Developed by Hammer95 Studios and published by Epopeia Games, MULLET MADJACK arrived on PC on May 15, 2024, and immediately stands out through one simple idea: every stylish kill buys you a few more seconds of life.
It is a fast-paced FPS roguelite that describes itself as “90% Arcade Fun, 10% Roguelite,” and that ratio tells you exactly what you are in for. Boot it up, and within seconds, it becomes obvious: MULLET MADJACK has no business being this fun.
1. Story: Humans, Robots, and the Internet Apocalypse
Story Cutscene
Set 50 years in the future, MULLET MADJACK imagines a dystopia where humans have fused with the internet and need a dopamine injection every 10 seconds just to stay alive.
Enter Jack Banhammer, a “Retrohuman” assigned by the ominously named PEACE Corp. to scale the towers of Nakamura Plaza and rescue a kidnapped social media personality known as the Influencer Princess. PEACE Corp. streams Jack’s acts of violence and pumps viewers’ dopamine directly into his bloodstream, keeping him alive and tied directly into the core gameplay loop.
The villains are the Robobillionaires, a collective of obscenely wealthy robots, topped off by a head boss whose skull is shaped like a bullet. Jack’s personal motivation? A brand-new pair of sneakers. Simple, stylish, and perfectly on brand.
The story is easy to digest, and that is entirely intentional. It is a hero-saves-princess narrative built on a satirical spine.
Instead of treating internet addiction and corporate violence as grim background lore, MULLET MADJACK turns them into both the joke and the survival mechanic at once, which makes the satire land without slowing the action. The narrative exists to serve the action, not compete with it, and that self-awareness makes it work.
2. Gameplay: 10 Seconds to Live
10 seconds to live
MULLET MADJACK‘s entire design philosophy boils down to one rule: kill robots or die. You have a 10-second timer on standard difficulty, and every kill extends it.
How much time you gain depends on the kill type, with cleaner or riskier kills paying out more:
- Headshot: earns roughly 5 seconds
- Limb shot: earns roughly 2 seconds
- Dash finish: one of the highest time bonuses available
- Environmental kill: kicking robots into fans, TVs, or electrical boxes earns bonus time
- Vending machine: smash one to grab a soda can for an instant time boost
The game is structured around 8 chapters, each with approximately 10 floors and a boss fight. Most floors take 35 seconds to a minute to get through.
Because of this, dying usually sends you back to the start of the current chapter rather than costing a long stretch of progress. Death is rarely more than a minor setback of a couple of minutes.
I love this design because it never punishes curiosity. Every run teaches you something new, and each chapter naturally demands that you figure out your tempo before it lets you through.
The Core Combat Loop
Combat tutorials
Finding your flow is everything. The control set is intentionally lean, and every input pulls double or triple duty depending on your loadout:
- Dash: doubles as a kick and triples as a melee finisher when holding an instant kill weapon
- Jump: standard vertical movement
- Wallrun: extends your mobility across tight corridors and multi-level rooms
- Slide: keeps you low and fast when pushing through enemy fire
- Shoot: your primary tool, with behavior changing based on your equipped weapon
That is genuinely all you need, and the simplicity means the flow state arrives quickly. I felt it myself, that moment around the third or fourth floor when everything clicks, and the movement stops feeling reactive and starts feeling intentional.
MULLET MADJACK rewards players who take risks, and that reward loop is what makes replaying chapters feel genuinely satisfying rather than tedious.
Boss Fights
Samuray
Each chapter closes with a boss encounter against one of the Robobillionaires, and these are some of the game’s most creative moments.
The best boss encounters introduce clear gimmicks, such as a fight built around dash finishes, while others lean more on traditional pattern reading. The final encounter is the most memorable set piece of the group.
For me, the boss fights function as the side dish to the main course of floor-clearing mayhem. They shift the game into a more traditional 1v1 structure with a health bar, which can feel like a tempo break compared to the relentless pace of the regular floors.
Two bosses do share enough design overlap to feel slightly repetitive. Even so, they work as a satisfying punctuation mark to each chapter, and the finale more than makes up for any mid-game familiarity.
3. Armory: 50+ Power-Ups and a Mullet’s Worth of Firepower
Talking Protag
Between floors, PEACE Corp. offers items and upgrades to purchase, and this is where MULLET MADJACK‘s roguelite identity takes shape. The game features 50+ power-ups that reshape how you play, and the weapon pool covers a wide range of combat styles:
- Pistol: your starting weapon and a reliable fallback
- Shotgun: close-range devastation for aggressive players
- Flaming Katana: a melee option that rewards dash finishes
- Plasma Rifle: mid-range energy damage for players who want more distance than the shotgun allows
- Railgun: high single-target damage for precision builds
- SMG (Gangsta Style): fully automatic, unlocked through permanent upgrades
Ninja Demon upgrade
Beyond the weapon pool, upgrade investments let you further specialize your build:
- Unlimited bullets: removes ammo concerns entirely
- Extended dash finish range: makes execution kills more consistent
- Gangsta Style SMG upgrade: converts the SMG into a permanent high-output primary
The critical point is that weapon upgrades are permanent in story mode. Losing a run resets your floor-specific stacks but not your core weapon progress, which keeps the roguelite punishments from ever feeling genuinely cruel.
4. Game Modes: Survive the Gauntlet
Endless Mode
Completing the main story unlocks several additional challenge modes, each designed to stress-test a different aspect of your skills. All of the competitive modes include leaderboards, giving the game a score-attack edge that extends replayability well beyond the campaign:
- Endless Mode: strips away the chapter structure and asks how long you can survive consecutive floors without stopping
- Boss Rush: places you back-to-back against every chapter boss as fast as possible, rewarding pattern mastery and quick execution
- No Timer Mode: removes the survival clock entirely, turning the experience into a slower and more strategic run that also works well for farming upgrades
The main campaign clocks in at around 2 to 3 hours, and for players not drawn to score attack culture or speedrunning, these post-game modes may not carry the same weight. That remains the most honest criticism I can level at MULLET MADJACK.
But for players who chase times, leaderboard positions, or personal bests, those modes add a strong reason to keep playing past the credits.
5. Graphics and Audio: Retro Anime Done Right
MULLET MADJACK commits fully to its 80s and 90s OVA anime aesthetic, and the results are stunning. Its look evokes the cool, violent, neon-heavy mood associated with titles like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell.
MULLET MADJACK sells that influence through bloodthirsty, chaotic presentation: neon corridors, sharp character linework, and stylized enemy designs that feel lovingly crafted rather than derivative.
I found myself stopping mid-floor more than once just to take in a particularly well-composed kill animation against the backdrop of a flashing corridor.
The soundtrack, composed by Fernando Pepe and Mateus Polati, matches every pixel of that visual energy. It leans into retro-futuristic synth and metal with the confidence of a game that knows exactly what it wants to sound like.
The soundtrack is strong enough that it would not be surprising to see it recognized among the year’s best, thanks to how directly it supports the combat energy, functioning almost like a mechanical input.
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- Yellow Doors direction
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- Car Getaway
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- Hostage situation
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- Title Drop
This MULLET MADJACK Review on PC is made possible thanks to JF Games Marketing and Communications.
