LifeisXbox’s Mayhem in a Single Valley review | Who is ready for yet another platformer that is reviewed with much jumpy attention? Or at least I thought I would. It’s a platformer that played differently yet was a welcome change to the genre! You guessed it, today we are taking a look at Mayhem in a Single Valley. It’s a beautiful pixel game made by the people over at Fluxcopic LTD. But is it worthy of its tinyBuild badge? And should you take your time getting familiar with it? Let’s go over that right now!
We played Mayhem in a Single Valley for 5 hours on PC. This game is also available for Mac and Linux
What we liked!
- Artstyle | I was just straight-up blown away by how this pixel art game looked. So I really wanted to get to review this game. And boy, was I happy that I got this opportunity. The game looks and feels like an arcade/pixel game, but yet it feels better? It’s weird to describe, but the vibe you get while playing this is absolutely astounding. It visually looks and feels good? It’s funny to imagine a visually great feeling game, but it truly is.
- Unconventional platformer | What I found most intriguing about Mayhem in a Single Valley was that you don’t really jump from platform to platform. Oh no, you spend most of your time moving stuff around and jumping over things to avoid enemies. It’s a different take on a platformer that was the most welcoming thing about this game for me. It indeed was the refresher I needed in the genre to keep things vivid!
- Music | And here we come into the theme of the game. Arcades, mystery, a little bit of action. But, those are quite a few feelings that can be hard to express. Especially if we are talking about transferring those very thoughts through music. But I will be the first to tell you that the people over at Fluxcopic did a great job with this. The music is varying, doesn’t get stale, and it actually got me in a state where I was bopping my head back and forth.
- Controller-feeling | So the keyboard layout feels okay (when you are playing on QWERTY). It isn’t the best, but yet it’s okay. As I have grown used to most devs, AZERTY is not present as a preset. But once you rebind everything or swap your layout to qwerty, you are golden. Most actions feel good to play, but then I was curious about the “full controller support,” and that is where I found my golden ticket. This game feels excellent with a controller. Yes, it makes it a bit harder in some aspects, but it also feels great. This combined with a big screen and a couch, and you can puzzle and platform from the comfort of a living room! A big plus for me.
Somewhere between
- Lack of currency | Something that was a minor inconvenience for me, but I still found worth mentioning: there isn’t any incentive to play the game again. Nothing makes you go for completion. It just feels like: how can I find the most convenient way from A to B. And this isn’t bad by itself. It just felt a bit out of place? Most platformers have a way of measuring level performance with stars. But there isn’t really a clear indicator of this while you are playing the game. It is shown by progression in the story.
What we disliked
- Quest-announcement | My biggest remark is that you don’t really see what you are doing until you open the quest menu. And you have to do this the whole time. Something that could pin the quests would be nice. Maybe a menu that would tell you that: “hey, you have to do this now” would be great. But it just feels hidden. It bothered me enough to put it under dislike. I just enjoy it when a game has a transparent HUD element that goes over these points.
CONCLUSION
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