“The human race attacking the Demon King’s castle. The Adventurers decided to join forces with the Imperial Army and the ‘Hero of Caerleon’ to lead a full onslaught in hopes of wiping out the Demons once and for all. They attacked the Demon stronghold with overwhelming numbers and succeeded in its total destruction. All of the demons in the castle were taken prisoner except for one lone skeleton named ‘Skul’.”
He has a bone to pick with you!
Guide ‘Skul’ on his quest to single-handedly take on the Adventurers & Imperial Army and rescue his King from captivity. Collect Dark Quartz along the way. Derived from the pain and hate of life itself, Dark Quartz taints and takes control of everything it touches. If Dark Quartz would get into the wrong hands the results will be devastating.
‘Skul: The Hero Slayer’ is a Side-Scrolling action-platformer with rogue-lite elements. Like a true rogue-lite, every run you will start from 0. None of the items within the run will carry over, besides gold and dark quartz. Defeat the enemies and earn gold and dark quartz. The gold can be spent on items within each run to temporarily upgrade Skul. The Dark Quartz is used to permanently upgrade Skul. Obtain items and skulls along the way to strengthen Skul’s stats and skills to help him on his quest.
Keep your head in the game
Skulls you say? Oh yes, I forgot to mention the main mechanic of the game. In this game, you upgrade your character within a run by obtaining new skulls. Choose the skull to your liking, each with their own stats and perks. You can carry two skulls at once while being able to change between them mid-battle. When you do this depending on your skull a special skill is activated which is stronger than your regular attacks, but you will be on cooldown after changing.
At the end of every chapter, you’ll face massive powerful bosses who are corrupted with dark quartz. These bosses are no joke. Study and adapt to their pattern to defeat them and continue to the next chapter.
Controllers are smooth as bones, I mean butter
The game controls lovely. It has keyboard support as well as full controller support, which is always lovely. Not pleased with the button layout? Luckily it’s possible to change it to your liking. Seeing this good controller support is comforting since besides being available on the Steam console ports are on its way.
In terms of graphics, as you can see they are pixel art style. These can be hit or miss depending on what you like. For me, I always have apricated this art style and think it has some lovely charm to it due to the nice animations. The cutscenes have a voiceover in them but they are in Korean, as the creator of the game, SouthPAW Games, Indie developer based in South-Korea. But don’t you worry because the game is completely written in wonderful English text for us all none Koreans. The dialogue in the game definitely has a good level of quirkiness to it while still conveying the story and seriousness of the story.
The sticks and stones that broke my bones
Now that I explained the game in detail and what I liked about it. Let’s now focus on what I didn’t like. Skul’s gameplay variety is a lackluster, especially compared to its competitors. This is best seen in the level design. They say and I quote: “rogue-like features such as everchanging and challenging maps. It will keep you on your toes, as you will never know what to expect”. This is simply incorrect.
Skul does not have randomly/procedurally generated maps like a lot of rogue-lite games. The maps cycle randomly through a selection. This is a shame because rogue-lites are all about replayability. Going through and getting further and further every time you play. But when the maps stay the same you will be going through the exact same map and enemies multiple times, even after a couple of hours of play.
Conclusion
Skul: The Hero Slayer is a wonderfully created game. If you don’t get thrown off by the repetitive level design and gameplay, pixel-art art style, and difficulty, you’ll have a blast with this game. Every element of the game has a lot of charm, from the animations to the characters themselves.
