Mullet Madjack Review

When Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital unleashed Hotline Miami on an unsuspecting gaming public more than 10 years ago, it’s unlikely that either the developer or publisher could’ve predicted the impact that the title would have on the indie development scene. But here we are 12 years later, and the influence of Hotline Miami‘s frantic “death mazes” and instant-kill difficulty is still reverberating throughout the industry, showing up in the most surprising of places through the ever-inventive genre-mixing and innovation ubiquitous with indie game development.

Enter Mullet Madjack. Making its initial debut at the fall Steam Next Fest in 2023, Mullet Madjack merged two of the most popular hyperviolent action subgenres among indie developers — the Hotline Miami-like twin-stick shooter and the Boomer/Movement shooter — to deliver a love letter to 90s anime, the golden era of first-person shooters, and neon-soaked retrofuturist 1980s cyberpunk aesthetics. The promise of the game’s initial demo was enough to whet the appetite of fans of any or all of those above, but the final product proves that Mullet Madjack is more than just the sum of its parts.

Moderate, Moderator

As soon as players boot up Mullet Madjack, the game wastes no time in getting straight to the heart of its bonkers premise. The year is 2090, and a ruling class of “Robillionaires”, sentient machines hell-bent on subjugating and enslaving humanity like a group of technocratic CEOs, keep the rest of the population in line with a non-stop stream of stimulation via online entertainment and consumerism. In this dystopian cyberpunk future, humans need a continual supply of dopamine lest they die from Internet withdrawal (obviously a clever poke at our current always-online culture). When Mullet Mad Jack gets approached to become a Moderator, Running Man-like athletes who kill for sport and entertainment, it sets the player off on a frantic killing spree to rescue a damsel in distress.

That Moderator premise is what acts as the foundation for Mullet Madjack‘s gameplay loop, with players needing to kill enemies in order to refill a continually dwindling clock. If your 10 seconds run out, you die, but it’s just as easy to keep the meter running by working your way through the game’s tight corridors, carving a path of destruction and death as you progress. Like similar games (particularly, Post Void), the player has an ever-present smartphone on screen that displays the countdown timer and reminds them of their mortality, with things only taking a second to breathe if the player is a mere few seconds away from death. If you slow down, if you hesitate, you fail. Thankfully, the game trains you to play at a pace that would make Ultrakill proud.

Breaking Necks at Breakneck Speed

The Ultrakill comparison is an apt one for Mullet Madjack, as the two share quite a lot in common. Where Madjack needs a continual shot of dopamine in order to keep moving and progress to the next floor, Ultrakill‘s V1 needs the blood of enemies to act as its fuel to keep going. Both games use the “push-forward” momentum-based combat style of games like 2016’s Doom reboot to engender a sense of propulsion and urgency, conditioning the player to never stop moving and try to make it to the end of a level as fast as possible.

Depending on the level of difficulty that players select at the outset, killing enemies in Mullet Madjack will either restore 3 seconds or 1 second to the clock, with higher difficulty options truly testing players’ understanding of the level layouts of each floor and challenging them to move and aim as fast as possible. Playing the title on a PC with a mouse and keyboard affords a level of control that makes playing on the normal difficulty setting an accessible experience, but the higher difficulties are almost impossible without the precision aiming made possible with a mouse and keyboard. That said, on its normal difficulty, Mullet Madjack is a near-perfect experience on the Steam Deck that runs flawlessly and plays great, and its level-based structure and roguelike elements make it ideal for quick pick-up and play sessions.

Hotline Miami Meets Johnny Mnemonic

In terms of its structure, Mullet Madjack places the player into a massive 100-floor skyscraper, with every 10 floors culminating in a boss and signaling the beginning of the next Chapter. You can go back and replay any previously completed chapter at any point, but dying before defeating the boss at the end of a chapter places players right back on the floor they began on. But with levels sometimes lasting less than a minute, no setback is ever anything more than momentary. Mullet Madjack‘s Chapters, each of which consists of 10 bite-sized levels, align perfectly with the breakneck pace of the gameplay.

Aside from the expected firearms that players have access to in an FPS, Madjack also has quite a few melee options at his disposal. Our hero has a useful slide/dash move that can knock enemies into environmental hazards (to hilarious effect and with a bonus to your time), but it’s the katana that truly shines. Similar to Hotline Miami, the guns in Mullet Madjack end up taking a backseat to the overall power, precision, and speed of the game’s melee weapons, and the bonuses that players can rack up for sticking with melee weapons make it the ideal choice for anyone hoping to break world records for level times.

Movement/Boomer Shooter Action with a Roguelike Twist

One of the more unexpected things from my time with Mullet Madjack was the game’s incorporation of an incredibly well-balanced and robust roguelike progression in between stages. After completing one floor of a Chapter, players are greeted by their handler. These brief respites from the frantic action give players the choice between one of three randomized upgrades. Some of these are fairly standard — new weapons, bonuses to time with every kill, an improved dash, etc. — but others have the potential to be game-changing depending on your playstyle. As mentioned previously, the katana is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and some of the modifiers that players unlock between stages make pure-melee playthroughs not only possible but optimal.

Rather than include roguelike progression as an afterthought on top of all the other genre and game influences that Mullet Madjack pulls from, the game actually puts some real thought into its progression path and balance. You never feel underpowered or overpowered in Mullet Madjack. Instead, the game does a great job of fulfilling the power fantasy inherent in the best movement/boomer shooters while always providing a fair and adequate challenge.

Bottom Line

If there’s one thing preventing Mullet Madjack from reaching perfection, it’s the game’s relatively short length. Mullet Madjack‘s hyper-violence and rapid-fire pacing often result in individual stages lasting less than 60 seconds, meaning players can complete an entire Chapter in less than 10 minutes. And with only 10 Chapters to speak of, completing the game can be a fairly short experience for players with even a passing skill in movement/boomer shooters. That said, Mullet Madjack‘s shorter length makes it tantamount to a rollercoaster or other thrill ride, giving you that satisfying burst of dopamine and adrenaline without ever wearing out its welcome.

Mullet Madjack has some very clear influences at play in its visuals, aesthetic, plot, and gameplay, but it blends all those various inspirations so skillfully that it never comes off as derivative. On the contrary, Mullet Madjack feels like an evolutionary step in independent action games, blending the best elements of some of the greatest titles in the genre into a new, cohesive whole that is uniquely its own.

Rating: 9 out of 10

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Mullet Madjack key art.