Turbo Overkill, the previous game from one-person studio Trigger Happy, was a gloriously unsubtle shooter blaring with defiance and energy. But the follow up, Total Chaos, seems to be a very different beast. This is a psychological horror that involves creeping around corridors to find keys to unlock doors, while panicking internally about what’s about to jump out at you next. It has survival gauges to keep an eye on, and there’s a crafting system that lets you pick up wooden sticks and glue hammer heads to them, or make bandages from alcohol and tape you find. This is a game about surviving in an oppressive place, a game of atmosphere and strangeness. On the surface, the two games seem nothing alike.
Total ChaosDeveloper: Trigger Happy InteractivePublisher: Apogee EntertainmentAvailability: 2025Download the demo on: Steam
Yet underneath that you can absolutely feel the similarities. It’s a first-person game and there’s a pace to its movement that feels quietly blistering, even as you’re edging around corridors. You forwards with a press of the Dash key, and there’s a snap to thumping things with hammers, or stabbing them frantically with scissors (it’s an eclectic arsenal) that feels exhilarating. There’s also the suggestion of guns later in the demo, and if Turbo Overkill proved anything, it’s that developer Trigger Happy Interactive knows how to make guns. Plus, there’s a bit of madness to it – and it’s in the madness where Total Chaos really starts to stand out.
The set-up here is you’re a person with a boat who sailed into a storm to heed a distress call, only to experience something odd at sea and wake up an amount of time later in a shadowy place called Fort Oasis, a crumbling compound where something untoward seems to have gone on. Heavy steel doors and barred rooms hide letters and journals, which in turn hint towards human experimentation. Clearly nothing good happened here. And then you start to see things.