Mayhem In Single Valley Review: Teenage Apocalypse

This Mayhem In Single Valley review is a coming of age story, one that we call experience in our adolescent years; preparing for college, helping your parents out with your younger siblings, saving the town from psychotic animals and toxic dumps.

Yes, we’ve all been there, right? If this doesn’t apply to you, perhaps you could try this new life simulator from Fluxscopic and tinyBuild? But this isn’t a real-life scenario, silly, but the above is a pretty accurate description of the events.

We don’t go too much into the details, but you play Jack – a budding student who helps out his overworked mother and lazy tanktop-wearing boozy father around the house. It’s all very normal until he witnesses a shady character dumping toxic waste into the local water supplies. Despite opposing this, he gets the blame for it and now has to save the town and clear his name.

Mayhem In Single Valley Review – PC via Steam

Mayhem In Single Valley has a chunky 2D pixel effect mixed in with 3D, giving a top-down/isometric viewpoint. While not immediately similar, it reminded me a bit of spiritual successor to Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It has a retro charm to it while being suped-up a bit for modern audiences.

Since this toxic waste has contaminated the resources, we find that the local wildlife goes batshit crazy. Their eyes are glowing an ominous green, and they sure as hell will attack you on sight. Jack doesn’t have much to work with in terms of defence as Mayhem In Single Valley is borderline survival horror (despite being quite cute) as you have limited resources (and pockets).

Ideally, you’ll want to outsmart the animals and distract them with the kind of items they go for – rabbits like carrots, snakes like eggs and influencers like the sound of their own voice. Jack can make various concoctions to subdue his assailants, but it means being smart about what to carry and knowing what is effective on each character.

In many ways, Mayhem In Single Valley reminds me of a more polished SNES experience from the 90s. Speaking from experience, this is the type of game you friend with the wealthy parents would have, or you’d scrounge enough money to rent it from Blockbusters.

A Blockbuster Performance?

It doesn’t take itself seriously, and there’s just so much variety in the game that it feels like MTV generation, and you aren’t going to be sitting still for very long. Fun is the biggest ingredient, but during this Mayhem In Single Valley review, it never felt like it was a game that I wanted to be playing all the time or couldn’t get enough of.

Perhaps it’s the one-hit kills that were a bit of a damper or not being able to get rid of your pursuers in one go completely. But that’s the nature of the game, and for the most part, it’s doable and in no way a rogue-like game – more of a modern(ish) RPG adventure from the 90s, only much more polished and very self-aware sense of humour.

This is the kind of game I’d pick up on sale on a Friday night (no detriment to the game!) and have the intention of playing over the weekend and only getting an hour’s worth. 

However, it’s also the type of game that remains actively installed in my Steam library where I will frequently dip into, explore new areas or ones that I have missed, and perhaps locate some of the elusive achievements. From that perspective, that goes to show how fun this game can be, considering you’re trying to stop the apocalypse.

This is an unusually shorter review than most, as I don’t have that much more to say on it. Mayhem In Single Valley is undoubtedly fun and often very funny (cleaning up lawn cigars then throwing them within the first few minutes set the tone). Platforming sections and the controls can be a bit sluggish in places, and the whole evasive element with the animals was a bit annoying, but down to tastes.

Mayhem In Single Valley Review Summary

If you’re up for a fun retro feeling adventure that covers a wide range of genres and does them pretty well considering, Mayhem In Single Valley is a title I’d recommend looking into, perhaps reading some other reviews et al. before committing. It didn’t blow me away, but again, it’s a game I’m more likely to keep playing throughout.