Skully

Skully is a platformer that challenges and entertains you. The game lets you die a lot, but never in an unfair way. The game's physics are always on point which pushes you to keep an eye on the little skull all the time. Solve puzzles with three other characters and roll, jump, bash, and dash your way to the lairs of four gods in this indie game.

Couple this with some excellent vistas, cool level design ideas and a charming cast of characters, it’s no wonder Skully has sucked me into its magical, muddy world.

Ultimately, Skully feels to me like the little game that could. It’s rough around the edges, sure, but it has heart and a solid underpinning that I hope Finish Line Games run with for a sequel. When it all comes together it inspires the same kind of wonder you might have felt when you were a kid trying to navigate your way through your first platformer - frustrations and all.

Between ironic tones and a least bizarre protagonist, Skully has the potential to entertain players willing to try their hand at a title whose structure is modeled around a frequent oscillation between platform and puzzle game.

While Skully definitely has its share of problems, I still had a fun time in this world. The camera is frustrating, but the twitch rolling and platforming mixed with the increasingly devious puzzles makes for a good gameplay combo. Even though the Switch version’s visuals are a little rough, which doesn’t play nicely with the overall visual blandness of the levels, the style of the character designs is appealing. Underneath Skully is a lot of charm, but enough issues pile up that pull it back into the mud.

Skully would be a great recommendation, were it not for its execution: poor camera mechanics, an inconsistent visual performance and unstable fluidity mean that the game's experience is severely harmed, not because of the game's creative input but because of its subpar execution. With a thorough update that can correct those issues, Skully can be a star in the Nintendo Switch catalogue.

Skully bites off more than it can chew. Its central concept is excellent; the combination of the balance mechanic in a 3D world is solid. But the drab environment, awkward camera, and overall lack of quality take the shine off things.

While the voice acting, storytelling and platforming in Skully is top class, the visual issues might cause you to lose your head.

Skully isn’t an entirely lost cause. There’s an entertaining enough puzzle platformer hidden underneath its myriad visual flaws. It may be uglier than sin and you may be accompanied by an irritating voiceover throughout, but you’ll still have some fun playing through it and the plot does resolve itself in a nice way by the end. You'll just need to be able to roll with a lot of annoyances to get there.

Skully has some interesting gameplay involving your multiple forms, but is ultimately let down by checkpoint issues, and blurry visuals.

I really wanted to like Skully because it falls neatly into a genre I have fond memories for – I’ve played more Marble Blast on old iMacs than I’d like to admit – but Skully very rarely succeeds at being the frenetic action platformer that it wants to be. Lacklustre level design and an inconsistent difficulty curve, matched with a meandering and confusing story, make this a hard sell for just about anyone. It’ll take a lot of patience to enjoy this one, even if you are a seasoned fan of 3D platformers.