Horror Obsessive
Horror has quietly built out a whole subgenre around dead theme parks over the last several years, from the killer animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series to the unhinged mascot suit at the center of Willy’s Wonderland, and Twisted Tower looks like the moment that fixation finally gets a proper first-person shooter. Developer Atmos Games has set an August 18 release date for the game, backed by a new trailer that confirms the pitch clearly: an abandoned 1950s theme park, its fairy-tale mascots left alone with nothing but time.
The BioShock comparisons attached to this game are earned. BioShock’s real trick was never the plasmids, it was letting a collapsed utopia narrate its own downfall through the wreckage left behind, and Twisted Tower borrows that structure directly: a park built on a promise of childhood wonder, abandoned, telling players exactly what went wrong through its own crumbling architecture rather than through cutscenes.
A Castle Built Out of Five Twisted Areas
The tower itself, the park’s central castle, is climbed via dozens of unique routes spread across five distinct areas, according to the developer. Players fight through fairy-tale mascots, twisted puzzles, and deadly traps on the way up, uncovering the dark secrets of their own past as they go. It is a structure that owes as much to the immersive sim as it does to the shooter, letting players choose how they carve a path rather than funneling them down one corridor.
Whack-A-Mole Mallets and Skull-Popping Ray Guns
The gunplay leans hard into the theme park’s own toy chest for its weapon design, with the developer describing a slate of upgradeable weapons that includes a whack-a-mole mallet and what it calls a skull-popping ray gun. Players gain new abilities as they climb, racing toward a prize framed as both a cash reward and the hand of a childhood sweetheart named Charlotte, a fairy-tale ending bolted directly onto a body count.
The single detail that sells the tone here is a small one. The developer’s own pitch warns that the park’s mascots have been cooped up for years and “may be looking for a hug,” a line that plays as a joke on the page and lands very differently once a player is actually being chased down a hallway by something that has spent decades alone waiting for one.
A demo circulated last year before the release date was locked in, and while that build is no longer available, a new playtest signup is live on the game’s Steam page for anyone who wants a look before August 18. For a subgenre that has mostly lived in short indie horror games and cheap streaming movies, a fully fledged shooter built around the same rotten nostalgia is worth paying attention to.
Quick Takes
- Twisted Tower is a first-person horror shooter developed by Atmos Games and published by 3D Realms.
- The game is set for release on August 18, 2026, following a new trailer reveal.
- The story is set in an abandoned 1950s theme park called Twisted Tower, populated by fairy-tale mascots.
- Weapons include a whack-a-mole mallet and a skull-popping ray gun, among other upgradeable tools.
- A playtest signup is currently available on the game’s Steam store page.
