Skul: The Hero Slayer has no originality, but no heart or excitement

Few people stopped listening to Nirvana as soon as they realized how much Nirvana sounds like the Pixies, but Skul: The Hero Slayer can be hurt by the similarity with other popular games of the past few years.

Skul is a 2D platform with roguelite elements, so every run is randomized to some extent, and you earn money – in this case ‘dark quartz’ – with which you can buy permanent upgrades to your character between attempts. The twist is that you are a small skeleton soldier and that the ‘heroes’ are the ones you are looking for. The role reversal is pretty weak in practice, especially since the story is rendered in English which is roughly translated, but luckily SouthPAW Games is the language of game design perfectly fluent.

The protagonist’s head is just a skull – he’s a skeleton after all – so he can swap his own noggin with a wide variety of other heads, each with its own powers, attacks and abilities. You can hold up to two different heads to switch between your supplies, although there is a cooling that is activated each time you switch between them. You will want to exchange between them regularly as you learn the ins and outs of each of the areas of the game.

Not only does a new head give you new ways to attack your enemies, but each one can also change the way you move, or your ability to act defensively. As if that’s not enough, the heads also allow you to do different things as you alternate between them, which means the attacks and weaknesses of each skull matter, as well as how they work together.

SouthPAW Games Advertising Skul as ‘70 different playable characters ’, and it claims to be honest, although I have not yet seen every head myself. 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 see from the design of the door whether you are going to tackle a boss. Although the upgrades are 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.

That might sound a bit off. Other roguelite games offer similar ways to expand your load, and 2D side-scrolling games with cute, retro-style characters mixed with modern mechanics are almost their own genre at this point. But in play Skul: The Hero Slayer, I never bothered to see so many of these individual ideas, because each one is so well executed and they work so seamlessly together. Originality in itself is an overrated trait; something that has been done before, but is still performed with this skill level, and grooming tends to feel fresh, even if you can draw a straight line from existing games to the design of Skul.

Image: SouthPAW Games / Neowiz

Then there’s how damn well the fight feels throughout the game. Unlike most platform players from the NES and SNES eras, and even most retro action games of today, the enemies are in Skull: The Hero Slayer can not hurt you. In fact, you can walk right through them, and they can walk right through you. The only thing that does damage in both directions is an actual attack, which means that it is crucial to learn how to move through enemies and their attacks, as well as to group the enemies together and carry out their attacks with you. interrupt.

Gathering a large group of bad things in one place and chopping them through with the wolf skull is a pleasure. SouthPAW has apparently mastered the intricate skill of designing ‘game feel’, making every fight feel thick, meaty and satisfying. Cutting through and cutting through crowds of enemies and learning how to disrupt, block or avoid their own attacks takes in enough brain power that it’s hard to think of anything else while I play, and me in a welcome state like the rest of the day’s worries is being pushed out of my head.

It helps, as the newly issued Cyber ​​shadow, Skul is a study of how to make enemy attacks readable and easy to make out if you pay attention. The trick is to place the indicators for each attack in different places around the screen, and distinguish them from each other so that the player learns how to read the screen.

Some enemies charge a straight-forward shot that places a laser-thin red line on the screen as they aim before firing. Other enemies send roots through the ground beneath you, causing the ground to glow briefly before you are hit with 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 have to constantly scan the entire screen to make sure there is not a mob planning something while working on another group of enemies.

As impressive as these systems are in practice, SouthPAW is still not happy with the balance sheet and has promised Skul‘s Steam page to continue to distinguish each attack even more easily before it happens. If this 1.0 version, which takes the game outside of early access, is all that good, I can not wait to see how the developers improve on what they already have here.

Skul: The Hero Slayer has some rough edges, but I even found the unbalanced balance between the heads and power shots to be pleasant. It was exciting to look at an excessive build and kick hole, knowing that you could not return to anything with your next attempt. With a good build I almost felt more was at stake, no less. If I hadn’t made the runs far enough, I would have just been to blame.

It’s hard to even write that the music was repetitive, bordering on annoying, when so many other things with the game are so good, but there are enough mistakes of the kind to keep Skul: The Hero Slayer to stand next to the absolute best matches of the year. I can forgive seductive music, a clumsy translation, and derived roots if the rest of the game is such a model of precision and iterative design.

I do not doubt it Skul: The Hero Slayer will be further improved as further work is done, but this is a good time during the launch which is easy to recommend. It almost feels like the work of a coverband so good that you can not wait to see what they can do if they create something truly original.

Skul: The Hero Slayer is now available for PC, Mac and Linux, with a release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One coming out in 2021.