For five years, a developer named Thomas Brush has been working on a BioShock-inspired horror shooter called Twisted Tower. Now he and a small team of other devs have finally released that game – albeit with pretty low expectations for its success. But Twisted Tower is well on its way to getting a coveted "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam, and even Brush himself can hardly believe it.
"So Steam has this rule (it's actually a really good rule) that if you hit 500 reviews at 95% you get a big fat gold star called 'Overwhelmingly Positive,'" Brush says on Twitter. "And when you get that gold star, you get to tell your friends you did it. Ofcourse, to be honest, I would have been okay with Mostly Positive. That's how much I doubted this project. To see Twisted Tower approaching that Overwhelmingly Positive dream that I thought was completely out of reach is pretty wild."
As it stands, Twisted Tower has 421 Steam reviews, and 95% of them are positive. If that ratio holds for 79 more reviews, that "gold star" is in sight. And the trends have been promising. Just yesterday, the game had 166 reviews, with 95% of them being positive. "I truly expected my game to flop," Brush tweeted at the time. "Months ago my goal was just to not release something embarrassing… and now I’m thinking… maybe just maybe…. It’s maybe good!!!!"
In a video celebrating the launch, Brush describes Twisted Tower as "a love letter to Bioshock and Willy Wonka and mascot horror. It's basically like Willy Wonka in a creepy Disney World kind of game." The creepier bits of BioShock's atmosphere are clearly present, though it does appear that this game is a little heavier on the action than its inspiration.
But hey, 421 very positive reviews can't be wrong, right? If you're holding out for that Overwhelmingly Positive badge before trying Twisted Tower for yourself, it doesn't seem like you'll have to wait very long.
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