Fate has bestowed Skully a second chance at life when an enigmatic deity reanimates the skull through the power of magical clay after it washes upon the shore of a secluded isle. Skully must hop, skip, and roll through this diverse island habitat teeming with obstacles and puzzles to intervene in a feud between the deity’s three siblings whose quarrel jeopardizes the place they call home.
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A platformer where you control a rolling ball sounds like an easy thing to make unfair, but Skully does a great job overall. Whether it was rolling at top speeds or carefully jumping across narrow platforms, I always felt in control of Skully. The game will slow down from time to time in order to have puzzle segments. Using one of the three transformations, Skully will have to find a way across chasms, and many of these puzzles were satisfying to figure out.
Aside from a few small issues (the overreliance of cutscenes that are just slideshows) my main issue are how some of the later levels can become tedious. A lot of puzzles in the latter half either involve slowly guiding enemies to destroy a wall, or slowing moving platforms in order to cross a gaps. There aren't too many of these scenarios, but it's a pace breaker when I know how to progress but I need to spend 5 minutes getting everything set up properly.
Aside from a few small issues (the overreliance of cutscenes that are just slideshows) my main issue are how some of the later levels can become tedious. A lot of puzzles in the latter half either involve slowly guiding enemies to destroy a wall, or slowing moving platforms in order to cross a gaps. There aren't too many of these scenarios, but it's a pace breaker when I know how to progress but I need to spend 5 minutes getting everything set up properly.
Saw this copy at a game store and thought it looked neat. A solid platformer. 6/10
Buen plataformero donde inicialmente llevas a una calavera que corre como una canica puesta de cocaína, pero donde mas adelante podrás controlar a un puñado de seres que te ayudaran a hacer los puzzles o a coger todos los coleccionables. Como plataformas en 3D lo veo bastante bien resuelto. Es bonito, buena música, no se controla del todo mal, tiene un buen diseño de nivel que pasa por todos los clásicos, desde volcán a cuevas a mucho más...
En general los únicos problemas que puedo tener con Skully es una historia donde se veía venir el giro desde el inicio (y aun así es entretenida), que las cinemáticas hechas a dibujos no acaban de convencerme, y el control de salto con los que no son skully, creo que son un pelín menos precisos de lo que deberían. Pero quitando esas cosas, 100% recomendable.
En general los únicos problemas que puedo tener con Skully es una historia donde se veía venir el giro desde el inicio (y aun así es entretenida), que las cinemáticas hechas a dibujos no acaban de convencerme, y el control de salto con los que no son skully, creo que son un pelín menos precisos de lo que deberían. Pero quitando esas cosas, 100% recomendable.
This is a charming little game with a somewhat lackluster story and some underwhelming puzzles. The environments look great, and the simple act of rolling around as Skully is great fun, but ultimately, this is a forgettable game.
Skully is almost a decent game but there's enough that's off here that unfortunately sets the experience back a lot. Skully is a puzzle platformer where the platforming is marred by dumb design decisions and the puzzle stuff can be more annoying than it's worth.
The main gimmick of the game is that you are a small skull thing and you transform into one of three large creatures when submerging yourself in checkpoint ooze. Little skull boy controls well enough but when you're a big boy the cracks in the platforming begin to show. Just weird shit like momentum being halted when you land from a jump to a different altitude (not just jumping down to a platform, but jumping up too) and shitty air control just makes shit annoying, and not in an engaging way. My favourite thing early on were these water spouts that if you got hit by them in big form you just froze for a solid like 2 seconds. It's fucked up, I tell you!
The big boy forms also serve the puzzle aspect of the game. You'll use their various abilities to move platforms and throw skulls around and whatever. The problem here is when it should all be coming together in the third act using all of them for stuff, it just becomes painful because if you fuck up it usually means death which means going through the same summoning processes over and over again.
The worst puzzle in the game requires you to summon three dudes, you'll be switching between their bodies numerous times, you'll be moving a platform to a perfect position outside of your line of sight and you'll only know if you fucked up by the end of your attempt of this puzzle, and then you'll have to throw your skull body to the perfect position four times. if you fail to avoid the stalactites above or simply over/undershoot your target (which is easy as you aren't given any indication that your throw will or won't be blocked by something) you will instantly die and have to spend like five minutes setting up another chance at the thing. Also when you leave a body it spits you up, sometimes at a random angle that can kill you for no reason if you did it over death water. This puzzle maneuver drove me to madness and there's still like 4 chapters after this!
So yeah that's Skully. It's almost fine but there's too much pain and it makes me sad.
The main gimmick of the game is that you are a small skull thing and you transform into one of three large creatures when submerging yourself in checkpoint ooze. Little skull boy controls well enough but when you're a big boy the cracks in the platforming begin to show. Just weird shit like momentum being halted when you land from a jump to a different altitude (not just jumping down to a platform, but jumping up too) and shitty air control just makes shit annoying, and not in an engaging way. My favourite thing early on were these water spouts that if you got hit by them in big form you just froze for a solid like 2 seconds. It's fucked up, I tell you!
The big boy forms also serve the puzzle aspect of the game. You'll use their various abilities to move platforms and throw skulls around and whatever. The problem here is when it should all be coming together in the third act using all of them for stuff, it just becomes painful because if you fuck up it usually means death which means going through the same summoning processes over and over again.
The worst puzzle in the game requires you to summon three dudes, you'll be switching between their bodies numerous times, you'll be moving a platform to a perfect position outside of your line of sight and you'll only know if you fucked up by the end of your attempt of this puzzle, and then you'll have to throw your skull body to the perfect position four times. if you fail to avoid the stalactites above or simply over/undershoot your target (which is easy as you aren't given any indication that your throw will or won't be blocked by something) you will instantly die and have to spend like five minutes setting up another chance at the thing. Also when you leave a body it spits you up, sometimes at a random angle that can kill you for no reason if you did it over death water. This puzzle maneuver drove me to madness and there's still like 4 chapters after this!
So yeah that's Skully. It's almost fine but there's too much pain and it makes me sad.
Oof. I feel bad for Skully because it feels like actual effort was put into it, but unfortunately those efforts don't actually amount to anything. The cast is annoying, the story isn't good and feels unfinished, the platforming veers between too simplistic and too finnicky (at times even seeming broken, as certain invisible bits of geometry halt you or the mechanics simply don't work correctly). I wanted to root for it, but it was just overall pretty bad. Apparently only 5.8% of its xbox playerbase has even finished it... I can understand why.