Welcome to our review of Skully, a game that has some irks that make it hard to love.
On a mysterious remote island, a skull washes up on shore and is reawakened by an enigmatic deity. Dubbed Skully, the newly reanimated being has been summoned to intervene in a war between the deity’s three siblings, whose quarrel jeopardizes the island they call home. Fate has bestowed Skully with a second chance at “life” and his adventure will take him across a strange paradise as he seeks an end to the conflict that plagues the isle.
Hop, skip and roll your way to victory. Dodge obstacles across the island as Skully, a skull reanimated by the power of magical clay. Adapt to your environment. Transform into three distinct forms to overcome challenges and defeat enemies. Traverse a mysterious island. Roll through 18 different levels in 7 distinct ecosystems each packed with unique dangers. Explore a compelling story. Fully voiced dialogue and cutscenes breathe life into the island’s inhabitants and the charming world of Skully!
So as you have read my intro, it is already clear that I found this game hard to love, but it may have sounded more strongly than intended as I do enjoy the idea behind the game but not the way it was executed. In its purest form, Skully is a game where you control a marble over an obstacle course, but more than just that.
At first, you learn how to use the basic rolling around and what really hit me, Skully can go fast and I mean really fast. I often went out of bounds and even towards hour 2 of the gameplay, I barely improved. I was either going slow and precise or out of bounds. Luckily there are gazillions of save points so you always just got a small part to do over when needed.
Checkpoints also redo your health which is very handy and some points in the game allow you to change your appearance to reach some places and do things you could not do otherwise. The other appearances do not have most of the basic and aforementioned issues, but they still suffer from one issue that went unmentioned so far. The cameras are often bad and they will get you into problems just by either being out of the picture or out of focus completely.
At one point, I had fallen off of a cliff and for some reason, I was not in the deadly water. But by the time I had repositioned to the right point of view, I had already decided to just opt for a do-over. I jumped into the water to just restart. It is times like these that I really dislike game mechanics that are well designed but improperly executed. To my personal dismay, mind you, because when you see the game in action, it really looks cool.
If the basic speed of Skully could be reduced a little and if they fixed the camera, this could easily be a solid 9 points score. I kid you not, the game is fun, just too fast-paced to be really manageable. I do intend to keep playing as I do want to know where the game leads me.
In conclusion, Skully has some issues but I still seem to like the game. It just makes me wonder what if they fixed these problems? Would it be a great game instead of this current mediocre version?
