Skully – Review (PC)
In a world that feasts on sequels, familiar ideas, and unoriginal content it’s a breath of fresh air when something comes along that feels new. Platforming games have been popular for over thirty years and they’ve become the comfort food of video games. You know that no matter how bad your day may have been – you can still come home and put in your favorite platform game and just feel better. It’s time to add Skully into your rotation of favorite platformers.
You play Skully as… a skull, at least at first. You wake up after an island deity wakes you from whatever slumber you were experiencing and recruits you to help him with a family dispute that may just destroy what’s left of the former paradise that Terry (a rock god of sorts) and his immortal siblings still call home. Unfortunately for you, Terry hates water… he hates it. Forget Lava, water is incredibly dangerous and is your biggest enemy. Well, don’t forget lava, that’s dangerous here too, but water can do some damage for sure. Did we mention you’re on an island? Yeah, there is a lot of water and every drop can harm you.
Fortunately for Skully, Terry has magical abilities that he doesn’t fully grasp. Mud pits serve many purposes. First and foremost, these pits are your checkpoints, but at each pit you can heal and transform into multiple different forms. Each form has different abilities and you’ll have to chose wisely in order to traverse the levels as smoothly as possible. This becomes one of the biggest struggles in the game and may require multiple attempts as you figure out which Skully to use for each area. We found it best when in doubt to use a bigger form and if you come across an area that only the skull version can make it through, such as a small hole or vines, then you can pop out of the rock creature and keep rolling on.
The levels here are quite varied and each one will feel completely fresh.
The enemies as mentioned are water, water, and more water. Fall in the water, you die. Smash into a water creature, you die. Some of the characters can kill the water beasts with fire balls, run really fast past them, or just roll away to safety. Often, how you choose to make it through each level is completely up to you. Certain areas require a certain character to move on but, overall, you have multiple ways to get through each level. You’ll want to explore each one as thoroughly as you can to find all of the collectibles in each world.
The developers recommend that you play Skully with a controller, even when playing on PC. The controls feel very tight. This is a game of precision and if the controls didn’t feel as good as they do it would all fall apart. Rolling through the level at a breakneck speed and then jumping onto a series of Lily pads in order to cross the river feels incredible. It may take you a run or two to nail it but, when you do, you’ll be rolling and hopping that skull precisely where you want him to go. It’s incredibly rewarding when you complete a level because the difficulty can be fairly extreme.
The graphics are beautiful. For a game that relies so heavily on water they really had to make the water standout… and they did. Another standout here is the soundtrack. It’s easily one of the best in any game you will play this year. You’ll feel like you’re on an adventure the entire time you’re playing. A game like Skully doesn’t even need a standout soundtrack to be a good game, but they went above and beyond with this one.
Skully is the complete package for fans of inventive platform games. It takes concepts from traditional platform games and Marble Madness to create an evolution of both that will bring you hours of fun while you try and save the island from impending doom. What more could you ask for from a video game?
*Skully was given to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
