Total Chaos
Released: 11/20/2025
Score Breakdown
79.2
Critic Average
19 reviews
88
Steam User Score
1,135 reviews
63
Metacritic User Score
59 reviews
Disparity Breakdown
79 vs 88
79 vs 63
Average of both sources
Review Disparities
Each point represents a critic review. Hover for details. Positive = critic higher than users. Negative = critic lower.
1/10/2026
Launch Window“Total Chaos is a survival horror game that shines with its old-fashioned, rust-hued atmosphere, but stumbles with repetitive maze design and a slow-burning narrative, where the biggest struggle is maintaining sanity amidst broken switches and tools.”
74
74/100
1/5/2026
Launch Window“Total Chaos is a gripping survival horror that plays like Doom but feels like the offspring of Silent Hill’s eerie landscapes and Resident Evil’s tense, confined settings. Its ability to tell most of its roughly 20-hour story mostly through gameplay alone is a rare feat, especially given its modest price tag. It’s easily one of the most unique experiences that 2025 has to offer.”
80
80/100
1/2/2026
Launch Window“Total Chaos is a survival horror that treats fear as a constant condition, rejecting immediate shock and spectacle in favor of atmosphere, silence, and psychological tension. The game keeps the player in a permanent state of alert through oppressive environments, empty spaces, and distant, ambiguous sounds, making subtraction its primary expressive tool. Its identity emerges most clearly through its aesthetic, which reworks a retro visual language into something grimy and corroded: visual distortion, grain, and decay turn Fort Oasis into a hostile, decomposing place, closer to a diseased organism than a simple setting. This sense of alienation carries over into the gameplay, deliberately slow and punitive, built around limited resources, heavy combat, and constant choices between confronting danger or avoiding it. Despite some technical roughness and a deliberately stretched pace that may divide players, Total Chaos stands out for the coherence of its vision and for an audiovisual presentation with strong impact, supported by fragmented and ambiguous environmental storytelling. It is not a game designed to appeal to everyone, but it leaves a lasting impression on those who seek a more introspective, oppressive form of horror, focused on atmosphere rather than spectacle.”
75
75/100
12/24/2025
Launch Window“Total Chaos is not just a mod that became a full experience; it’s a horror survival that knows how to have an atmospheric experience.”
100
100/100
12/16/2025
Launch Window“"Total Chaos" is a psychological indie horror that trades jump scares for deep atmosphere, exploring themes of madness and isolation. Despite some technical flaws, it delivers a profoundly unsettling experience, even for non-horror fans.”
85
85/100
70
70/100
12/14/2025
Launch Window“However, despite its imperfections, Total Chaos can get under your skin and stay there. It's not flashy, it's not polished, but it's a horror game that makes you feel and tremble, question and survive.”
75
75/100
12/11/2025
Launch Window“Fort Oasis is a decaying nightmare where reality crumbles and waiting only for you. Come and be pleasantly scared and fight for survival.”
80
80/100
12/7/2025
Launch Window“Total Chaos is purposely imperfect horror. And that is exactly why the game is a unique and memorable experience.”
90
90/100
12/4/2025
Launch Window“When you put all of Total Chaos' myriad of gameplay elements together, a lot of the fear factor quickly disappears, giving way to something more akin to Doom than to survival horror. There's definitely an audience for this game, but it's more of a survival horror-adjacent experience. It has elements of the survival horror genre, but it leans too hard into the Doom formula. This combination creates a fun concept that needs editing to be a cohesive product. $25 is a fair price tag for what Total Chaos offers, but it may make some hesitate if they don't know what they're getting into.”
60
60/100
12/3/2025
Launch Window“Total Chaos is a rough, visceral survival horror game aimed squarely at fans of the genre, preferring to be edgy and punishing rather than watering down the tension in the name of accessibility. The writing doesn't revolutionize the genre, and some interface and structure choices can be frustrating, but the combination of atmosphere, level design, and sound design creates an experience that leaves a lasting impression, especially for those who love old-school horror. Considering its origins as a mod and the scope of the project, the result is a more than successful title that carves out its own space in the horror landscape of 2025. In essence, compared to other recent examples, it represents the most “old school” and brutal link in the chain: less polished, less narratively ambitious, but valuable for those looking for a survival game that truly brings back the “pure fear” of limited resources, heavy blows, hostile maps, and enemies.”
80
80/100
12/2/2025
Launch Window“In Total Chaos, we are faced with a captivating story, fascinating world-building, engaging gameplay, and excellent atmosphere. The game's construction system has an exemplary depth that will become your only companion and sympathizer in the isolated world of this work, and the sound design is also a great complement to the horror elements”
80
80/100
12/2/2025
Launch Window“Fans of tense melee terror - or old-school DOOM games in general - shouldn't hesitate to check out Total Chaos this holiday season.”
85
85/100
11/27/2025
Launch Window“Total Chaos brings enough to the table to be worth trying, despite minor issues that may affect your enjoyment depending on how much they matter to you. For the most part, though, it's a challenging survival horror experience that's well-designed and consistently focused on building fear and tension.”
70
70/100
11/25/2025
Launch Window“The extreme lengths it takes to make the player feel hopeless may be too much for the casual player, so it's definitely not a game that could be recommended to everyone.”
75
75/100
11/24/2025
Launch Window“Total Chaos is rough, strange, and stubborn in all the right ways.It's the kind of horror game that lingers because it feels genuinely lived-in, and If you're willing to meet it on its own terms, it gets under your skin and stays there.”
80
80/100
11/20/2025
Launch Window“Total Chaos' remake can be orthodox to a fault, but it's a polished evolution of a fascinating blend of survival horror and shooter that never lets off the gas.”
85
85/100
11/20/2025
Launch Window“Originally an ambitious Doom II mod, Total Chaos is an action-heavy survival horror gem.”
80
80/100
11/20/2025
Launch Window“It’s not often we see such a thematic change between games like the move from Turbo Overkill to Total Chaos, but I think Trigger Happy Interactive has built something quite fun with this game. It might not always be consistent, but when Total Chaos hits, it hits like a sledgehammer crushing a twisted figment of our warping sanity.”
80
80/100
