I'm frustrated.
I can feel the passion in this. The art direction is great. The music pops. There is a semblance of a heart in the story. The guns feel solid.
But it's kinda ♥♥♥♥.
Assets get a lot of reuse. The opening scene in the car is one of *two* interactions you actually see with Vincent and Charlotte, and you'll see that first one many times in pictures and recordings. Over and over. The rare times you see another character in game, they stand in place and read their lines. No dialogue trees, no reaction to being attacked, not even an extra "shouldn't you be going now" line if you prompt them again.
There's not enough enemy variety, even among the enemies in the game. They all move with the same basic pathing, don't take cover, move in formation or interact with the environment in any way. All of them are defeated the same way, a few are just more bullet spongy. The *only* way this game varies encounters is occasionally swarming you with a lot of them, which the air dash makes trivial to escape.
The music is poorly sequenced. You will often start an encounter and spend like, 15 seconds listening to bombastic music while enemies just...don't spawn. Outside of a couple of cutscenes, there's not one sequence in the game that tries to sync with the music. There are occasional stingers used in jump scares, none of which have the necessary tension to work.
The story is absolutely bare-bones. Your fiance has been kidnapped and whisked away to a spooky tower! That's it. There are two supporting cast members who basically just spout exposition to give some context now and then, but never provide information that you can act on. They don't develop or actually do anything. There are two nonsensical twists near and at the very end that are both obvious and pointless. The main villain's motivation is "I want to make a great movie," Vincent's involvement in this makes no sense. There is a disgusting element to the second twist I won't spoil here, but it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gross and pointless shock slop.
Vincent. Let's talk about Vincent. He sucks. His entire story is that he wanted to be a doctor, but can't study so he fails. He's a wet blanket about it the entire game and then it ends. His mother (grandmother? I can't remember, it doesn't matter) prods him to switch to acting for some reason, but he doesn't do it and then fails his exams. Beyond that, he weirdly just...doesn't react to moments in the game you would expect him to. For example, small spoiler: Charlotte gets her hand chopped off in the middle of the game and Vincent later finds the hand in a sewer. You can pick it up! It still has the ring he gave her like, yesterday! Vincent doesn't say a word. Making your main character such a one-dimensional sad sack the entire game is...a choice, I guess.
Don't expect any catharsis, you'll never see it. I doubt Thomas Brush could spell the word.
Gameplay! The mallet is awesome. It has a satisfying thwack, enemies go flying. The secondary attack is a reliable charge move that one-shots most enemies, and knocks back everything. For some reason there are nine guns in a 3-4 hour game. They are introduced at a reasonable pace for a while, then way too fast in the last hour or so. Several, like the Chain-Gun and Sniper Slingshot, are basically redundant. You can do everything they do with the Tommy Gun and Magnum Revolver, I only used the others when the game threw so many enemies at me I didn't have time to reload. I would have greatly preferred deeper weapon mechanics and upgrades around four or five guns.
The enemies are not interesting enough to shoot at for 3-4 hours. They all move at about the same pace, in mostly straight lines back and forth. There's no momentum to them, no shifty maneuvers, they don't interact with the environment at all. I *think* they don't even leave the platform they spawn on. They are never placed in clever ways, most just spawn out of sight or from monster closets. Better shooters understand that good gunplay is as much about what you're shooting *at* as the guns themselves. This just...doesn't do that.
The level design is blocky and often featureless. Only the lobby is laid out in a fashion that makes any sense, most of the rest of the game is corridors and larger open areas for arena fights. You spend most of your time finding keys to open a door. Or special tickets, which are keys, to open a level on the elevator. Or simple puzzles to open a door. There is some basic platforming that is somewhat elevated by an air dash, double jump, and a fun but highly constrained grappling hook. For some reason the grappling hook doesn't have any use in combat, you can only grapple onto specific blue dots on some walls in some levels. I don't know why, it feels like a missed opportunity. There are two or three areas in the game that ask you to use all three of these at once, that's about it.
It's weird, too. The hub layout of the game feels like it should be seamless and full of backtracking to other floors, but it's not and you never do. There are a *lot* of loading screens, not just from the lobby, but often within each floor. Sometimes almost room-to-room! I'm guessing this is a technical limitation, as the game doesn't run super well. It runs well enough on my desktop (see my specs), but doesn't seem to utilize resources available. It runs 30-40fps in the early game on my Steam Deck, dipping into the high teens later on when larger groups of enemies show up. I suspect several core systems are single-threaded or just don't scale well.
Anyway. I know this game had a long, troubled development. It used to be a different take on the idea called "Father," after around three years Thomas Brush rebooted and turned it into Twisted Tower. It was always a Bioshock-inspired arena shooter, but I can see the old bones. It's difficult to let go of an idea and salvage what you can into another. I respect his ability to pull that off.
But this still feels like a creator that spent more of his time making YouTube videos and promoting his paid courses than making a good game. That it presently sits at 93% positive on Steam is infuriating, it feels artificial, Brush's fans are clearly signal boosting the hell out of this. I guess marketing is key.
If all you're looking for is a mid Bioshock clone, $15 for 3-4 hours isn't the worst thing. Just don't expect to find anything well executed, ambitious or new.
