I like to keep a somewhat close eye on the indie game scene and I have several titles on my radar at the moment. However, sometimes a game pops up from nowhere and as soon as I see the title alone, I want to review it. Developer HAMMER95 and publisher Epopeia Games brings you Mullet MadJack, a game that blends numerous gernes and tropes to make a madcap mix of mayhem.

“MULLET MADJACK is a HIGH-OCTANE-ACTION SHOOTER that put you directly inside a CLASSIC ANIME. Pick your favorite weapon and reach the last floor; Beat your best time or try again. Haste makes waste… OF YOUR ENEMIES!”

I’m just going to cut right to the chase here, Mullet MadJack is awesome and I adored every second of the game. Just look at the trailer, the visuals look like something from a mid ’80s anime and the gameplay is pure FPS action that hardly ever stops to take a breath. There is a story here and it is about as plain and bog-standard as you can get… but that’s what makes it so damn great. Taken right out of Super Mario Bros., you have to save a princess… and that’s about it. Yeah, okay, so there is a bit more to it than that, but I’m trying to avoid spoilers here because the story is pretty damn great. But let me just say it has to do with streaming and killing robillionaires (robot billionaires).

The gameplay is fast, frantic and violent. Playing as the titular Mullet MadJack (he does sport an impressive mullet) you have to shoot and maim your way to the top of a skyscraper, one floor at a time. But there is a bit of a hook. You only have X seconds to live. The seconds until your death changes depending on what difficulty you play on. But, just for the sake of this review, let’s say you only have 10 seconds to live… that’s not a great deal of time, is it? Seeing as you have to make you way up dozens and dozens of floors of this skyscraper to save the princess. For every kill that you do make, you earn yourself a couple of very valuable seconds. So you need to keep killing, and killing fast, to keep yourself alive. If you waste those initial 10 seconds, then you die.

How you kill is pretty crucial too as more impressive kills will earn you more seconds. Yeah you can just shoot these robohenchmen as you would with any FPS. But a headshot will get you a slither of extra time, or maybe you could try shooting them in the balls. Try something a bit more excessive like kicking a robot into a pool of acid or an industrial fan. You can even build-up combo kills for extra seconds. Did you ever play the overlooked Bulletstorm that rewarded you for impressive and gruesome kills? Pretty much the same thing here. The more elaborate the kill, the more seconds added to your life.

Mullet MadJack isn’t just a frantic shooter though, there’s a Rogue-like element here too. This game is tough (on the right difficulty setting) and you will die… a lot. But you persevere and earn upgrades. You get a new upgrade for every floor that you clear, but they are not permanent and they get reset every ten floors. This may sound a tad unfair, but it does encourage you to try different builds, upgrades and weapons. Every tenth floor has a boss fight and picking the right upgrades for each boss adds a little strategy to the game.

As this is a Rogue-like, don’t expect an easy route to save the princess. If you die, you have to go back to the first floor of the group of ten that you are on. Example: if you die on floor 38, you go back to floor 31. You have to play and replay each floor to learn and memorise. Try out different tactics and perfect your run. This may sound tedious, but the floors are short and can be finished in just a few seconds… if you know what you are doing. This is where the gameplay loop of your very short lifespan comes into its element. You have to keep moving, and killing, and moving, and killing. Even stop and think for a second, and you’ve just wasted a second of your life.

Mullet MadJack is fast-paced and it forces you to think fast and play fast too. This keeps the gameplay moving and you’ll be thankful of those little rest bites that you get between floors when picking which upgrade to go for. Outside of the main story (and plenty of difficulty settings), you get a generous helping of other modes. There’s a boss rush mode and and endless mode that throws plenty of challenges at you as you play. You can even do a virtual unboxing. Remember back in the ’90s when you got a big box PC game crammed with goodies? Well, Mullet MadJack brings that back, virtually. Aside from being a great throwback to when games were much more than just a disc or digital code, the virtual unboxing even rewards you…

I already touched upon the visuals at the start of this review, but they are glorious. The presentation of Mullet MadJack is spot on. You feel like you are in an ’80s anime that is predicting what the future of the mid ’90s will be like. The cut scenes are exquisite with beautiful animation, the music is wonderfully ’80s synth and Mullet MadJack spurts out plenty of cheese one-liners (there’s even an upgrade to make him say even more). This game is awesome and very much like gaming used to be back in the “good old days”. Unashamedly violent, cheesy as hell and just pure fun from start to end. I can already tell that Mullet MadJack  is a game that will be on my hard drive for some time to come. Even though I have already played through it, twice, I’ll be back for more. It’s one of those titles that, every now and then, I’ll feel the urge to have a few hours on… and shoot some robots in the dick.