Twisted Tower: The gloomy carnival of November

After all, we don’t understand this holiday very well. Watching horror movies and getting drunk in carnival costumes is very entertaining, but what does Halloween have to do with it? After all, All Saints’ Day, like the Un Dia De Los Muertos, is the most spiritual holiday, as Ray Bradbury described it in his works. Opening the door to the otherworldly, caroling children seem to peer into the darkness of inexorably impending adulthood. The main thing is to beware of carnivals. There’s always something wrong with these clowns. A striking example of this statement is this year’s novelty, the Twisted Tower game.

This is probably the most Halloween game I’ve ever played. And Halloween, according to the precepts of the great psychobills, is there every day. Pumpkins with candles and colorful balloons are not a temporary event here, but a permanent style.

Citizen Twister

A pale young man with burning eyes named Vincent committed an important act in life. A skinny, unsuccessful medical student with a memory disorder proposed to his beloved Charlotte. Everything went well, she said yes. But romance quickly gives way to a plot twist in the best traditions of Italian plumbers: the main character’s chosen one is abducted by the mysterious Mr. Twister, who has nothing to do with the legendary band that recently lost a key member prematurely (we will always remember you, Valery Yozh Lysenko!).

Most reviews ignore the elephant in the room. The local Twister has been compared to Orson Welles, Andrew Rayone, and even Willy Wonka. In my opinion, this character refers most of all to Charles Foster Kane from the cult film “Citizen Kane”: an overbearing media owner, here is a film director who, at the end of his life, went to his own island of treasures and nightmares.

I really like the mystical approach to building this island. Gravity and space behave very non-Euclidean, hostile clowns and other animators are also difficult to rationalize. Rare NPCs also behave very inhumanly, rotating their heads 360 degrees and smoking a dozen cigarettes at a time.

And there is no scientific explanation for this. Fortunately. Because the explanation of resurrection chambers, bees and crows flying out of their hands, dead little girls and walking diving suits in the same Bioshock by a rare species of marine reptile looked unconvincing. The twisted Tower is an infernal circus in its purest form, without attempts at excessive rationalization.

It’s also a purely Burtonian story, like “The Corpse Bride” or “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Skinny, timid heroes against a horde of charming freaks.

Count Vincent

Appearances can be very deceptive. Visually and stylistically, Twisted Tower refers to a Bioshock, but in reality it is a boomer shooter with a pinch of survival horror. It’s not just the lack of slug magic. From the classics, there are level designs that you need to wander through in search of colorful keys and secrets, and a diverse arsenal that you need to juggle during shootouts, choosing the right barrel for the task. However, despite the publisher, the very 3D Realms, Vincent has never been a Duke of Nukem and is very fragile. This is where the horror part comes into play, which is perfectly balanced through the weapon change wheel. How exactly? It’s very simple! Unlike Turbo Overkill and other Dummies, the weapon selection wheel stops time here, like the inventory in the Resident Evil series. Or like Pipboy in three-dimensional Fallouts. The latter is also indicated by a characteristic bell when killing an opponent. However, there it meant gaining experience, which is not in this game.

The weapons here are not only pleasing with their angry toy style, but also mechanically interesting. I want to say a special thanks for the different types of cartridges for each gun. Since the time of the first Duma, I have not liked the idea of identical ammunition for a pistol and a machine gun. This is both unrealistic and harmful to gameplay. Fortunately, the local Thompson and Minigun do not get too much ammunition. Especially since the latter shoots gum or something.

The second feature is the variety of alternative fire modes. Here, it often replaces abilki, like the same plasmids. Time dilation can be used, but only when using the Thompson automaton. A gas grenade is an alternative shotgun fire, and a second pistol with a headshot allows you to get a handful of tickets to attractions – the local currency. I can’t say that this is a good solution, but it’s more convenient than memorizing the layout of a character’s superpowers in another game. Well, two pistols, two shotguns in the arsenal … really, with all the pretentiousness of the setting, didn’t you have enough imagination for a greater variety?

The ghosts of Bioshock still peek through the immersive scouring of all possible garbage dumps and a minimalistic economy. This has a positive effect on the pace of the game by properly landing it.

The opponents here are also well balanced under such a medium-tempo process. Not bullet sponges or cannon fodder. Dangerous enough not to be boring, but not stuffy. Most of all, this game resembles a questroom with real-life animators.

The circus is here forever

The main problem of misunderstanding the atmosphere of Halloween for our compatriots is that we are not afraid of clowns. How can Vyacheslav Polunin or Yuri Kuklachev harm us? What’s so creepy about a Plug and a Tarapunka? For the overseas soul, everything is different: a clown is not just a Steven King’s Pennywise or a serial killer named Pogo. Under the mask of a clown, there is a nomadic rascal who denies Christian morality with his animal dionysianism. Who knows where this circus came from and where it will go next when it leaves your town. What if he takes the naughty kids with him, or even the gawking girl?

It is this kind of gloomy carnival that Bradbury described in his work “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, and it is this form of subconscious savagery that Vincent will have to fight. Perhaps this maze is a funhouse, and all the monsters in it are reflections in crooked mirrors.