Twisted Tower Is BioShock’s Feral Theme Park Cousin
- Niels Gys
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Quick Verdict
Twisted Tower launched on August 18, 2026 as a short, single-player horror FPS built around climbing through a deranged 1950s theme-park resort full of corrupted mascots, ridiculous weapons, puzzles, platforming and enough cheerful murder décor to get the entire Disney legal department out of bed.
And the early signs are very good.
This is not survival horror where you spend six hours hiding behind a wardrobe because somebody upstairs dropped a saucepan. Twisted Tower is far more interested in handing you increasingly stupid instruments of violence and sending you through a hotel, waterpark, clown casino, carnival forest and space station while the scenery develops several untreated psychiatric conditions.
Early Steam reception is Very Positive, while launch reviews broadly agree that the environments, weapons, combat and grotesque enemy designs are the stars.
The bigger question is whether that wonderfully demented premise has enough underneath it to survive beyond its reported four-to-six-hour campaign.
For now?
This looks like one of 2026's more interesting horror-action curiosities, especially if you miss shooters that are allowed to have an actual personality.
If Twisted Tower has awakened your appetite for things that absolutely should not be moving, meet The Skin Stapler. CRIMENET investigated another horror game where the phrase “probably harmless” should never enter your decision-making process.
What Twisted Tower Actually Is
The easiest comparison is BioShock, because pretending otherwise would be like reviewing a man in a cape who fights criminals at night and carefully avoiding the word Batman.
But Twisted Tower isn't simply trying to recreate Rapture with clowns.
You play as Vincent, ascending the abandoned Twisted Tower resort while searching for Charlotte. Each major section has its own theme, enemies and environmental identity, taking you through increasingly bizarre locations including the aforementioned clown casino because apparently ordinary casinos weren't already spiritually horrifying enough.
The basic loop mixes first-person combat, exploration, platforming, light puzzles and environmental navigation.
There are branching paths to investigate, upgrades to find and movement abilities including jumping, dashing and grappling. Combat pits you against corrupted mascots and mechanical horrors using an arsenal deliberately designed by people who looked at sensible military firearms and correctly concluded that gaming already has enough of those.
That's important.
Because the attraction here isn't merely that Twisted Tower looks strange.
It actually plays strange.
The Theme Park Is the Main Event
The strongest thing Twisted Tower appears to understand is that a horror theme park cannot merely be a normal FPS level with bunting.
The environments need to feel wrong.
The mascots need to look like something originally approved by a marketing department before spending forty years eating maintenance workers.
The weapons need to belong to the same universe.
That identity runs through the game rather than sitting harmlessly in the wallpaper. Its horror comes through hostile mascot designs, warped attractions, violent encounters and environments built around cheerful entertainment architecture that has undergone some fairly dramatic changes in management policy.
And it isn't relentlessly grim.
Dark comedy is a major part of the package. The weapon design, dialogue, grotesque visual jokes and deliberately absurd violence constantly drag Twisted Tower away from solemn horror.
Whether every joke works is another question. Early criticism is divided there, with some reviewers embracing the absurdity and others finding the humour considerably less successful.
But at least it has committed.
There are few things sadder than a game desperately insisting it is deranged while behaving like an accountant wearing novelty socks.
Twisted Tower seems genuinely willing to be weird.
Want horror with an entirely different flavour of impending catastrophe? Descend into Static Dread: The Submarine, where being trapped underwater apparently wasn't sufficiently unpleasant until somebody added cosmic horror.
The Guns Apparently Got the Memo
The combat and weapon selection are among the most consistently praised parts of the launch reception.
That's encouraging because Twisted Tower increasingly leans into action rather than trying to maintain pure vulnerability throughout its runtime.
You're not merely wandering around waiting for the next mascot to crawl out of a ventilation shaft and violate several workplace safety regulations. You're fighting back.
And that changes the flavour of the horror.
This is less about sustained helplessness and more about turning a nightmare attraction into an armed dispute between you and everything that should have been removed during the last health inspection.
The result looks closer to grotesque horror-action than traditional survival horror.
If you want relentless dread and the constant sensation that three bullets constitute generational wealth, this probably isn't that game.
If you want something horrible to come charging out of a carnival attraction so you can respond with a weapon apparently designed during a concussion?
Now we're conducting business.
How Much Is Actually Here?
This is where expectations need adjusting.
The campaign is currently reported at around four to six hours.
That's compact.
New Game Plus adds replay value and opens previously inaccessible areas, while branching routes give exploration some variation. But Twisted Tower clearly isn't positioning itself as a forty-hour lifestyle commitment where you eventually forget your children's birthdays because you're collecting +2% mascot-resistant trousers.
For some players, that brevity will be a strength.
The environments change substantially, the game keeps moving and the entire thing potentially ends before its central joke starts smelling strange.
Others will understandably want more.
Light puzzles have also attracted criticism, while some launch reviews point toward weaker narrative delivery, occasional encounter pacing problems and the possibility that straightforward action begins replacing some of the early novelty as the tower continues.
Those are exactly the areas worth watching once more people have finished climbing the thing.
So, Is Twisted Tower Actually Good?
The launch evidence says yes, with qualifications.
Steam's early response is extremely positive, while the critical reception currently leans favourable rather than unanimously ecstatic. Praise repeatedly circles back to the same things: environments, combat, weapons, atmosphere and enemy design.
The technical picture also looks reasonably healthy so far, although it's still too early to declare the PC version completely house-trained. One launch review encountered very few technical problems, while another was dramatically more negative about bugs and general polish.
So don't tattoo FLAWLESS PC LAUNCH across your forehead just yet.
Give the corpse another few days.
What matters right now is that Twisted Tower has successfully crossed the first and most important hurdle:
the game it promised actually appears to exist.
The bizarre amusement-park horror isn't store-page perfume. The grotesque mascots aren't merely trailer bait. The strange weapons aren't one joke stretched across a conventional shooter.
The tower really is twisted.
Should You Keep an Eye on It?
Absolutely.
Twisted Tower has arrived with a distinctive identity, very strong early player reception and enough genuine mechanical weirdness to deserve attention from horror fans who prefer their nightmares armed, colourful and faintly ridiculous.
The short runtime may eventually become its biggest weakness or one of its greatest strengths. The humour will undoubtedly split people. And we need more time before the technical state and replay value deserve permanent judgment.
But the fundamentals are considerably more encouraging than the usual indie launch where the Steam description promises a revolutionary descent into madness and the actual descent into madness begins when you open the graphics settings.
Right now, Twisted Tower looks weird for the right reasons.
And in a genre increasingly populated by people walking slowly through dark corridors while a VHS filter commits aggravated assault against the screen, that's already worth celebrating.
For the rest of this week's crimes, monsters and gaming disasters, open This Week in CRIME. It's CRIMENET's underworld briefing on what deserves your attention and what deserves to be driven quietly into a lake.
Twisted Tower FAQ
Is Twisted Tower a horror game?
Yes. Horror is central to Twisted Tower, with grotesque mascots, disturbing environments and a nightmare amusement-park setting, although combat makes it more horror-action than pure survival horror.
What do you do in Twisted Tower?
You climb through themed areas of the Twisted Tower resort, fighting enemies, exploring branching paths, solving light puzzles, platforming and finding upgrades.
How long is Twisted Tower?
A playthrough is reported to take roughly 4–6 hours, with New Game Plus and alternate routes adding some replay value.
Is Twisted Tower like BioShock?
There are obvious similarities, particularly its first-person combat, bizarre weapons and twisted retro environments. Twisted Tower leans harder into grotesque carnival horror and dark comedy.
Is Twisted Tower worth playing?
Early signs are very positive. Players are responding particularly well to the weapons, environments and enemy designs, but it's still too early for CRIMENET to issue a definitive review verdict.
Comments