Skully Review (Nintendo Switch)

Review code used, with many thanks to Modus Games

You play as Skully In this adventure, a platformer with puzzles from developer Finish Line games and published by Modus games. I’ve had the game on my radar for a while and I was very happy when we received a review code for Skully. Will Skully live up to my expectations or will he roll off into oblivion…..let’s roll along and find out.

Meet Terry

As the game begins you witness a hand dropping a skull into a clay pool. This is Skully, a disembodied skull, who has been brought back to life all be it without his body. You soon discover that Skully has been brought to life by Terry, who is an earth element deity.

Terry explains that there is a little bit of sibling rivalry going on between him and his siblings and Skully island is taking the brunt of their destructive rivalry. Terry’s siblings are also deities, in fact, Fiona, Brett, Wanda, and Terry himself are element deities, representing Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth respectively.

They’re not really the sort of beings you would want to have at war, so Terry asks for Skully’s help in bringing peace to the mythical island of Skully and save it from being destroyed by the deities.

Let’s Roll

You control Skully across eighteen chapters of this physics-based platformer. Roll, jump, hop your way across Skully island and solve puzzles and encounter bosses as you progress. Terry and his siblings are the narrators of the story and any cutscenes are in a frame by frame format. I was expecting the cutscenes to be animated, though the frame by frame format works and does tell the story well.

Sulky island is a fairly linear world full of all manner of speedways, ramps and tricky angles for Skully to navigate, using gravity and momentum and a bucket load of luck. You’ll probably die quite a lot while playing Skully as some of the platforming sections can be tricky, very tricky, But that’s the fun of a good platform game, to try and try again, isn’t it? Thankfully, there are plenty of save points scattered across the various environments on Skully Island. Save points which come in the form of a magical clay mound sitting on the ground, once Skully rolls into the clay the game is saved.

Skully the Skull of Many Talents

Skully is a skull of many skills, apart from the roiling and jumping he can also cling on to vines covering walls, but Skully has three other skills as well. As you progress the game, you’re introduced to Skully’s other clay forms.

You see the magical clay mounds aren’t just for saving your game, Skully can use the clay mounds to change into three other forms to help with the heavier work of traversing the island. Sinking into a clay mound Skully can be changed into a golem-like Strong form who is the muscle. It can obliterate rocks or bash them down to create bridges or removing enemies from the path such as bursting the water-based, bubble-like enemies you encounter on your journey with a powerful wind-swept fire blast attack that obliterates them instantly into a puddle.

You can turn Skully into a Swift form who can run quickly to traverse the terrain and move certain types of rocks from side to side. And finally, you can change Skully into a Vault form who can jump higher than any of the other forms.

Vault form also has the ability to move certain rocks around but unlike Swift from who can move rocks side to side, Vault form can move rocks up and down.

You must use and combine all these forms with their variety of skills in order to progress through the levels and the puzzles throughout the game. You can have three forms in play at once in the latter part of the game, once you have acquired all the clay form skills. Though you can only ever have one being controlled. I had a lot of fun with changing Skully’s forms and working out which one to use where or when I could leave one clay form behind to change to another.

To change Skully from one form to another is as simple as spitting Skully out of the mound’s mouths and move on. The form Skully has vacated will stay where you left it, with my kind of warped sense of humour I found this funny, so changing Skully’s form and spitting the skull from the golem-like strong form always brought a smile to my face. The game doesn’t allow for much free exploration as it’s a pretty linear path to follow and as you travel along you can collect flowers that unlock beautiful concept artwork from Skully’s development.

Gravity and Momentum

As Skully is round and rolls he can be very hard to control at times, infuriating so, as you contend with gravity, momentum and the angles of the platforms. When I got to the point I made the same mistake numerous times in the same place I knew it was time to turn the game off. Once I turned the game on a few hours later I breezed past the part I had made the mistake so frequently on before. There can be a lot of tension when you get to one of the game’s difficulty spikes and when you do succeed and finally get to the next checkpoint it offers you a big sense of relief.

However infuriating the platform sections can be it’s such a fun game with Skully and all his different forms and using the different abilities that you want to succeed and see more of the game.

There isn’t a tutorial as such when you start the game, if you’re looking for an explanation of Skully’s skills you will find these written on in-game rocks at various points in the game, especially when you acquire a new clay form. And these tell you all you need to know about controlling Skully and his other forms.

It is packed full of personality, it’s a little odd that a small skull could have so much personality but he does as do each of the four deities. You’ll visit different environments on Skully islands from murky caves, to volcanic areas full of hot lava and tranquil beaches, to flowing rivers. Beware though, Skully doesn’t like water and will die almost instantly once he touches it.

Visuals and Controls

Skully features great voice acting and humour, as well as optional on-screen subtitles. You can also activate on-screen controls so that a list of the game’s main controls is always visible in the corner of the screen. These are nice added touches that give the player a choice of whether they want to use them or not.

Skully is controlled using the joy-cons, and I found that the controls are mostly intuitive to use and easy to pick up. I did much prefer to play the game using the pro controller as the controls felt more intuitive that way, but that could just be my imagination playing tricks on me.

The camera on the other hand was a problem at times, particularly in a few very dicey moments when Skully rolls away from an encroaching giant wave of water from Wanda the water elemental sibling. The camera switches to a fixed camera perspective of overhead and the water is on the bottom of the screen. The water and the camera speed up if Skully gets too far in front and this makes it very hard for the player to follow the onscreen action. At other times, when Skully has to flee from a threat and he has to roll towards the camera, the player can’t see any upcoming platforms or pits and you end up dying through no fault of your own.

Skully island looks bright and alive with an upbeat audio playing to accompany Skully on his journey. In some sections of the game it does struggles on the Nintendo Switch with the texturing in some of the levels, but it is not too bad. It’s the little details that shine through the game, such as the little trail in the sand that Skully leaves behind as he rolls along.

Conclusion

I do think Skully has lived up to my expectations. I will leave my frustration behind as I find most platform games frustrating at times while playing them, it’s the nature of the genre. Skully is a very enjoyable game and the puzzles are a lot of fun. Set in beautiful environments, with great voice acting and humour.

If you are a fan of the genre, Skully is definitely a game you should consider adding it to your Nintendo Switch library.

Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up