Spooky Express

You know, among all the Draknek & Friends games, Cosmic Express has always been the most “underdeveloped”. I’m not saying it’s a bad game or anything like that but when you purely look at its core, there were a few mechanics but not much going on.
It settled to be a pure pathfinding game and that’s all, that’s why I wasn’t surprised to see a “sequel” was being made. Infuse Cosmic Express with a new Halloween setting and related puzzle mechanics revolving around fear and you get Spooky Express, which we’ll see is not Cosmic Express 2 and plays completely differently from its predecessor.

I know it’s a bit annoying but I can’t really review Spooky Express without referencing Cosmic Express, sorry for that.
Spooky Express opens with a first world that teaches you the basics: you drive a train and you must take all the passengers aboard, drive them to their stop and then reach the exit. The first major difference with Cosmic Express is the number of seats available in the train, you can only carry one passenger at a time.
The game then proceeds to develop its mechanics, each world introducing a new one, and you immediately understand why there’s only one seat in the train… it would be a bit chaotic to have more, wouldn’t it? That’s surely not what will happen later!

Spooky Express’ mechanics revolve around fear. This time, you have to be careful when you drive your passengers! If you drive in front of a monster with a human aboard and there’s space on the other side, the poor human has to give up their place for example.
The same is true for a monster when there is a demon nearby, and you might even be able to turn a human into a monster… the passengers and their behavior are what brings a more logical approach to the “Express” formula.
Cosmic Express was a LOT of trial and error, you couldn’t really deduce a lot of things just by looking at a puzzle and that was the biggest gripe people had with it. Spooky Express completely changes that, the first thing you do when entering a puzzle is actually to pause and analyze it. It’s not just about dropping passengers at their stop, you need to deduce what you have to do with them before.
The passengers’ interactions allow for diverse and unique puzzles while also narrowing the possibilities, it helps the game feel pleasant, rewarding and not exhausting. I remember having to take lots of breaks playing Cosmic Express.

Spooky Express is accessible with a very smooth difficulty curve, another consequence of the less “trial and errory” nature of the game. Don’t worry though, this game is still rather hard overall if you want to complete everything. The bonus puzzles explore the mechanics as deeply as possible, and you even end up increasing the number of seats of your train in the later ones.
They are not crushingly hard, but the interactions become far more complex when multiple seats are involved and you really need to be careful, it becomes super easy to give up on actually correct solutions just because you missed a tiny little thing. The fear chain reactions you have to find can be quite hard to anticipate, but the puzzles stay refined and never get too overwhelming (looking at you, final puzzle of Cosmic Express).

When I hear Draknek & Friends, I can’t help but think “META PUZZLES”. Yes, a review without me mentioning meta puzzles is impossible I know but what can I do, this is the best type of puzzle.
I was a bit disappointed to see that there are actually no meta puzzles whatsoever in Spooky Express, I think this is the first time for a Draknek & Friends game. Cosmic Express had you find alternate paths, as well as monoliths that challenged you to solve some puzzles again with heavy restrictions, at least.
I guess implementing meta puzzles or something like what Cosmic Express did was too hard or out of place with this more logical formula that usually only has one solution for each puzzle.

The visuals, the music and the sound design are all top notch as expected (zombies saying “traaaaaain” are my favorite thing btw), we also get super nice little comics before entering a new world. You can even still poke the decorations in the puzzles… no it’s not completely useless! It feels good to poke everything when you’re stuck, trust me.

Anyway, Spooky Express builds upon what its big brother created to offer a more thinky and far less frustrating experience. As always, Draknek & Friends delivers with an overall very approachable and polished game that still manages to please puzzle veterans as well.
Great game, highly recommended of course.

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Developer: Draknek & Friends
Publisher: Draknek & Friends
Platforms: Steam – Windows/macOS, Android
Release Date: October 21, 2025