When a plane full of passengers suddenly starts falling apart, our protagonist, Jack, does what anyone would and takes to the air, on a rescue mission. Superpowers? Hardly. Just got a serious case of escapism through daydreaming and Mayhem In Single Valley. Or so I was initially led to believe, only to find, upon saving enough people from certain doom… something else was going on. Something else entirely.
No really. Nothing is quite as it seems in this game, and while the on-screen objective list may seem a tad silly at times, it is still the only way to progress. The only way to see what happens next, in this incredibly surreal adventure that just gets weirder and weirder with each ‘level’. Oh and on top of that, part of the experience actually lies in figuring out how to perform certain actions as the game doesn’t explain it outside the controls list. Very peculiar.
An example would be rather early on in the demo, during which I was tasked with jumping out of bed. Sure, mash a button or some such, right? Nope. Took a bit more finesse than that. Won’t spoil the ‘puzzle’ here, and maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it was a one-time thing. Maybe… I don’t know. But what I do know is that the strangeness of what followed, as furniture was pushed around, balls thrown, and empty beer cans kicked around near a rather upset father, only made me more eager to explore.
Jack’s world has been coded to destroy his life… only he doesn’t know it yet!
Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get around to that as eventually, reality itself seemed to implode and poor Jack – yet again – ended up failing whatever grand mission he’d been tasked with. Not entirely certain as to what triggered the fail state, although like that of the developer’s prior release, You Are Not A Banana [review], I’ll try my best to survive the entirety of Mayhem In Single Valley come launch. Until then, do try the demo.