Did you know that Spooky Express is a Game of the Year contender?
PLUS: Halo comes to PlayStation
You have probably not played Spooky Express, likely haven’t even heard of the game.
I need to correct that.
Spooky Express came out last week on PC, iOS and Android. It is perfectly timed for Halloween, if imperfectly timed for a season clogged with new video games.
It’s a puzzle game about laying down train tracks. More specifically, it’s about transporting vampires, demons, zombies and some very scared people using a very short passenger train.
When I started playing it about a week ago, I expected it to be pretty good. Development studio Draknek & Friends has released some lovely puzzle games before. One of their past standouts is A Monster’s Expedition (Through Puzzling Exhibitions), a 2020 game about pushing logs on islands.
I just was not expecting something this excellent.
Spooky Express is a spit-shined gem, an inspired collection of hundreds of puzzles that deliver nearly as many eureka moments.
Here’s a nice GIF that shows the basics of how the game works. Imagine the track being drawn by the player’s finger as they slide it across the screen, though I played using a controller.
Every level is like this. There are passengers who need to be picked up. You draw the route.
For this early level, the vampire needs to be brought to a coffin. Simple!
Next, I’ll show you a video of me playing a slightly more difficult level, captured from my iPhone (the resolution is a little fuzzy in the clip, but the game looks sharp on my phone).
In this clip, you’ll start to see some of the game’s early complexities.
Some rules to bear in mind:
Different types of passengers need different destinations. T
he track can never cross itself.
In this one, I need to get the zombie back into a grave and the vampire into a coffin, then direct the train to the exit.
See?
Spooky Express’ levels are grouped by gameplay theme. In the first bunch, you’re just transporting monsters, as you’ve seen above.
In the next chunk you also need to carry humans, who don’t go in coffins or graves. They need to reach the exit.
With each batch of levels comes a new gameplay twist. These twists are conveyed wordlessly, as you’re funneled toward an epiphany about how things actually work in the game.
For example, in the third batch of levels, the player discovers that there’s a hierarchy of fright among the passenger population. Humans who are brought near vampires, for example, will scamper to an unoccupied, adjacent platform. This scare system becomes a valuable technique for moving everyone to their necessary spots.
This next clip, also captured from my phone, runs for about 69 seconds. You’ll see the scare system in action.
Watch closely and you might even get a feel for how magical Spooky Express is to play.
You’ll see me make a few false starts, as I struggle to draw a train path that will scare the human passenger into a position where I can pick him back up, while also putting the zombie back in his grave.
I get the zombie to scare the human onto another platform, but my track keeps hitting a dead end.
Twenty-five seconds in, I activate Spooky Express’ superb hint system, which shows me where part of my track must go. I wound up using the game’s hint system a lot, because it narrows my options while still requiring me to solve the level myself.
In this clip, I initially take the wrong approach over the hinted section of track.
Then, I figure it out.
In just 69 seconds, I go from being stumped multiple times to feeling the exhilaration of a breakthrough.
Nearly every level of the game is like this, and they use an expanding, ingenious bag of wordlessly conveyed tricks.
Here’s one more clip, in which I use yet another surprising gameplay element. I won’t spell it out for those who don’t want to be spoiled (don’t click the video if that’s the case!).
I was so impressed with Spooky Express that I reached out to its creative director, Alan Hazelden, with the most banal of questions. Basically: Why is this game so awesome?
I was curious how much iteration work went into each of the game’s beautifully tuned puzzles. (I cannot overstate the extent to which Spooky Express’ puzzles are tough but fall just enough short of discouraging, so that you keep at them; you will plug away and marvel at their solutions).
Hazelden told me that the bulk of the puzzles made in the game was designed by Lucas Le Slo, who he described as “an extremely talented puzzle designer whose games I’ve been playing since at least 2018.”
He said they designed over 400 puzzles for Spooky Express and kept the best ones, shipping with some 220 puzzles.
“Each puzzle has a single idea it’s focused on,” Hazelden told me. “And if it doesn’t explore that idea in a way that we’re happy with, then we’ll scrap it and try again.
“Lucas and I made a good team,” he added.
“Lucas had full autonomy to suggest new mechanics and explore the parts of the design space he thought was most interesting, and I’d provide input on whether we were going in the right direction, where we need more levels, what order the concepts should be introduced in, and where we might be asking too much of the player too quickly. Occasionally I’d also help with iterating specific puzzles, and it was always lovely to get in the weeds and bounce ideas back and forth, both of us suggesting possible variations on the other’s work to make a puzzle stronger or more focused or more approachable or to prevent unintended solutions.”
To hone the puzzles, Hazelden and team also studied video of play-testers who were trying Spooky Express for the first time. He explained: “Part of being a good puzzle designer is learning to internalize a normal player’s experience and thinking process, so that when we see someone getting stuck on a puzzle we can often extrapolate what’s going on in their head, realize what key concept they might have missed or misunderstood, and figure out if there should be an earlier level focusing on that concept.”
Hazelden also thinks it helps that Spooky Express doesn’t force players to solve most of its puzzles. When one seems to tough, there’s usually another the player can attempt that will also allow them to progress further into the game.
I definitely took advantage of that!
A couple of days ago, I reached what amounts to Spooky Express’ easy ending. A new puzzle appeared. In the middle of the playing field was a conspicuous vat of green liquid appeared.
I solved it and discovered that Spooky Express had another great gameplay twist for me. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow, this game keeps surpassing my expectations.
If you’re intrigued, the game is free-to-start on iOS and Android and pretty cheap on PC.
Item 2: Halo heads to PlayStation
As unthinkable as it once was that Sonic the Hedgehog games would race onto Nintendo systems, the Xbox’s defining franchise, Halo, will be released on PlayStation in 2026.
On Friday, Microsoft and its Halo Studios (formerly 343) team said that a remake of the original 2001 first-person shooter’s campaign, dubbed Halo: Campaign Evolved, will launch next year on PC, Xbox Series consoles and the PS5 (no Switch 2 version announced… yet?).
Microsoft is touting a full Unreal Engine 5 remake, four-player online co-op, two-player splitscreen on consoles, plus altered weapons, enemy behaviors and level set-ups, while “keeping that classic Halo feel.” (A former designer of the original game has been critiquing some of the changes seen in the first footage of the remake.)
As for how/why Microsoft decided to bring its most iconic franchise to PlayStation, the company has been bringing more of its games and franchises over to Sony (and to a lesser extent Nintendo’s platforms) since a four-game salvo in early 2024. Last month, Microsoft announced a new cross-platform 2026 Forza racing game for PC, Xbox and PlayStation (post-launch).
“We are all seeking to meet people where they are,” Microsoft’s head of game studios, Matt Booty, told The New York Times, regarding the multi-platform approach.
Item 3: In brief…
🚫 Ubisoft’s cost-cutting continues. It is beginning a process that could see the layoff of 60 people from its Redlynx (Trials) studio.
It is also offering “voluntary career transition” (read: buyouts) to members of its Massive (Star Wars, The Division) studio.
📉 Remedy CEO Tero Virtala has stepped down following poor sales of the company’s co-op game Firebreak FBC and a recent warning to investors that the company will be in the red for the year.
Studio co-founder Markus Mäki is now serving as interim CEO.
🇺🇸 Americans spent $4.8 billion on video game content, hardware and services in September 2025, up from $4.4 billion the year before, according to analytics firm Circana.
Switch 2 was the top console by units and dollars.
Borderlands 4 was the top fully-tracked game by dollars, followed by NBA2K, EA Sports FC 26 and PS5-only Ghost of Yotei.
👀 Electronic Arts workers are being pressed by the company to use generative AI for communicating with direct reports and managers, as well as for tasks more closely tied to game development—and not always with the best results, Business Insider reports.
Key excerpt: “Some Electronic Arts staffers who spoke with Business Insider under the condition of anonymity say the AI tools they’re encouraged to use, including the company’s in-house chatbot ReefGPT, produce flawed code and other so-called hallucinations that they need to correct.”
👀 EA and Stability AI (makers of the AI-powered Stable Diffusion image generator) have announced a partnership “to co-develop transformative generative AI models, tools, and workflows” to help make tools for “rapid prototyping and visual storytelling,” per an announcement.
Key excerpt: “Among the first joint initiatives is accelerating the creation of Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials through new artist-driven workflows, for example, generating 2D textures that preserve exact color and light accuracy across environments. The partnership will also pursue developing AI systems capable of pre-visualizing entire 3D environments from a series of intentional prompts, allowing artists to creatively direct the generation of game content with unmatched speed and precision.”
🟥 Netflix has shut down one if its internal game studios, Boss Fight, shortly after celebrating the performance of the studio’s Squid Game video game in a recent call with investors, Aftermath reports.
💰 An update by Valve wiped out $1.75 billion worth of value from the third-party market around digital items in the company’s Counter-Strike 2 game, Bloomberg reports.
That’s a quarter of the market for the game’s items, the outlet noted.
Valve’s update made it easier to obtain rare in-game items and allows players to trade up for them, devaluing a lot of the goods being sold outside of the game, Eurogamer explains.
🎮 Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Fallout 4 are coming to Switch 2, offering more western publisher support for Nintendo’s newest platform.
⚡️ Pokémon Legends: Z-A sold 5.8 million copies in its first week of release, with sales split about 50/50 across Switch and Switch 2, The Pokémon Company said.
The spin-off game’s predecessor, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, sold 6.5 million in its first week of release for Switch back in early 2022.
The most recent main-line Pokémon game, late 2022’s duo of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, sold 10 million copies in their first three days of release on the Switch.
📱 Unity, the game engine that runs most popular mobile games, is offering expanded tools for developers who want to let their players make purchases for in-game items and services outside of Apple and Google’s marketplaces.
Such transactions have been made possible by recent regulatory updates and legal challenges regarding the iOS and Android platforms.
👍 Next month’s Kirby Air Riders for Switch 2 will be the rare Nintendo-published video game with an extensive accessibility settings menu, The Verge reports.
Item 4: The week ahead
Wednesday, October 29
The Outer Worlds 2 (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is released.
Thursday, October 30
Arc Raiders (PC, PlayStation, Xbox), Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection (PC, console) and Dragon Quest I & II HD Remake (PC, console) is released.
Friday, October 31
Happy Halloween!
I've got Cosmic Express and I really loved that game. It's great to see they've expanded the gameplay concepts since that game. I wasn't aware of that, looking forward to get Spooky Express.