[Chilla's Art] The Ghost Train | 幽霊列車

Introduction

The Ghost Train sends players wandering a haunted train drawing on Japanese urban legends like Teke-Teke and Kisaragi Station, wrapped in the prolific horror studio Chilla's Art's familiar lo-fi VHS aesthetic. Developed and published by Chilla's Art, it launched on Steam on 23 July 2020 at NZ$3.36. Six years and dozens of subsequent studio releases later, its 362 English-language reviews sit at 83% positive, Very Positive. This review read all 63 negative reviews in that sample alongside a range of the positive side.

A weak entry, according to the studio's own fans

What sets this sample apart from a typical mixed-reception horror title is how many of the negative reviews come explicitly from people who say they love Chilla's Art's other games. "Normally, I'm a big, big fan of Chilla's Art but this game just didn't click for me," reads one. Another, more specifically comparative: "A step back from Missing Children in my opinion." A third: "the gameplay is a walking sim like Inunaki Tunnel but the scares and atmosphere is much worse." That pattern — naming specific other titles in the studio's catalogue as the bar this one fails to clear — recurs across dozens of reviews, suggesting this isn't a rejection of the studio's signature style so much as a specific, comparative disappointment from an audience that knows the work well.

The core complaint: walking, not horror

The dominant theme across nearly the entire negative-review sample is pacing built around repetitive movement rather than tension. "Most of your time is spent crossing train cars at an irritatingly slow running speed, just to complete repetitive and pointless tasks before anything actually happens," reads one detailed review. Mundane objectives recur as a specific complaint — visiting the restroom, the smoking area, searching for small hard-to-see items across identical train cars — described by multiple reviewers as padding rather than meaningful gameplay. The horror payoff many expected doesn't land for a large share of this sample either: "not scary," "no jumpscares," and "one jumpscare, a whole lot of walking" recur as near-identical, independent summaries.

A real bug, and a real accessibility gap

Beyond pacing complaints, this review found two more concrete, specific problems worth naming directly. First, a progression-blocking bug: one reviewer reports picking up three cicadas required to progress, only to find their inventory shows two, with no further cicadas available to find, leaving them permanently stuck; a second reviewer independently reports the identical item-count problem. Second, a genuine accessibility concern: one detailed review reports a puzzle relying entirely on sound cues with no captions or accessibility option, a real barrier for deaf or hard-of-hearing players that the reviewer specifically contrasts with the rest of the studio's more accessible catalogue. A separate reviewer flags a strong epilepsy warning regarding a pixelated visual effect used in place of the studio's usual VHS filter.

Checking the support record

This review checked Chilla's Art's own public update history for The Ghost Train specifically. The record shows two quick hotfixes in the days immediately following launch in July 2020, and nothing specific to this title since — consistent with the progression-blocking item bug remaining unresolved across years of reviews reporting it. Steam's own achievement data shows a moderate completion curve (90.5% for the easiest goal, down to 27-49% for others), suggesting most players who start do finish, even if many describe the experience as tedious along the way.

Verdict

The Ghost Train has real atmospheric strengths — environmental art and lighting draw praise even from its critics — but this review's full read of its negative-review sample confirms a consistent verdict from the studio's own fanbase: this is one of Chilla's Art's weaker efforts, weighed down by repetitive pacing, a real progression-blocking bug, and a specific accessibility gap the studio's other work reportedly avoids. Worth a look only for completionists already invested in the studio's catalogue.