Skul: The Hero Slayer lacks originality, but not in heart or emotion

Few people stopped listening to Nirvana after they realized how much Nirvana looked like the Pixies, but Skul: The Hero Slayer it may be hampered by its passing resemblance to other popular games in recent years.

Skul is a 2D platform game with elements of roguelite, so each race is random to a certain extent, and you will earn money – in this case, “dark quartz” – that will allow you to buy permanent updates for your character between attempts. The difference is that you are a small skeleton soldier, and the “heroes” are the ones you are looking for. This role reversal is very weak in practice, especially since the story is told in English that seems roughly translated, but, fortunately, SouthPAW Games is perfectly fluent in the language of game design.

The protagonist’s head is just a skull – he’s a skeleton, after all – so he can trade his own head with a wide variety of other heads, each with its own set of powers, attacks and abilities. You can keep up to two different heads to switch in your inventory, although there is a cooling that is activated each time you switch between them. You will want to switch between them often as you learn the intricacies of each of the game areas.

It is not just that a new head gives you new ways to attack your enemies, but that each one can also change the way you move or your ability to act defensively. As if that weren’t enough, heads also make you do different things as you switch between them, meaning that the attacks and weaknesses of each skull are important, as well as how they work together.

SouthPAW Games Announces Skul as having “70 different playable characters”, and that statement seems honest, although I haven’t seen each one yet. As in Hades, Different doors at the end of each area lead to different rewards, so you can choose whether you want a new skull, more gold for the in-game store or an item. You will also be able to tell by the design of the door if you are about to face a boss. While the updates are all random, these color-coded outputs give you at least some control over how you want to build your character, even if you never know what the options will be for each potential reward.

This may all sound a little mechanical. Other roguelite games offer similar ways to build your loadout, and 2D side scrolling games with cute, retro-style characters mixed with modern mechanics are almost their own genre right now. But in the game Skul: The Hero Slayer, I never cared to have seen so many of these individual ideas before, because each one is executed very well and they work together so perfectly. Originality itself is an overrated trait; something that has been done before but still runs at this level of skill and care tends to look new, even though you can draw a straight line between existing games and design Skul.

Image: SouthPAW Games / Neowiz

So there is that drug Good the combat is felt throughout the game. Unlike most platform games from the NES and SNES eras, and even most of today’s retro action games, enemies in Skul: the hero Slayer cannot hurt you. You can get past them, actually, and they can get past you. The only thing that does damage in either direction is a real attack, which means that it is crucial to learn how to get through enemies and their attacks, as well as how to group enemies and stop their attacks with yours.

Gathering a large group of bandits in one place and cutting them with the wolf’s skull is a delight. SouthPAW has apparently mastered the intricate ability to project “game feel”, making each battle feel dense, substantial and satisfying. Cutting and slicing my way through crowds of enemies and learning how to interrupt, block, or avoid your own attacks consumes enough brain power to make it difficult to think of anything else during the game, putting me in a welcoming state of flow like the rest of the day’s worries are out of my head.

Help that, like the recently launched Cyber ​​Shadow, Skul it’s a study on how to make enemy attacks readable and easy to distinguish, if you’re paying attention. The trick is to place the indicators for each attack in different places on the screen and differentiate them from each other so that the player learns to read the screen.

Some enemies fire a direct shot that places a thin red line like a laser on the screen while aiming before firing. Other enemies take root through the soil below you, causing the soil to shine briefly before you are hit by the roots. Others may have exaggerated animations or flashing lights that let you know what to expect, once you have learned what each indicator means. The end result is a game in which you need to be constantly examining almost the entire screen to make sure there is no mob planning something while you are working on another group of enemies.

As impressive as these systems are in practice, SouthPAW is still not satisfied with the balance and promised Skulto continue working to make each attack even easier to differentiate before it happens. If this version 1.0, taking the game out of early access, is already so good, I can’t wait to see how the developers will improve what they already have here.

Skul: The Hero Slayer it has some rough edges, but I even found the uneven balance of heads and power-ups pleasant. Profiting from a powerful construction and kicking the butt, knowing that you could return to almost anything on your next attempt, was thrilling. Having a great build almost made me feel like More it was at stake, no less. If I didn’t get far enough in those races, it would be my fault.

It is difficult to even write that the music was repetitive, almost irritating, when so many other things with the game are so good, but there are enough flaws of this type to keep Skul: The Hero Slayer to stand by the best absolute games of the year. I can forgive some sickening music, awkward translation and derived roots when the rest of the game is a model of precision and iterative design.

I have no doubt about it Skul: The Hero Slayer will be further improved as the work continues, but it’s a good time at launch that is easy to recommend. It almost feels like the work of a cover band so good that you can’t wait to see what they can do when they create something truly original.

Skul: The Hero Slayer is now available for PC, Mac and Linux, launching for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2021.