The moment I laid my eyes on Twisted Tower, I knew it was a game I would enjoy. It’s a first-person shooter (I like those!). It has an interesting setting in an old, abandoned amusement park resort (I like that too!). And it seems inspired by the original BioShock (which I also like!). So at first glance, I was pretty sure I was going to find something to like about Twisted Tower. While the game definitely wears its inspirations on its sleeves, there’s a lot to like in this charming yet disturbing narrative FPS from Atmos Games and 3D Realms.
In Twisted Tower, you play as Vincent, a man summoned to the abandoned “Twisted Tower Resort” in search of his freshly kidnapped fiancée, Charlotte. The kidnapper? The enigmatic resort owner / renowned film director Mr. Twister. Upon setting foot on the stormy shores of the resort, Vincent is subjected to a twisted game devised by Mr. Twister, full of crazed parkgoers, devious traps, and shifting buildings that stand in his path to reuniting with his beloved wife-to-be. As Vincent ascends the titular “Twisted Tower”, a much darker and more subtle narrative begins to emerge. As the mysteries and revelations pile up, they eventually barrel towards an ending with a bit of an “Ah-Ha” moment where everything falls into place.
On the whole, the narrative in Twisted Tower is pretty good. It has enough mystery and asks enough intriguing questions to remain engaging throughout its entire runtime. At times, I felt some story reveals came a little out of nowhere, or that they didn’t have enough seeds planted on the path to have the payoff really land. On the flip side, some elements also seemed a bit too easy to predict, and I found myself just waiting for the answer to reveal itself. Perhaps this is on me; as a fan of BioShock, I was perhaps looking more intensely at the smaller details of the story, trying to figure out how they fit into the big picture. Essentially, I found myself going “ok, ok” as more of Vincent and Charlotte’s story unraveled, but rather than landing at the desired “Ah-Ha” moment, it was more of a “Huh, Interesting” type of feeling by the end. It’s not a bad story, but the narrative doesn’t exactly live up to its inspirations in the narrative-FPS genre.
As I stated above, Twisted Tower is a Narrative-FPS. We talked about the narrative, so now let’s talk about the FPS! An FPS is only as good as its arsenal of weapons, and I’m happy to report that the guns in Twisted Tower are fun! The weapons are thematically linked to the crazy theme park aesthetic, with a machine gun that replaces a belt of bullets with a bowl of gumballs, a pump-action shotgun that rips a giant fart gas cloud as an alternate fire, and the devastating Marble Magnum, which fires high-speed marbles using pinball flippers and dark magic. The weapon archetypes may be familiar, but the visual designs of the weapons and the various alternate fire modes you can unlock make them fun to switch between when dispatching your foes.
One element I did enjoy and wish to highlight is the performances. Vincent (played by Andrew Latheron) and Charlotte (played by Alaina Wis) have great chemistry, and you really get a sense of their growing relationship through audio recordings and voice-over. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the performance of Mr. Twister, or perhaps I take more issue with the direction of that character. It was a bit too mustache-twirly, and while I’m all for some toilet humor, some of the crassness of his lines felt tonally at odds with the narrative. Not a bad performance, certainly; it just felt at odds with the story the game was trying to tell.
While the weapons are certainly fun to wield, the combat itself isn’t much to write home about, sadly. There are a number of distinct enemy types in Twisted Tower, from raging mermaid women to teleporting fire-breathing seahorses, and demonic talking telephone toys. Each of these enemies can be foiled more efficiently with a specific weapon; the telephone enemies, for instance, can be smashed in one hit with your massive mallet, but they take multiple hits if shot with the pistol. But ultimately, most of the enemies can be dispatched just by sending enough lead downrange, and as a result the combat feels a bit one-note. The enemies aren’t designed in a way to really promote switching weapons to address incoming threats, so I mainly just employed a “shoot it until it dies” approach and mainly just switched weapons when I got bored or ran out of magnum ammo. This also made the enemies feel a bit spongy in combat, not an egregious amount, mind you, but I was thinking more about how many shots it would take to kill the enemy in front of me, rather than things like my positioning in the arena or which weapon I should switch to. Playing on Normal difficulty, it felt a little on the easier side coming from someone who is pretty familiar with FPS games, so perhaps this, paired with the fact that combat didn’t really promote much creativity or decision-making, made it feel a bit underwhelming.
Aside from combat, platforming makes up another significant chunk of the gameplay experience in Twisted Tower. Throughout the game, Vincent gains access to a number of movement abilities, from a slide to an air dash to even a grappling hook. You will utilize these abilities along with shifting segments of levels, like turning hallways and even flipping entire levels upside down. There are a few areas in the late game where you will be combining your platforming skills while engaging in combat, but on the whole the halves feel a bit more separated. For example, you will go from fighting off waves of enemies in an arena to an area outside the tower where you will be grappling and dashing over gaps with very few enemies present. For what it is, the platforming is fun (if a little bit stiff) to engage with; I just wish there were more opportunities to mix the platforming and the combat. The mechanics feel like they want you to be constantly moving at high speeds, commanding an arena, but the way the game plays out feels much more reserved.
If there’s one thing I don’t have any qualms about, it’s the art direction. The “Twisted Tower Resort” is a 1950’s art deco nightmare carnival and hotel combo. Various sections of the resort have their own distinct vibe, from the rundown hotel rooms to the disgusting and damp “Mermaid Palace” swimming pools, and the dazzling lights and colors of the “Clown Casino”. Each of these environments is a treat to explore. The game is a mostly linear experience, but the levels are large enough that exploring is something you naturally find yourself doing, checking every nook and cranny looking for extra tickets to upgrade your weapons or searching for a brightly colored key to unlock a door. The environments are decorated and lit in a fantastic way that beckons you to keep exploring every inch of the tower, and the way the game is rendered really does evoke the look of a 7th generation Xbox 360 or PS3 game, which is quite impressive for a relatively small studio to achieve.
I also wish to highlight the audio design, which is particularly strong. In addition to looking the part, the weaponry all sounds impactful and tactile. There’s a strength behind the sound that is heard when breaking a crate with the mallet that never gets dull, especially when the disgusting squelch of an enemy’s head getting smashed is mixed in. Collecting tickets makes the perfect little jingle reminiscent of collecting bottle caps in a Fallout game. Even the creepy telephone enemies rolling towards you, screaming “VINCENT” in this robotic voice that’s pleasant yet evil, really come together to form a great soundscape. The music maybe isn’t the most memorable, but what’s there usually helps establish the mood of a specific area in the background while you explore or fight.
My initial playthrough lasted about 5-6 hours, which was basically the perfect amount of time for a game of this scope. There is enough depth there to get in, play with some fun mechanics, explore the tower, and end the story right before it starts to overstay its welcome or run out of ideas. Throughout the first playthrough, there are alternate paths that are locked, and the game suggests that in “New Adventure +” these areas become available, sort of as an incentive to replay the game. I didn’t want to miss out, so I decided to boot into “New Adventure +” right after completing the game and decided to speedrun the game, partially to see these new areas, but also to get an achievement for beating the game in under 4 hours.
Speedrunning the game was quite fun. Seeing as I knew where to go and what to find in each of the levels, the challenge became all about speed: how fast can I kill these enemies? How much exploring do I need to do for healing items? Can I skip this area entirely? These were some of the questions I found myself asking, and I had a lot of fun, ultimately finishing the game a second time in under two hours.
The new areas unlocked in “New Adventure +” were novel, but they didn’t feel all that impactful. There’s only a handful of them throughout the game, and if I wasn’t paying specific attention, they felt very similar to the rooms I moved through in the original playthrough. It’s a fun concept to encourage replayability by having new areas to explore on a second playthrough, but the idea felt like it wasn’t fully capitalized on.
As a fan of BioShock, I knew I would probably enjoy Twisted Tower, and in the end I did. It’s a fun first-person shooter with interesting characters and story backed by immaculate artistic and audio direction. Not all of its systems fully realize their potential, and some aspects of the presentation feel like they got more attention than others. But ultimately the output here from Atmos Games is impressive and definitely worth a playthrough if you are looking for something a bit more bite-sized while you wait for Judas to eventually release. Twisted Tower is available on PC via Steam. A review code was provided by the publisher.
