14 DAY TRIAL // 
If video games have thought us something, it is that there are many unpleasant ways one can spend eternity. Necromancers can summon hordes of skeletons, warlocks may invoke the angry spirits and being a zombie always hungry for brains does not put things in a positive light either. But it seems the Canadians from Finish Line Games may have stumbled upon the most unpleasant experience from them all: returning to some kind of odd existence as small and round skull, powerless without any other bone to support it.
Skully is a rather bizarre game: it reminds us of other titles where you have to balance a ball in order to succeed, but the developers chose to add a few other twists turning it into a more complete platforming experience. You will assume the control of a miniature skull who will have to roll, jump and cling on with his teeth to any form of vegetation just to manage to keep his undead status. Skully is reanimated by Terry, some sort of whacky god, who hopes that through you he will manage to solve a rather unpleasant family conflict.
Thus, reborn from magic clay you will have to obey the instructions coming from your master and re-establish peace on the island on which you awoke. You will have to traverse different types of environments, from beaches to caves full of lava, split into 18 levels. Although the levels themselves are pretty short, your skills will be put to a hard test and you will lose dozens of minutes, or even more, trying to overcome some of the fiendish obstacles. The serenity of the first level induces a false sense of comfort and safety, but pretty soon you will realize that there is no rest for the wicked or for the undead for that matter.
Shortly after the start of your rolling career, you will get used to the trial and error mechanics. First, you will have to master point perfect jumps, quite a hard to execute when you are a ball rolling all over the place. Then you will be acquainted with the tentacles which will slap the “unlife” out of you. Or you will fall into the lava. Or you will be swept by currents of wind. Anyway, although you cannot really die, you will quite often be reborn in the puddles of magic clay due to the hazardous environments. Your only relief in the middle of this very hostile environment is these puddles, which serve among others as checkpoints. Still, even with them placed generously on the map, you will run into obstacles that will require dozens of attempts until you succeed.
During your quest to visit all the alienated siblings you will soon discover that the developers relied on a few simple mechanics, which they built upon by adding several variations. In order to do Terry’s shady biddings, you will roll, jump and you will cling to the vegetation to climb the walls. Anything but the solid ground is a danger and the levels are built in order to make this traversal from one end to another as perilous as possible. Even if you master the point perfect jumps, you will still need a lot of patience to deal with the narrow passages surrounded by waters or the water lilies which stay on the surface only for a few seconds.
The boss fights will be the real test of your agility, requiring you to defeat Terry’s siblings, being able to rely only on your basic moves. Unfortunately, sometimes you will fight not only the tricks and traps around you but also the camera. There are scenes, like the fight with Wanda, when your frustration will reach new peaks due to the very poor camera movement. Even if you master the simultaneous movement of the two analog sticks, you will often feel that Skully is quite unfair with its players.
In the beginning, we mentioned a twist to the basic rolling of the reanimated skull. These are different forms that you can use to cross different sections of the game. While the first offers you a body that is able to vanquish temporarily lesser foes and crush stone obstacles, the second offers magnetic properties to Skully. As you can expect towards the end of the game you will need to mix and match all the forms to overcome the platforming puzzles. This will result in partial freedom when it comes to tackling the challenges of gathering the collectibles scattered generously throughout each level. If you manage to collect thousands of these flowers you will be able to peruse artworks of the game.
Graphically while Skully is not quite ugly, it lacks the level of details you would expect from a modern game. Especially the animations of Terry and his siblings seem chunky, while the textures of the distant objects are especially ugly. On the other hand, after the first few patches, there are no more stutters when it comes to the frame rate, and the lighting system can produce some pretty nice vistas.
The greatest technical flaw next to the camera control is the sometimes erroneous collision detection. It is unpleasant enough if you miss a jump, but having to repeat sections of the game because of developer errors makes you want to throw the controller at the screen. The soundtrack is a pleasant surprise, being varied, and managing to create quite a nice atmosphere. The lack of any voice acting for Skully is quite understandable, him being just a tiny reanimated skull.
The Good
- Nice soundtrack with some atmospheric tunes
- A lightning system that can produce nice scenes
- A peculiar style of humor
The Bad
- Terrible camera management
- Outdated graphics
- Errors in the collision system
Conclusion
Instead, you are presented with jumps that require ultimate precision and obstacles with errors in collision detection which force you to adopt a slow and careful approach. With more attention to details and some more polishing Skully could have been an entertaining experience. Unfortunately, it just proves to be a modest attempt to make a cute platformer.
