Mayhem ZX

I want to root for Mayhem ZX, and part of me still does. It comes from exactly the kind of studio this column exists for: two people, one making art and one writing code, building something loud and pixel-soaked in their spare time. The core pitch is honest and unpretentious. Take a handful of fighters, drop them into platformer arenas, hand everyone guns and grenades, and let chaos sort out the rest. Wall-jumping, skidding, sliding, and a full 360-degree firing radius give the movement a kinetic, loose quality that the genre often gets wrong. When it clicks with a friend on the same couch, there are flashes of the anarchic fun the developers were clearly chasing. The mechanical skeleton is genuinely interesting. Each character handles weapons and grenades differently, which means picking up the same rifle as your opponent still produces a different fight. The scoring system ties higher point rewards to lower health, which quietly nudges players toward aggression rather than camping. Platforms are designed so bullets cannot pass through them but grenades can, a small but thoughtful asymmetry that rewards players who learn the geometry. These are the design instincts of people who love the genre, and they show. Here is where honesty requires a harder look. Mayhem ZX entered Early Access in October 2017 with plans to exit around December 2018. The last developer update is now more than seven years old. The single-player arcade mode was never finished during the public development window, leaving the game almost entirely dependent on local multiplayer to justify a session. The community itself flagged the solo experience as thin very early in Early Access. What remains is a multiplayer brawler with a tiny player base, no meaningful solo content, and a development track that went quiet without a formal conclusion. The small pool of Steam user reviews that do exist lean positive, and comparisons to the old freeware game Liero have come up organically, which at least confirms the chaotic-sandbox energy landed for some players. As someone who tracks small studios with genuine craft in their DNA, I find the situation more sad than damning. The bones here are good. The retro aesthetic is committed, the heavy-metal-leaning energy is consistent, and the couch-brawler intent was never cynical. But a game that required a second player to shine, and then lost its development momentum before adding an arcade mode, is a hard sell in 2025 unless you have a dedicated couch partner ready and the barrier to entry is near-zero. Treat it as a curiosity with a genuine spark, not a complete product.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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