Search the Community

One part Marble Madness and one part 3D platformer, Skully throws players into a tumultuous world of forests, caves, and lava-filled volcanoes with one of the most unlikely protagonists imaginable: a skull. Imbued with earth-based energy from an elemental deity, Skully draws power from mud to navigate perilous environments and overcome platformer obstacles. Despite the inventive premise though, the game lacks depth and polish, making the adventure more of a lifeless slog. As the game begins Skully is reanimated by Terry, an earth elemental deity who is trying to reconnect with his three elemental siblings. With Skully's help, Terry wants to find his siblings and convince them to stop fighting amongst themselves. The plot is fine, if somewhat bland, though the addition of voice acting might hurt the overall experience more than help it. Terry's interjections as you explore the world are more obnoxious than entertaining, and the awkward rivalries among his siblings feel uninspired. The gameplay of Skully breaks down to a mix of platforming, exploration, and puzzle solving. Your goal is to merely explore each level and collect the floating flowers (mainly to unlock concept art in the main gallery, or to just give you a secondary objective while rolling around). What makes the game unique is that, as Skully, your main method of movement is rolling like a ball. Right away this presents some interesting challenges, such as uneven terrain or narrow paths that become much more difficult when you need to maintain your balance so carefully. The problem is, Skully isn't very fun to control. The imprecise nature of rolling a ball or jumping is frustrating, and the kinds of obstacles thrown at you tend to be more tedious than inventive. Any time you die you're also sent back to the last checkpoint which, to be fair, are pretty frequently spaced, but are still just a little annoyingly spread out. Most levels are also highly linear but any time the level design does spread out it can be annoyingly difficult because the game does a pretty poor job of hinting or nudging you toward where you're supposed to go next. The camera is also a major obstacle at times, and trying to maintain micro-adjustments on Skully's movements and the camera makes for some terrible moments throughout the game. A short way into the adventure Skully gains the ability to transform into mud golems whenever you're at a checkpoint, and each of the three mud golems provides a new way to play. The first one you unlock, for example, allows you to punch through weak walls and send a shockwave out to destroy enemies. The golems add some much needed variety to the gameplay and also provide some tricky puzzles for the player to solve. You can only control one golem at a time but you can create up to three, so you might have to position all of them strategically in order to make it across a chasm or up a ledge. However, these puzzles can be extremely difficult, disproportionately so compared to the kid-friendly vibe of the rest of the game. Controlling golems can also be a bit of a chore for basically the opposite reason as Skully: golems are slow, stiff, and clunky. Setting up a puzzle solution and dying due to a slightly misaligned throw, then having to take the time to slowly reset everything again is completely obnoxious game design. The game's presentation leaves a lot to be desired. As already mentioned the voice acting is a bit grating, and the soundtrack isn't much to write home about either. It just lacks personality, something to make the music feel unique to this adventure. And the visual design has the exact same problem. The generic settings are simply bland, and clearly some technical corners had to be cut to make the game run on the Switch, given the fairly muddy textures and inconsistent frame rate. Skully does have some charm and a sense of heart, but virtually every aspect of the game feels unpolished in some respect. The gameplay simply has too many nagging little annoyances, from Skully's slippery movements as a skull to his clumsy controls as a golem, and the visual and musical design of the game lack strong personality. Maybe if the developers had more time to fully flesh out the ideas present here Skully could have been a great platformer, but as is it's easy to skip this one. Rating: 4 out of 10 Skulls