This Doom 2 mod was relaunched into a solid survival horror title

Total Chaos is an interesting game that started life as a Doom 2 mod back in 2018 before developer Trigger Happy Interactive revisited the title for a full release. The final game is a classic survival horror title with a huge emphasis on resource management. Total Chaos sets up a horrifying scenario that plays out over the course of nine hours, an abandoned island stuffed with makeshift weapons, eerie secrets, and alarming monsters.

I play a hapless ship captain who finds themselves lost in a storm, with waves relentlessly battering my small boat. I wash up on the shores of Fort Oasis, a classically creepy environment — stone tunnels, an ancient electrical system, waterlogged corpses rising from the sea. These are all cliches for a reason; they’re effective enough to stir up interest. Then, after making my way past the first few obstacles, a mysterious voice beckons me deeper.

My ally on the other side of the radio keeps urging me forward, but this is the survival horror game where I find the journey to be much more satisfying than the destination of figuring out the fate of Fort Oasis. I start with a handy pickaxe, and I feel invincible as I smash through obstacles and beat back foes. My bravado quickly dissipated when that pickaxe broke while I was underground, stuck in a labyrinth with a big, grey-skinned man who aggressively shot spines at me.

The enemies in Total Chaos are quite formidable, with long, writhing limbs that they can use as flails, and gaping jaws that serve as a projectile launcher. They’re largely bipedal and mostly humanoid, suggesting that they are the former inhabitants of the island, along with their dogs and a few unusually shaped monstrosities. I have four important tools for dealing with them: attack, heavy attack, parry, and dash. That’s a fairly straight-forward toolset that’s easy to pick up, but it's further enhanced with the game’s crafting and combos. I can dash into a pack of enemies, stun them, swing a hammer around to clear them, then spin around and throw a repurposed piece of trash to stagger the next group of bad guys.