How does one start a review for a game about a half-train, half-gigaspider from Hell gaming thrill ride? I guess we should start at the beginning?

The beginning tutorial experience was useful enough but most gamers will be able to pick up and play this title right out of the gate if they've had any experience at all with their peripheral(s) of choice. C-CC is not a very difficult to understand concept: Do missions, Collect scrap, Retrieve Weapons, Upgrade, rinse-repeat. Worked great on both the Steam Deck and on my PC. Will recommend frame capping on the Steam Deck to 40 and setting graphics down a tick or two to improve battery life. While the game isn't "gorgeous" in the typical since, it was nice to play it on a full blown GPU on the desktop cranked all the way up. Make sure you give it a try on both if you are able to.

Completing the game took around 2.5-3 hours for me on my Steam Deck on my first play through of the game due to the level of exploration the map has to it. A lot of the time, I found myself wondering in the woods or trying to find things like the baby doll camp fire. The map might not be the most lively, but there are hidden secrets if you look around for them.

Pros:

- Decent, simple horror game
- Fun potential speedrun title
- Got to destroy a Half-Train Half-GigaSpider from Hell
- Train has a whistle
- Save system is epic. Need to stop in the middle of a session? No problem, you'll be exactly where you left off when you come back, and I mean EXACTLY.
- Cured my phobia of Thomas the Tank Engine as I finally got to dispose of a train with a face.

Cons:

- Barry is a little too touchy when you're in his waters. Worse than Old Greg honestly.
- The stealth mechanics are non-existent. They're "there" but they aren't real useful (perhaps this is my play style also causing issues with it, but it didn't seem fully baked in v1.0.0).

Complaints:

- Although I 100% completed the game on my Deck, some achievements didn't unlock (mostly those at the beginning of the game: Fetch Scraps for Candice, Swamp Swimmer, Lock Pick O'clock, Bug Spray Blaze, Journal Returnal, Cloud Climber, and to prove that I had to complete one to finish the game South Mine Spelunking) which was EXTREMELY annoying to have to repeat the Swamp Swimmer one but that's a personal gripe.
- Charles didn't attack as much as I expected on the Deck but attacked more on the PC. Not sure if it was just luck of the draw some how or if my Deck is graced with some sort of anti-Charles powers.


Overall, this title is not an IGN 10/10 or an X-Play 5 out of 5, but it sure is an excellent indie horror game. I don't mind the price even though some suggest that it should be about half of it's current $20USD but for the enjoyment I got 100%'ing the game, it was worth it to me.

See you on the speedrun.com leaderboards soon!