudge the needle on the fun meter. But I’m still not altogether sure how I feel about the humans as children because… they get turned into monsters? I mean, that’s fine. They all look like kids dressed up for All Hallow’s Eve – but then you discover some of the creepy characters can be destroyed. I suspect the team have worked hard to avoid a configuration where a child can be turned into a monster and then destroyed because, so far, I have not been able to find a level where this can happen. Let me know in the comments if you pulled this off.
Regardless, I absolutely dig the funky soundtrack and some of the character cues make me snigger. Like when a zombie says “Traiiiiinssss” or a vampire, after converting a human, might mutter, “Refreshing!”
Let’s get back to the puzzles. No surprise that the Draknek & Friends team have got difficulty structure down to a fine art. There is a core route of puzzles you need to travel through to reach the end, but there is a dense forest of optional content around it, much more than you might expect. And I’ve played Spooky for nearly 20 hours because the hard puzzles are hard. Can it be too hard? Well, there is a hint system which I have drawn on occasionally, which shows you where some key track needs to be in place. Each level offers just one key hint; it won’t necessarily give the game away but will help you focus.
What I appreciate most of all is that Spooky has largely avoided design agoraphobia – where developers are forced into weaving larger and larger levels as the compact level ideas become exhausted. This is because the mechanics come from passenger interactions rather than spatial complexity meaning so many puzzle possibilities can be found in a small space. Sure, Spooky does not avoid this problem entirely and there are a few puzzles where you’re dragging the rail around only to discover, right at the end you’ve deprived yourself of a space you really need.
Having a lot of small levels means you will occasionally solve a puzzle by accident, but do not worry, you will not solve many this way. According to the credits, Lucas le Slo was at the helm on the level design and I have to say he’s done a terrific job.
I have one more quibble. There is a minor mechanic that only becomes useful during late-game optional levels , which is something along the lines of “seating priority” – I’m happy to get into detail in the comments – but unfortunately it felt like bureaucratic detail instead of an exciting new note added to Spooky‘s melody. I have not enjoyed these levels as much, but this is hardly a stinging criticism.
Spooky cannot bump Cosmic from the special place it has in my heart, simply because I played Cosmic at a particular time when I needed it. I also played Cosmic leisurely through weeks of commutes instead of trying to hit a review deadline, which can make any game feel like a job, a task. But I have zero doubts as I write that Spooky Express is the superior game.
If you enjoyed Cosmic Express, you will fall absolutely dead over heels for Spooky Express.
Spooky Express is available on Windows and Mac from Steam, and also mobile through the App Store and Google Play. A free review key was provided by the developer.
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I bounced off the first game, finding the levels overwhelming to parse and leaving most of the later ones unfinished, so I’ll have to give this a go and see if I can click with it (or figure out what exactly breaks it for me). Went through the Le Slo back catalogue earlier this year (Alephant still haunts me) and his involvement makes me hopeful.
Hey Johan. Yes, it sounds like Cosmic Express might not be your thing like any puzzle involving cogs is not my thing!
The puzzle structure for Spooky feels entirely different but it can still blind you with an obvious solution sometimes that’s it’s not possible to see beyond.
I need to return to Alephant, that was some hard puzzling.
Wow it’s been over a month without me chiming in! I was going to post that I hadn’t gotten into Spooky Express yet because I had just finished a forever game, Legerdemain, and promptly gotten into Blue Prince. Then I realized that one of my issues with Blue Prince is that the minimum length of a play session is large, because you can’t save in the middle of a day, and that Spooky Express would solve this problem. Then I binged Spooky Express all the way to a credit scene on a single day when I was supposed to be grading. It’s good!
(Also speaking of forever games, somebody posted about Slice & Dice in my timeline and now I’m 608 floors into a run that is a total perversion of the game.)
The Draknek game I most immediately clicked with would be Monster’s Expedition. I recently did a partial replay of Cosmic Express and it didn’t click quite as much for me as the first time. Line-drawing games can sometimes be an issue for me because it isn’t always immediately apparent to me what the problem even is until I bang around with them a while, and I feel like my solutions often require fiddly edits. This came up sometimes with Cipher Zero which isn’t quite, or always, a line-drawing game but often has similar properties where you have to check something globally. It may be that my brain is better at implicit abstract algebra, the thing where your log or sausage is in certain orientations on certain squares and the problem is how to push it out of that invariant, than implicit graph theory where you have to find a way to hop over some bridge of Konigsberg. (One might say, perhaps that would mean that I should be less of a jerk about a certain other line-drawing game I didn’t vibe with at all? Phoeey, I say.) Or I may just be happier with arrow keys than with the mouse (though at least one tough level opened up only when I drew the rail backward from the exit; I’m glad Spooky still allows all that).
The train moving as you draw the track was a real revelation here. And also necessary, because unlike Cosmic where many of the added complications were about transforming the topology of the graph (transporters and cross tiles), here almost all the added complications are about critter behavior. Instead of teleporting the train across the grid, you get the child to hop out somewhere where you can retrieve from the other side, etc. This gets into some complex stuff that would be very difficult to parse in advance. Which might seem like a flaw compared to Cosmic, but even in Cosmic there were several times where I smugly drew a track and when the train went along it I was like “hey! how did that not work?”
The “seating priority” thing, if I know what you mean, is an issue because it feels like you’re exploiting hidden edge cases in the algorithm rather than doing the main thing you’ve been doing. Which is a hard line to draw, because like most modern games the algorithm only reveals itself through what you do (and the odd hint in the cartoons, like the one that tells you what happens when a child and zombie bonk heads). But I think the line is drawable.
There was one level in an earlier part where I found the solution somewhat unintuitive and only stumbled across it when drawing something I thought couldn’t possibly work (va svany shasnve n guvegrra, jurer lbh jvaq hc univat n inzcver fgnegyr n phygvfg vagb ehaavat naq penfuvat vagb n mbzovr ba gur fnzr fgrc jurer gur inzcver whzcf vagb n pbssva). But the later game content really gets into something akin to the dread movement order puzzle, and a kind of edge case I thought Spooky had avoided–in Cosmic there were sometimes parts where an alien had a choice of destinations and an inscrutable algorithm determines which one they choose. In Spooky, in those situations the monster refuses to jump off the train at all and this is signaled in advance by an achievement. But in the end there are some bits where it looks like there were multiple things the critters could have done and it’s not clear why; and one of these even reproduces one of my least favorite bits of Cosmic which Spooky had avoided up till now (gur genva ershfrf gb yrnir orpnhfr lbh unira’g fngvfsvrq rirelbar lrg, rira gubhtu vs vg xrcg tbvat rirelbar jbhyq trg gb gurve qrfgvangvba).
Often these edge case puzzles don’t work that well even when they are transparent. Movement order minutiae flummoxed some of the hardest of hardcore DROD players, even though the information is all available there, and got kind of irritating in some optional Patrick’s Parabox levels even though they were much friendlier. It’s an extra layer of information to keep track of. Bureaucratic, as you say.
There’s a bit of ludonarrative dissonance in that, not only did I feel bad for the critters who get destroyed and the kids who get monsterfied, but why are cultists running away from demons? They love the demons! And there are some levels where it’s easy to draw a track that leaves every monster in the home and the kid leaving, but the level requires e.g. turning the kid into a zombie so every grave gets filled. It is the spooky funfair/mansion/whatever that must be sated, with no witnesses left behind.
Ok, very serious criticism: The first-person view you can turn on when you finish the level should go from the caboose, not the locomotive. You can’t see any of the interesting stuff! It is nice that you can make the scenery dance in this view.
I have finished finished it! One thing I would say, compared to Cosmic, is it seems easier? Even leaving aside the post-Nova 7 content in Cosmic. Partly because the levels are not as Big, which is a good thing (see: your entire post about Nova 7). Even Andromeda 15, which while a huge stumper is an early one, is seven aliens on an 11×11 grid, which would be one of Spooky’s huger levels. Though with the additional movement possibilities in Spooky a really big level would cause some real combinatorial explosion.
I used some hints and glanced at a couple solutions… the hint system isn’t perfect, in that sometimes it pointed to a bit that I had already solved, but while it might be possible to design a progressive hint system, it would probably be far too much trouble. Pity I couldn’t find a more progressive batch of hints which, as I may have mentioned, I did for some of the snowpeople in Expedition. One level where I had to go beyond the hint annoyed me in that edge-casey way: Va Perrcl Pelcg P sbhe, vg jnfa’g pyrne gb zr gung gur puvyq jub whzcrq arkg gb n mbzovr jbhyq gura whzc vagb na bcra pne vafgrnq bs orvat mbzovsvrq, juvpu bayl orpbzrf cbffvoyr va P yriryf. Gubhtu znlor V’q frra guvf orsber? Vg jvaqf hc trggvat hfrq va n ybg bs gur P yriryf.
Obligatory level select comment: It should be possible to zoom out the level select screen. (The unlock pattern is fine!)
Also a question about the ending: Jung ba, be bss, rnegu vf cbccvat bhg bs gur fyvzr cbby ng gur raq bs yriry M?
Congratulations Matt – I haven’t finished it yet. My progress got slower and slower and some of the very late levels I’m not enjoying as much. Gur raovttravat bs gur genva fjvgpurq guvatf hc naq gur frngvat cevbevgl ohfvarff orpnzr zber cebzvarag. I also disliked the Rube Goldberg-ness of some of the levels involving characters fleeing. Movement order, as you say, started to grate. Because it was constant gotchas that I would only see through trying instead of speculating; second-order effects that I was just hopeless to predict (or didn’t care to).
I think the train moving as you draw track is extremely useful and makes me wonder how train puzzle games could ever be built another way.
First-person view? What the what? What first-person view?
> gur genva ershfrf gb yrnir orpnhfr lbh unira’g fngvfsvrq rirelbar lrg, rira gubhtu vs vg xrcg tbvat rirelbar jbhyq trg gb gurve qrfgvangvba
Do you remember which level this was in? We tried to use level design to prevent this ever being possible, but I guess we missed a spot.
Alan: Wait, I owe you an apology; I don’t think what I said is possible after all, though there is a UI thing that confused me. Pretty sure this is the level I was thinking of!
Va Chzcxva Cngpu P2 (gur bar jvgu sbhe xvqf naq ab zbafgref), vs lbh ybnq gur svefg gjb xvqf vagb gur svefg gjb frngf, gura eha gur genva ol gur gjb xvqf fgnaqvat arne gur rkvg, gur erznvavat xvqf jvyy tybjre ng lbh jvgu gur ybpbzbgvir fgbccrq va gur svefg fcnpr bss-tevq. Ohg vs gur genva pbagvahrq, bar bs gur xvqf jbhyq or noyr gb trg vagb gur guveq frng. Ubjrire gura gur sbhegu frng jbhyq unir zbirq cnfg jurer gur bgure xvq pbhyq obneq. Gur HV guvat sbe zr urer orvat, V pbhyqa’g gryy gung cebcreyl, orpnhfr V jnf guvaxvat “url gung xvq pbhyq trg ba vs gur genva jbhyq whfg pbagvahr!” naq fvapr ng gung cbvag gur ynfg frng jnfa’g bhg bs enatr sbe gur bgure xvq, V pbhyqa’g raivfvba gur ceboyrz jvgu zl fbyhgvba.
Joel: Rube Goldbergness! A couple of the levels reminded me a bit of Rube Goldberg from Bonfire Peaks, where it was pretty hard to predict why the solution would work, but the available moves were so constrained that it was possible to trial-and-error it if not brute force. Like ones where the final path very obviously has to follow a constrained channel and the level is all about setting things up before you enter the channel so things go off in the proper domino chain.
I feel like I tolerate this sort of thing more than you because I’m much more about smashing things together and seeing if I make progress rather than trying to work out my solution in advance. Which reminds me of young Joel writing out The Citadel in machine language by hand and then coding it in AND THERE WERE NO BUGS. How is that possible? Whereas when I’m teaching struggling intro logic students to do proofs I always tell them, “look, for these kinds of problems, there’s a couple of ways to work backward from the conclusion, but otherwise just look around for steps you can take and have faith that they’ll be getting you somewhere.”
as for the other thing, cerff gur uvag ohggba (be jung gur uvag ohggba gheaf vagb) nsgre fbyivat gur yriry.
Naturally after posting that and went back to try Rube Goldberg again and had some sheer panic of “I don’t understand how this works at all.” But then I managed to solve it in less time than it took me to find the level! Which rather illustrates the point, except it took me a while to find the level.