REVIEW – Total Chaos is the kind of survival horror that at first glance looks like a lost PS2-era nightmare mashed together with a Doom mod, then suddenly you realize you are hunched over with an overstuffed backpack and shredded nerves, stumbling through the rotting corridors of Fort Oasis. What started life as a Doom II cult mod has grown into a full-fledged modern horror game, where old-school movement, heavy-hitting melee combat, bare-bones survival systems and vicious sound design keep your nerves tight from start to finish. It is far from flawless and sometimes feels downright cheap, but it is that classic 8-out-of-10 experience that is hard to put down and even harder to get out of your head.

The story behind Total Chaos already tells you a lot about what you are getting into: it began as a Doom II total conversion that for years was talked about as one of the bleakest fan projects around, then eventually evolved into a standalone game published by Apogee on PC and consoles. The plot is set in the 1970s, with you in the shoes of a coast guard type who gets tossed by a storm onto the abandoned island of Fort Oasis, a once-busy coal mining colony now reduced to a ghost of its former self. Among the ruins of factories, mine shafts and apartment blocks, something unnatural has started to fester, while a voice on the radio guides you, or maybe misleads you, deeper and deeper into the island.

From Mod To Full-Fledged Nightmare

One of the most interesting things about Total Chaos is that even though its roots reach deep into classic Doom modding, the end result feels surprisingly unified and self-contained as a horror game. The total conversion DNA is still there: every texture, model, monster and level is custom, and from Doom II practically only the spirit remains, that late-90s, early-2000s FPS vibe that is both familiar and uncomfortably off. Fort Oasis comes together like a never-released early survival horror that someone dug out of a time capsule, only this time it is dressed up with modern lighting, fog, particle effects and properly disgusting monster designs that still work today.

The game is split into several interconnected chapters that slowly drag you down into the guts of the island: at first you only see the shore, the docks and a few rundown shacks, then the industrial zone opens up, along with the underground shafts, sewer systems and dark forests. The layout is mostly semi-open: tight corridors lead into larger hub-like areas you loop back to, where you have to piece together keys, codes and shortcuts while constantly listening for the next distant clank or guttural growl. It all feels like a hand-crafted, maze-like action adventure with a survival horror wrapped around it.

Your first run can easily stretch to 15–20 hours, especially if you like checking every corner and do not mind doubling back to older areas for a newly unlocked door or item. Some chapters hit a near-perfect rhythm, while others, especially the longer industrial stretches, test your patience more, but overall the game is very good at deciding when to let you breathe a bit and when to tighten the noose again.

After The Calm Prologue, Hell Breaks Loose

The opening is almost disarmingly calm: you bob around in a tiny boat on stormy seas, following a distress signal on the radio, then slowly pick your way through the crumbling structures along the shoreline. For a few minutes it feels like this might be a moody, slow-burn narrative piece where story matters more than action. Then a side steel door swings open, the darkness swallows you, and suddenly you are in rusted corridors where something scratches behind the walls, wet muck drips from the ceiling, and the first twisted creature launches into your face hard enough to make you physically push your chair back.

Total Chaos very quickly rips off the “relaxing walk” mask and makes it clear this is a brutal, action-heavy survival horror. The island is crawling with mangled, meat-covered nightmares, warped bodies lined with teeth and claws that either sprint at you screaming or stalk you quietly in the dark, only revealing themselves at the last possible second. The arsenal matches that intensity: pipes, wrenches, axes, improvised cutting and stabbing tools, later firearms, molotovs, traps and their crafted variants.

As you push deeper into Fort Oasis, your inventory slowly becomes your main enemy. The carry limit is a constant threat: cans of food, meds, scrap, ammo, weapon heads and bandages pile up in your pack, and every single item forces you to decide whether it is worth the hit to your movement speed. On top of that, hunger, bleeding, stamina and health bars keep you under pressure, so looting never becomes mindless routine – resource management is just as much a source of tension as whatever is screaming around the next corner.

Monsters That Make You Think Twice About The Next Corner

One of Total Chaos’ strongest pillars is its monster lineup and the way the game actually uses those creatures. You rarely run into pure “filler” enemies: almost every type gets its own entrance, its own rules and a specific weakness. The slow, fleshy Splitter, with a giant mouth covering half its body, opens up like a walking trash bag, and if you toss a hammer or brick into it at the right time, you can stun it for a few precious seconds. Brutes are simpler, shambling two-legged rage machines that creep up behind you, then go wild with trash-throwing and heavy swings once they are in range.

There are also enemies that are practically impossible to kill outright, where the smarter play is to avoid, slow or outmaneuver them with the help of the environment. Glares and Widows, for example, are built around line of sight and light, and each run-in with them plays out like its own suffocating mini set piece. The game rarely spells everything out: sometimes graffiti, other times a quick on-screen tip nudges you in the right direction, but most of the time you have to figure out for yourself how to survive that first encounter with a new monstrosity.

Total Chaos keeps leaning on its creatures in a way that never really lets you feel safe. You never know whether the next turn hides a “simple” nuisance or a brilliantly staged nightmare that will make you rip your headphones off on instinct. The game is careful not to lean on the same trick three times in a row – instead it sprinkles in new threats more sparingly but with much greater impact, and it would be a shame to spoil the best ones.

When The Sound Design Gets Under Your Skin

The real star of Total Chaos is not the silent protagonist, it is the audio. It is rare to see a horror game that leans this aggressively on sound alone to get under your skin. Echoing drips in the sewers, distant thuds of something massive moving behind a wall, metal scraping, long, distorted screams that only show up every now and then – it is all arranged so that you almost never get true silence. Even the record player that serves as your save point plays what should be a comforting, worn-out tune, but there is something subtly off in it, like the record itself is warping as you descend deeper into the island’s madness.

The few voiced characters are surprisingly strong as well: the radio “helper” is soothing and ominous at the same time, just ambiguous enough that you are never fully sure whether they actually have your best interests at heart. The main character never speaks, but his breathing, pain sounds, startled reactions and the scattered tape recordings you find still manage to give him some presence. Visually the game also punches above what you would expect from something that started as a mod: there is no jumping or ladder climbing, which makes movement feel even more like navigating a dense dungeon, but the fog, lighting, grimy textures and persistently filthy, rusty environments create a very tangible, unified mood.

The horror slowly shifts from plain industrial decay into full-on body horror and pulsating, meat-covered, surreal spaces. This is not exactly new ground for the genre, but the execution is sharp, and it constantly maintains the sense that Fort Oasis is not only physically falling apart, it is mentally collapsing too, with the line between reality and hallucination getting thinner by the minute.

A Game That Beats You Up, Yet You Cannot Walk Away

From a gameplay perspective, Total Chaos clearly enjoys putting you through the wringer, though usually still on the tolerable side of cruel. The basics of melee combat feel solid: hits land with a real sense of impact, the weapons feel distinct, and both found and crafted tools scale up nicely as you go. At the same time, hit detection and movement can feel a bit stiff here and there, and you can feel the older skeleton underneath the modern coat of paint. Some fights drag on to the point of frustration, especially if inventory decisions leave you stuck in a tough encounter with the wrong weapon, too few healing items or an empty magazine.

In the midgame the experience really hits its stride: smart enemy placement, well-timed “unkillable” threats that force you into cat-and-mouse chases, and cleverly layered, looping areas keep you on edge. In the last couple of chapters the pacing eases off a bit, and the game starts remixing more of the tricks you already know, but the overall quality never falls off a cliff. The New Game+ mode that made the original mod version so beloved is not in at launch here, but the devs say it will arrive as a post-release update, which should add a lot to replay value.

The story, meanwhile, leans hard on classic survival horror building blocks: guilt, buried trauma, an unreliable sense of what is real and what is just a broken mind trying to cope. If you have played a lot of games in this space, several twists will feel familiar, and it is easy to raise an eyebrow when the “did we ever really have a chance” type of beats show up. Still, the narrative works, partly because the environmental storytelling, notes and visual cues are stronger than the explicit dialogue. And just before the credits roll, Akira Yamaoka’s dark, melancholic closing track lands as a perfectly uneasy final note on this long, grim nightmare.

-Gergely Herpai “BadSector”-

Developer: Trigger Happy Interactive
Publisher: Apogee Entertainment
Genre: Survival horror, first-person, maze-like action adventure
Release date: November 20, 2025