Mullet Madjack’s ten-second timer makes every kill count

Mullet Madjack gives you ten seconds to clear a floor. Kill an enemy, drink a soda, land a finishing move — the clock goes up. Stand still and the timer runs out, and Jack Banhammer dies. That is the whole game, and it is enough. Hammer95 Studios built a first-person shooter around a single cruel rule, and the result is one of the tightest action games of the decade.

Trailer, via Epopeia Games.

Ten Seconds Per Floor

You play as a “Moderator” named Jack Banhammer. Each floor of a skyscraper is a sprint: find the enemies, kill them fast, grab whatever time they drop, and reach the exit before the counter hits zero. Soda cans from destroyed vending machines buy you extra seconds. So do finishing moves performed with items scattered around the environment.

Death sends you back to the last checkpoint with every upgrade wiped. That reset is the spine of the game. It means every run is a clean negotiation with the same question — how much time can you make out of this room?

The weapons are a revolver, a shotgun, a rifle, a submachine gun, a railgun, a plasma rifle, and elemental katanas. You pick up upgrades and guns between floors. The loadout you carry into a fight is the loadout you earned two floors ago, which makes each choice about what to grab feel like it costs something.

Mullet Madjack is a roguelite, and it is a shooter, and it is an arcade game in the plainest sense: score, speed, retry. Beat your best time or try again.

A 2095 Where Dopamine Is the Currency

The game is set in 2095. “Robillionaires” have taken over the world, and humans are addicted to dopamine. Jack is hired by Peace Corp to rescue a figure called the Influencer from a skyscraper full of killer Robillionaires, and his payment is a new pair of shoes.

That premise is not decoration. The ten-second timer is the joke made mechanical: a world that has merged with the internet, where a being needs dopamine every ten seconds or it dies, and you are that being, floor after floor.

Jack reaches an upper floor and finds Mr. Bullet, one of the top Robillionaires, holding the Influencer hostage. She is tied to a chair on a bridge between the skyscraper and the neighboring structure. It is a robot decoy. It explodes and blasts Jack away.

Jack spots Mr. Bullet with the real Influencer on the other skyscraper and uses a sniper to take out the henchmen. Before he can kill Mr. Bullet, Mr. Bullet shoots him through the head. As Jack dies, Mr. Bullet gloats that he is using the Influencer’s virgin blood to start a ritual — a search for any sign of another world, and infinite power from it.

The Streamer, an unhinged Peace Corp operative who had been monitoring and encouraging Jack, convinces her superiors to resurrect him through “Brain Resurrection Wizard” technology. The populace loved him. That is the argument that works.

Mr. Bullet Puts On the Mech Suit

Returned to life, Jack continues the mission and eventually confronts Mr. Bullet atop the other skyscraper, where the Influencer is held nearly drained of blood. Mr. Bullet reveals he tried every magic sigil with her blood and found no sign of another world or a higher power. He declares, gleefully, that this means Robillionaires are the supreme power. Then he puts on a giant mech suit.

Jack cripples the suit, grabs the Influencer, and dives off the building with her. They land in a pool and narrowly survive. They get in Jack’s car and make their escape.

It is a plot that knows exactly what it is. A moderator paid in shoes, a villain who wants to be God and settles for being rich, a resurrection justified by popularity metrics. The satire is not subtle and does not try to be. What matters is that the story keeps handing the gameplay reasons to move: a hostage on a bridge, a sniper’s nest, a rooftop, a pool.

Survival, Boss Rush, and an Ultrakill Crossover

Mullet Madjack ships with a campaign, a survival mode, and a boss rush mode. The boss rush mode features a crossover with Ultrakill.

That crossover is the clearest signal of who this game is for. Ultrakill is the reference point for the modern fast shooter, and Hammer95 is not shy about the company it keeps. The difference is the timer. Ultrakill rewards style; Mullet Madjack rewards speed under a countdown, which is a harsher and more specific demand.

The modes also solve the roguelite problem of a campaign that ends. Survival strips the game to its timer. Boss rush strips it to its fights. Neither is the main event, but both are worth the space they take.

Release Schedule

Mullet Madjack launched on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service alongside its Xbox release.

The Windows version arrived first, in May 2024. The Xbox versions followed in March 2025, day-and-date with Game Pass. The Switch version is dated April 30, 2026 — a long tail for a game this small, and a sensible one. A ten-second loop is built for a handheld.

9.0 on the IGDB Critic Aggregate

Mullet Madjack scores 9.0 out of 10 on the IGDB critic aggregate, across six outlets.

That number is high, and it is earned. The ten-second rule is not a gimmick bolted onto a shooter; it is the shooter. Every system in the game — the soda cans, the finishing moves, the between-floor upgrades, the checkpoint reset — exists to feed or punish that clock. Very few action games have a single idea this clean and this thoroughly built out.

The weaknesses are the ones the design invites. A game that demands speed will frustrate anyone who wants to look around. The roguelite reset means a bad floor can erase twenty minutes of good play, and the story, while funny, is delivered in the broad strokes of a vintage anime rather than with any interest in surprise.

None of that changes the score. Mullet Madjack is a first-person shooter that understands the genre’s oldest pleasure — the room, the gun, the clock — and refuses to add anything that slows it down. Haste makes waste… of your enemies.

FPS · Game Pass · Hammer95 Studios · Mullet Madjack · roguelite · Ultrakill