Game Review: Circus of TimTim (Xbox Series X)

If you’ve played one of these games, you’ve played a hundred of them, and Circus of TimTim does nothing to change up the stale gameplay formula that makes up the majority of stealth horror survival games.

You know how this goes. Hide and sneak from baddies who will chase after you should they detect your presence. Some games can nail this idea, turning the experience into a heart-racing, scare-filled nightmare. Others, like Mascot Bro Studio’s Circus of TimTim have nothing but obnoxious attempts at jump scares to offer. Some of which are really embarrassing.

So, who is TimTim? I don’t know, but their circus is out of commission following ‘dark’ incidents and having been long abandoned and considered extremely haunted, two teenagers have decided to sneak in and explore. One of which, who the player controls, finds themselves trapped in the haunted carnival being hunted by grotesque mascots.

There is a way out though, and players will have to collect tickets (randomly placed around the carnival) to escape. These can be found using a detector device that beeps when the player is in the vicinity of a ticket, but be warned, the monsters of this carnival can hear it too.

Find all the tickets, avoid being caught, and escape. Then do it all over again in Nightmare mode. Although it’s hard to believe anyone would want to play through this game twice.

It’s not that it’s a bad game, per se. It’s competently made, it looks decent, it sounds even better, and gameplay is solid enough. The problem is that this type of game has been done to death and there is no attempt to freshen things up in the slightest. From the moment it starts, it’s uninteresting, and it just gets worse from there. While the initial entry into the circus, with the whimsical music, does create some atmosphere and dread, it quickly disappears in favour of the jump scare specials – loud noises and ‘creepy’ things covering the screen suddenly.

It’s so uninspired and becomes quite annoying after a while. Combine that with the frustration that comes from having to use a detector that can be really finicky, enemies that you can’t fight back against, and the repetition of doing it over and over again, and it should be clear to everyone that this is one circus no-one should bother visiting.