REVIEW | Mustache in Hell

“Blast through Hell with your Mustache to take back your life.”

Mustache in Hell is a comical twin-stick action game. You play as John Mustache who is a tough-as-nails police officer. After some disturbing dreams, John wakes up in a strange place and must make an unexpected deal with the Grim Reaper to regain control of his life before it’s too late. This is a singleplayer game where you must battle hordes of enemies including demons, gorgons, giant spiders and many more beastly creatures. The Grim Reaper has tasked you with returning to him these 5 special stones of power to fully restore the reapers power, these 5 stones are hidden in the labyrinth of hell. 

Things I liked!

• Gameplay | The game was easy to pick up and play with simple controls. Left stick to move, right stick to aim and shoot. You also have a sprint button which is the left trigger and a secondary weapon button to throw grenades or drop mines, which is the right trigger. The character you play, John Mustache, reminded me of a character named Randy Marsh from South park which I thought was funny. To progress in the game you must clear each room of enemies, after you kill the final one they will drop a key for you to exit the room. As you progress through each area the difficulty increases, with the last few areas of the game proving to be very challenging, once you have completed an area then your progress is saved which definitely helps. You will find extra lives hidden around each area along with food to refill your health along with some classic retro controllers which are collectables, by finding these you can earn some more achievements.  

• Graphics | Mustache in Hell features pixel art style graphics and I was impressed with the cartoon look and feel of the game. I loved the  small unique details that went into each of the monsters that are always chasing you from mini devils with the pitch forks to demons with their swords. Some of the final bosses that you will face are pretty and crazy comical looking too from giant heads to enormous sea monsters. For a budget price indie game. I was impressed with the art style and all this added to the humour and feel of the game.

Neither good nor bad

• Sound | The music and sound effects are pretty basic from the constant pow pow as you fire your pistol to the roaring sound your flamethrower makes, but it all works well and the background music never becomes annoying. The music can turn dramatic as you face a boss but most of the time it can go unnoticed. I think the sound of concrete dragging on the floor as you open a door to one of the five main areas sounded pretty cool.

Things I disliked!

• Bugs within the game | Sadly when I reached the 4th area of the game I did start to encounter some serious game breaking bugs such as when you enter a new room no enemies would spawn. This would mean that you cannot collect the key you need to progress and are left with no option but to exit the game and start over from the beginning of that area. This became very frustrating when it started to happen again and again. Sometimes I would get lucky and it wouldn’t happen so that I could carry on. I also came across another bug later in the game where the door to the final boss in the game would not open when you stand on a pressure plate after leaving the previous room. I did finally manage to get it to work so that I could defeat the final boss and complete the game eventually but this really should not happen.

• Difficulty | As you start your quest  the game is fairly tough, I was able to progress fairly quickly but as soon as you reach the 3rd area it felt like the difficulty went up several notches. Enemies can easily outnumber you and it can be difficult to escape, causing your health to deteriorate quickly. You can pick up weapons such as a shotgun, machine gun and flamethrower, but these only have a limited amount of ammo which goes quickly, then you are back to using your pistol which has unlimited ammo but isn’t very powerful, especially against bosses.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 10 hours
How long to beat the story? 7 Hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 6/20
How long to achieve 1000G | 20 hours +
You’ll love this game if you like these | Ailment and Hellmut: The Badass From Hell