Avinash Rohra I went into Glamour Riot expecting something weird, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the absolute chaos that unfolded. This is a game where you play as a beauty pageant contestant who spends more time throwing punches backstage than actually performing on stage and honestly, that pretty much sums up the entire experience.
The Madness Behind the Curtain
The premise is genuinely hilarious and completely unhinged. You’re competing in beauty contests, but between each round, you’re literally beating the crap out of your fellow contestants with baseball bats, crowbars, flower bouquets, and whatever else you can get your hands on. The weapon system is particularly interesting each item has limited uses before breaking, forcing you to constantly scavenge for new tools of destruction during the mayhem.
There’s even this twisted mechanic where you can knock someone out, steal their identity with a creepy rubber mask, and then go on stage to deliberately bomb their performance. It’s the kind of dark humor that shouldn’t work but somehow does, creating moments where you’re cackling at the sheer absurdity of sabotaging a rival’s catwalk routine after having just brained them with a baseball bat backstage.
The competitions themselves are randomly generated, which keeps things from feeling completely repetitive in the short term. Each pageant features different opponents with varying difficulty levels, and the unpredictable nature means you never know if you’ll face a pushover or someone who’ll knock you out cold before you even reach the stage.
Mirror, Mirror: Crafting Chaos in Couture
What actually works really well arguably the game’s strongest feature is the character customization system. I spent way too much time tweaking every little detail of my model, from major elements like body proportions and facial structure to tiny details like freckles, scars, and beauty marks. The level of customization is genuinely impressive for an indie title, rivaling much larger productions in terms of depth and variety.
This extensive customization creates a weird emotional attachment to your character, making the backstage violence feel more personal and invested. When someone knocks out your carefully crafted contestant, it genuinely stings a bit which makes the revenge all the sweeter when you get them back with a crowbar to the head.
The visual design of the models is solid overall, creating this amusing contrast between their glamorous runway appearances and the slapstick violence they engage in moments later. The game includes an “Armour Mode” for streaming purposes, though the physics system remains prominently featured regardless of the setting.
Glitches in the Glamour: When Beauty Breaks
But here’s where things fall apart completely: the actual gameplay is an absolute mess. The fighting feels completely random and unpredictable hitboxes seem to exist in their own dimension, collision detection is laughably inconsistent, and player skill matters way less than just mashing buttons and hoping for the best. I found myself getting genuinely frustrated more often than laughing, especially during longer sessions where the repetitive, broken combat really starts to wear thin.
The bugs are everywhere and range from minor annoyances to game-breaking problems. Weapons regularly fall through floors and disappear, characters clip through stairs and walls, the UI is clunky and unresponsive, and the menu system forces you to cycle through all options instead of allowing direct navigation. It feels like an early access game that needed at least another year of development before seeing the light of day.
The upgrade system is particularly cruel and poorly designed. Failed equipment upgrades don’t just waste your resources they destroy the gear entirely, creating frustration rather than meaningful risk-reward mechanics. This punitive system adds stress and annoyance rather than strategic depth to the experience.
There are also some completely baffling design choices, like horseback riding segments that feel entirely random and disconnected from the main game. The controls for these sections are terrible, making them feel like they were added just to pad out the content without any consideration for how they fit into the overall experience.
Entertainment Value and Replayability
Despite all its technical shortcomings, there’s something weirdly addictive about the whole experience. The competitions being randomly generated means each round feels somewhat different, and managing your fame, money, and equipment creates this odd progression loop that kept me coming back for more punishment.
The game has expanded beyond just the basic pageant format with recent updates adding features like gym livestreaming, photo shoot jobs, and a Lucky Shop system. These additions provide some variety and different ways to earn money and fame, though they don’t address the fundamental combat issues that plague the core experience.
Glamour Riot works best in short bursts or as a party game where you can laugh at the absurdity with friends. It’s definitely prime streaming material the kind of janky weirdness that makes for great reaction content and generates memorable moments through pure chaos rather than polished gameplay. The novelty factor carries it surprisingly far, offering an experience unlike anything else in gaming.
Pros:
- Unique concept that you won’t find anywhere else in gaming
- Decent character customization system with impressive depth and detail
- Great for streaming and social play – generates hilarious moments and reactions
- Dark humor that actually works – the absurd premise is genuinely entertaining
Cons:
- Broken combat mechanics with terrible hitboxes and random outcomes
- Numerous technical bugs affecting core gameplay and user experience
- Repetitive gameplay loop that becomes tedious during longer sessions
- Punitive upgrade system that destroys equipment on failure
- Poor UI design and navigation systems throughout
- Feels unfinished – more like a prototype than a complete game
Final Verdict
Score: 3/5
Glamour Riot earns points for pure originality, robust customization, and entertainment value, but loses them just as quickly for being a buggy, unfinished mess. The game represents a fascinating experiment in game design a beautiful disaster that’s impossible to ignore, offering moments of genuine hilarity wrapped in frustratingly broken mechanics.
It’s worth checking out if you’re looking for something completely different and don’t mind dealing with janky controls and technical issues, but most players will probably bounce off pretty quickly once the novelty wears off. For streamers and players who enjoy over-the-top, unpolished experiences, Glamour Riot delivers memorable moments of absurd fun that you’ll be talking about long after you stop playing. However, anyone seeking a refined, mechanically sound gaming experience should look elsewhere this is chaos gaming at its most pure, for better and worse.
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