Mayhem in Single Valley

Review

Mayhem in Single Valley is a fun new indie, puzzle-platformer wrapped around a neat-looking pixel art world. The whole game’s premise revolves around our young hero, Jack, who is trying to save the world from mysterious events while defending it against endless monstrous zombie hordes.

The game is rather confusing, wrapped around a simplistic little world. I would’ve been lost from the get-go if it wasn’t for Jack's little to-do list, which would’ve been fantastic if implemented correctly.  But since this is a puzzle-platformer, a little bit of confusion doesn’t hurt.

Plot: You play as Jack, a kindred spirit who is fed up with his little town life and plans to move into the big city, only to be met with fierce resistance from his problematic father.

While trying to prepare for his journey, Jack wanted a last good view of the little town's Valley from his treehouse, only to be shocked by the scene he was about to witness.

A mysterious shadowy figure appeared out of nowhere and started dumping toxic waste into the water, turning the valley’s harmless local flora and fauna into mindless zombies with heightened abilities. 

Before Jack’s very eyes, these contagious zombie creatures rapidly started to affect the local population and wildlife.  And for some reason, you are the one who’s being blamed for it!

While trying to leave, your backpack along with your plane ticket out of here gets stolen by an infected squirrel. Now you have no choice but to hunt down this squirrel, retrieve your backpack and while doing so, get to the bottom of this mystery.

Gameplay: The game starts off very simply, and it seemed as though I was going to have a very easy time finishing it, seeing how simple the gameplay was and how the to-do list was set up. Or so I thought!

The game got pretty confusing, and as soon as I left the house with minor items in my backpack, it was stolen by a pesky Squirrel!

The first major task would be to get my backpack back, which wouldn’t be so easy since the infection from the toxic waste was spreading rapidly throughout the valley, infecting local flora and fauna.

The infected can kill you with ease and you can’t fight them off, but what you can do is distract them enough with treats to go right past them. There are treats littered around everywhere; different items for each type of infected.

With a simple selection and left-click for throwing items, you get enough time to go right past almost everything. Although this system isn’t perfect some just ignored it and came after me, but luckily most of them are slow and the fast ones have a predictable.

There are quite a few items in a simple item swap system, and it gets pretty hard sometimes to remember which item to use for which animal and select that item in time.

This system worked just fine at the beginning when there were fewer enemy types to deal with, but later on it didn’t work well. It was much easier to keep dashing throughout each area and hope that eventually they would stop following you.

Other than that, you have nothing much to do to escape their pursuit. Picking up trash can help you survive one single attack and that’s pretty much it. Just try to keep clear of tight corners while being pursued.

Puzzles: As mentioned earlier, the game is rather confusing, not hinting much about where to go and what to do. But thankfully there is a checklist system in place and combined with minor dialogue box queues, it wasn’t that hard to puzzle things together.

 Most of the puzzles were simple, yet very clever at their implementation level, consisting of multiple simple tasks, item collection, and shifting things into their correct places.

I did face some minor issues while solving certain puzzles, such as items getting stuck, or blocked by the duplicates.

Upgrade system: By far the most troublesome feature of the game. As you collect your deformed doppelgangers, you get duck tapes in return. You can in turn use those to upgrade your stuff, such as increasing your inventory size, increasing your shield strength and the damage of slingshot, and improving your shoes to increase speed.

Simple enough, right? Umm, Yeah no! As you progress, these doppelgangers end up tricky and it’s hard to locate areas, which on its own makes for difficult puzzles. This would’ve been just fine if the sense of reward or importance was much higher.

Personally, I would prefer getting these upgrades by just doing things and solving main puzzles.

Secrets and Collectables: If you are the type of person who loves going out just to collect all the secrets and collectible items, Mayhem in Single Valley has you covered.

Right from the beginning, there is so much stuff to collect, both in terms of simple collectibles as well as something usable in gameplay.

And as a bonus point there are collectible music tapes spread throughout the game, which you can play from your inventory.

Music and sound effects: I was a bit upset with the background music, even with the different usable music tapes spread throughout the valley.

The same goes for the sound effects, especially the UI sound, which was just horrible; I had to mute it.

Visuals: The devs did a great job with the world design. The world looks lush, vibrant, and full of life, even though life is full of infected creatures.

And the same goes for a lot of minor details full of pixel art goodness.

Summary: Mayhem in Single Valley is claustrophobic, chaotic, and outright difficult at times. Definitely not for all, but if you’re looking for a challenge and can overlook some minor things, Mayhem in Single Valley is for you.

The core gameplay and the motivations are strong but minor annoyances hold the game back.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!

Mayhem in Single Valley Steam Store Page