"You... you have come here, to find something... Something we have both desired for a long time. Your presense in this place, means you are willing to do what I ask of you. If you follow my requests, then I will take you to what it is you desire."
- The voice over the radio
Total Chaos
, as hard as it is to believe by its visuals, is a total conversion Game Mod for Doom II. Thanks to using GZDoom, the game is able to render things like 3D models and dynamic lighting. It also turns Doom's First-Person Shooter gameplay into a first-person Survival Horror, including gameplay elements like Item Crafting, Status Effects, a dynamic stamina system, hunger and radiation management, alongside a host of others devious mechanics. It takes heavy inspiration from horror classics like Silent Hill 2, Condemned: Criminal Origins, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. It was primarily created by wadaholic.
The game takes place in 1972 on a remote island known as Fort Oasis, an Abandoned Area composed of tall concrete structures that was once the residence of a mining community. You arrived on the island after receiving a distress signal, which culminated in you getting caught in a storm that left you shipwrecked on the aforementioned island, but you still received the distress signal through your (mostly) repaired boat's radio. It doesn't take long to realize that something had gone very wrong on the island before you arrived.
A demo was released on November 8, 2016, but the full game would be released nearly two years later on October 30, 2018. A lower-resolution Retro Edition of the game was released on December 18, 2018 specifically to run on older computers. On August 27, 2020, an extended Director's Cut version was released.
On May 6, 2022, the author of the mod revealed that they were creating a standalone version of the game in Unreal Engine 5. Despite having worked on it for a couple years, they believe that they may need a couple more years to finish it.
Total Chaos has examples of:
- Abandoned Area: Fort Oasis. The entire island is in ruins and infested with monsters by the time you arrive and the only person left on the island is the same person who talks to you over your radio. It starts to become a bit questionable when you discover several notes that detail how the island had been abandoned before it got infested with monsters 20 years later from when the game takes place.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Quite a few items sadly fall into this category for a number of reasons.
- The Super Shotgun. In terms of sheer damage and power, nothing in the game comes close; its powerful enough to one-shot pretty much every monster in the game and feels awesome to use. The problem? It's a huge resource hog, eating up two shells per shot, in a game where shotgun ammo is rarer then diamonds, and conservation is key to survival. Furthermore its overkill; with most enemies, barring the most rare Elite Mooks, already being felled by a single blast from the regular shotgun. Making it even more impratical, to acquire the weapon in the first place you need to engage in cruelty and lock yourself to the bad ending.
- Military Rations. They fill up your hunger bar in a single bite, but weigh very heavy, and will eat up inventory space like no ones business, making them overall impractical to carry.
- The Harpoon Gun, while a powerful weapon with reusable ammo, is held back by not just its weight, but the weight of the harpoons it uses for ammunition in a game where inventory management is one of the player's worst enemies. One harpoon already weighs as much as a pickaxe and does not stack with other harpoons. There's also the chance for the player to lose fired harpoons, whether it be shot out of the map or it just vanishes in thin air.
- Boring, but Practical:
- The melee class of weapons entirely. Ammo is far too precious to use often, so while far less glamorous, sticking to the reliable way of bashing monsters to death is the most practical.
- Want another way of saving ammo while being able to use ranged attacks? Pick up items like bricks and rocks and throw them at enemies. All throwables besides rocks break on impact, meaning the player can kill an enemy by repeatedly throwing the same rock at them over and over.
- Boulder Bludgeon: Many small items, like rocks and bricks, can be thrown at enemies to deal damage. Most of them will break on impact, but rocks can be reused upon hitting a wall or enemy, making it entirely possible to kill an enemy by repeatedly throwing the same rock at them.
- Breakable Weapons: Nearly every melee weapon has durability and must be repaired using certain materials, like wood glue and the handle and head of the tool in the case of the pickaxe or axe. The wrench is the only aversion as it is unbreakable.
- Bullet Dodges You: Trying to use a firearm on a glare has this outcome, as it freezes any bullet you fired at it before they can touch it. If you give it a moment after you stop shooting at it, the glare will send all the bullets you just fired back at you.
- Can't Move While Being Watched: Widows are one of the few enemies in the game that don't make a straight beeline towards the player. The widow will only move towards the player if their line of sight is broken by looking away or moving behind a wall. If the widow gets close enough to the player, they will explode and kill the player, which can be avoided if the player is fast enough to hide behind a wall.
- Carry a Big Stick: One of the weapons the player can use is a hammer. A small hammer. Because of its size, it doesn't use up a lot of the player's stamina when using it to attack and is very durable.
- Damage Over Time: The player has a "bleed" meter, which will continuously damage the player depending on how high it is. Many attacks in the game increase this meter, but the type of attack determines how much this meter will increase, with attacks that involve you getting punched increasing the meter by a little while getting bitten increases it by a lot. Bleeding won't completely kill you and can be healed by using items like blood clotters or bandages.
- Difficult, but Awesome: The weight skeleton armor increases your carry capacity by 60Lb and doesn't break. The reason for the latter is because the armor doesn't absorb any damage from enemies, meaning the player has to play defensively and dodge enemy attacks correctly to survive while wearing the armor, but it allows you to avoid the drawbacks that come from Critical Encumbrance Failure much slower.
- Elite Mook: Angered brutes. They act the same way as normal brutes, except they are wearing armor and using an axe and pipe to attack you, making them able to absorb and inflict more damage.
- Featureless Protagonist: The entire game takes place in first-person, and there is nothing to note about who you're playing as other than their hand model and that they never say a word. While you do learn about who you're playing as near the end of the game, you'll still have no idea what he looks like.
- The Ghost: The voice over the radio is never seen at any point in the game. Considering they're an aspect of Tyler, they probably look exactly like him... whatever he looks like anyway.
- Glass Cannon: Drifters. They have a very quick Dash Attack that can deal heavy damage to the player as a ranged attack, but they have the second lowest health in the game, low enough to the point where any weapon with access to a heavy attack can One-Hit Kill it.
- Harpoon Gun: A harpoon gun can be picked up as a weapon as early as Chapter 3. The weapon weighs a lot but fires silent and powerful shots, which can be reused after firing them at an enemy (assuming that they land in a place that you're able to reach), but they take up individual inventory spaces and weigh as much as a single pickaxe.
- Hooks and Crooks: The meat hook is one of the stronger melee weapons in the game, especially considering its primary attack can do damage in the 50s while most of the weapons you obtained until then only did damage in the 20s. The hook comes with the trade-off of not being very durable and can't be repaired if broken.
- Implacable Man: One of the biggest obstacles of New Game Plus is the hunter, an enemy that is an invincible Lightning Bruiser that can instantly kill you with a fast attack, but can only spawn after a 10-minute grace period in each chapter. If you manage to reach an area that it cannot get to, do not worry, it will teleport to and kill you. Only in the final level is the hunter finally killable, and it's still the most durable enemy in the whole game and still has its fast instant-kill attacks, though now it will actually retreat a bit when it takes enough damage.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: Much like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, the inventory system in Total Chaos runs on both a Grid Inventory and a weighted inventory. Having too heavy of an inventory hinders your stamina regeneration while being encumbered removes your ability to dodge, which is critical for surviving in combat. Adding onto this is how most of the items that are crucial for survival or required to progress tend to weigh a ton.
- Item Crafting: The "combine items" section of your inventory. You're going to be using it a lot in this game. More often than not, you'll be using it to repair weapons and cook food, but at some points you have to use it to make items to progress.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The player manages to reach the mines in the last chapter... but it's completely silent inside, depite being told several times by the voice that it's the source of the monsters on the island and would've been crawling with them. Then the lights go out.
- Mental Story: The entire game is this. It could also somewhat count as a Dying Dream since the game takes place moments before Tyler hangs himself in the bad ending, using the story to justify his death.
- Menu Time Lockout: Nope, completely averted here. If you want to organize your inventory, you'd better find a safe place to do so as enemies can and will attack you if you do it in the open.
- Molotov Cocktail: Given that the player managed to get their hands on the materials needed to make one, they're able to use these against enemies to deal damage. They're extremely useful at chokepoints as enemies will walk through the fire to reach you, but because of Total Chaos's graphics, staring directly at the fire produced from a Molotov will hurt your eyes because of how bright it is. One is even required for the player to progress, as it is needed to burn a growth covering the exit to a building, which is where the player learns the recipe for it. If the player follows through with this, they've essentially locked themselves into the bad ending as it represents Tyler cutting ties with the various people who knew him.
- Multiple Endings:
- Bad: By following the directions of the voice on the other end of the radio, the game will end on Tyler, knowing that even though he got his lung cancer treated, feeling that he has nothing left as Leda had left him, Fort Oasis had been abandoned and felt that the aforementioned treatment prolonged his misery, ends it all by hanging himself.
- Good: By finding alternate routes at certain points in the game, Tyler manages to avoid being Driven to Suicide and continues his life without cutting himself off from everyone and with the knowledge that Fort Oasis, a place he perceived as his paradise, has been abandoned.
- Nail 'Em: You can find a nail gun that can rapid nails at enemies, but the individual damage of each nail isn't very high, and reloading the gun uses up a massive supply of nails. It's also possible to craft a nail bomb that deals an insane amount of damage with a wide blast radius, but has a high chance of hurting you unless you take cover.
- New Game Plus: Not in the way that New Game Plus is usually accessed or works. After completing the game once, the credits has a code at the very end of it. Inputting that code on a keypad you found at the beginning of the game has you access New Game Plus, which the game warns you about before you continue. The main differences between the main game and New Game Plus are that the player starts out with a Super Shotgun, the fog becomes completely red, the player is no longer being guided by the Voice with an Internet Connection, enemy placements and types being changed and the player will get hunted by an unkillable enemy capable of one-shotting after a short grace period after starting each chapter.
- One-Hit Kill: There are a few enemies that have an attack that kills the player in a single hit. For just a few examples, there is the splitter, which does this as part of a Charged Attack and the hunter, who can always kill you in one hit but is only encounterable in New Game Plus.
- Organ Drops: Brutes can drop their flesh when killed. It can be eaten, providing a stamina boost along with causing radiation damage. Cooking it with a mobile gas cooker removes the radiation.
- Pipe Pain: The pipe is a melee weapon that, while not being durable or can do a lot of damage, can be used to perform heavy attacks with a quick charge-up.
- Pistol-Whipping: This can only be done with the Remington and double-barrel shotguns.
- Powerful Pick: Your first weapon in the game is a nearly broken pickaxe. While the weapon can't do a lot of damage, it comes with having high durability (once you've repaired it) and can do fast heavy attacks.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: The revolver is the second handgun you can acquire and is also much stronger than pistol but is offset by its ammunition. In both rarity and the amount it can carry.
- Schmuck Bait: Total Chaos loves this.
- At one point in Chapter 2, you're sneaking around a long leg nest. At the other side of the room from the exit, there is a switch that is placed underneath a bright light. If you go and pull that switch, then you've basically alerted every single long leg in the area. Though the lever does open up a cache you can enter by backtracking.
- As you're heading to the storage room in Chapter 2, you'll notice a graveyard you can access. Going towards it prompt the voice over the radio to tell you that there is nothing there for you to find. Turns out the voice was lying as there are several supplies and a new gun for you to pick up. What's also down there is an invisible enemy that you'll only be aware of after you take damage from it or you see a box randomly burst open. However, going through the graveyard is also necessary to getting the Good Ending, as it leads to a hidden note.
- Several boxes of ammo? At the end of a corridor? Right in front of a door? Seems perfectly safe. And no, the monster does not attack you from behind, it busts the door down.
- The tutorial for throwing items has you throw a rock at an inaccessible switch to open a room with a few supplies in it. Trying to do this same exact thing in New Game Plus will instead teleport you to an inescapable room filled with monsters.
- In New Game Plus, you can find shotgun shells lined in a row free for the taking. Picking them up will immediately spawn the hunter near you regardless of the 10-minute grace period still being active.
- Shear Menace: Scissors can be used as a melee weapon. It shouldn't be used as your primary weapon since it has low durability, but using it to attack does not use up a lot of stamina and deals more damage than most of your weapons at the point you obtain them.
- Shout-Out: In Chapter 2, the player can find "Remember the Cant" written on a wall behind a palette.
- Unreliable Narrator: The opening leads you to believe that this game takes place in 1972 and that Fort Oasis was abandoned long before your arrival. This starts being contradicted when you start finding letters that were not only written in the future, but depict a completely different story for the location's abandonment, which ends up being true by the end of the game. This is subtly Foreshadowed in the opening when the text shifts from being handwritten to being typed after Tyler arrives on the island, as this is where he stops basing the game's narrative on real events.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Whoever is speaking to you from the other side of your radio, you will never get to see who they are. You do learn they're another part of Tyler's subconsciousness.
- Wham Line: If the note the player finds at the end of the mines didn't make it apparent as to who they've been playing as the whole time, then what the voice of the radio says afterwards spells it out.Welcome home, Tyler.
- Wrench Whack: The wrench is the only melee weapon in the game to be unbreakable, but comes at the cost of being the lowest damage-dealing weapon in the game. You also need to find it in a secret area in order to use it as well.
