Skelattack

Skelattack is a fascinating game from developer Ukuza and publisher Konami. It will mystify you with its lovely visuals and then punch you square in your nose with how tough it is. The platformer is a 2D Dark Souls. Intentional? I believe so. Wait, God, I hope so.

Let’s-a-GO!

The game is a hand-drawn adventure about a Skeleton named Skully. The story goes that Skully is about to celebrate his mortal death on Remembrance Day. The day reminds Skully about his life and puts him through trials in order to truly show what type of person he will/should be in the afterlife. What should be Skully’s Remembrance Day reveal turns into a disaster when elder skeleton Elzedon, the one who is supposed to help him through his day, is kidnapped by human beings that have raided the afterlife town of Aftervale, where Skully resides. The only way Skully can complete his day is by rescuing Elzedon, and to do that he must traverse through the lands around, inside, and outside of Aftervale.

The story behind Skelattack is at the very least sincere and somewhat melancholy. It reminds me a lot of Grim Fandango on a tonal scale. It’s quite thick with a melancholy, raining in London sort of feel. The story is the main driving point behind the game and cleverly crafted to keep you engaged. Why cleverly? Because you’re in for a test of your patience, strategic skills, and acceptance that it’s okay to die a bazillion times. I’m not kidding, you’re going to die a lot in this game. A. LOT.

The narrative is thick so that you don’t feel the devastation that games with its cruel action platforming that really puts your patience to the test. The game won’t apologize for its meticulously crafted levels, where you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings at all times. For example, the first level, located in a sewer and shortly after the elder has been kidnapped, requires Skully to cross alligator ridden waters, kind of like in Pitfall, where the gators will open and close their mouths systematically. If you land in their mouth, you die. The same level also presents spikes/shards of glass hanging from platforms, ceilings, and walls. If you touch one, you die. Each piece of glass is spaced out with sadistic care, where you have to jump or leap off edges perfectly or you will run into the glass — and you will die. To be open and honest, there is a very real chance that I died on the first level of the game over 50+ times. The first level of the game. FIRST.

They might as well as rename this Skully and the Lost Levels. I appreciate the design and the fact that you can’t just run through the game, but, wow, the game is hard. It’s not impossible, but it’s certainly hard. The difficulty doesn’t stop at the level design!

The bosses are a different type of evil. The first boss you run into is a Viking of sorts that will smash you with a giant hammer, then mix it up a bit with throwing axes as metal pieces rain down in mid-fight, while also trying to smash you with a hammer. I must have died about 20+ times with this guy until I saw the pattern, which helped me to stop cursing. The bosses are a weird relief as compared to the levels, but still a different type of difficulty that will frustrate in different ways. Anyway, once the Viking was down and dead, the game rewards you with something special, then moves you along. The second boss? Good lord, I won’t talk about that fight. It’s emotionally too painful.

Before you assume you should avoid this game because of difficulty, just stay with me a moment. The game knows itself and its purpose and doesn’t try to shroud you in some misconception about why it exists. It’s pretty blatant in its intentions. Every aspect of it is difficult and the only real way it tames said difficulty is through guaranteed checkpoints.

There are blue torches everywhere in the game, which act as checkpoints. If you reach them, you respawn at that torch after dying. There are so many of these that the difficulty of the game is forgivable. The fact that you have an infinite amount of lives helps as well, as it means that the game knows what it’s going to put you through. There were so many times in the game where I just breathed a sigh of relief just hitting those checkpoints. An honest to God sigh of relief. Out loud. My kids thought I was dying sometimes because I breathed so heavily.

Normally, I wouldn’t find this type of game fun. I have never been a fan of Dark Souls or Bloodborne, so why would/should I accept this type of game? The ‘why’ falls to the story and the RPG backend. The story is obvious, as it seems sincere in its telling of Skully’s life/afterlife and uncovering who he is. This game presents a solid journey and executes that visually, verbally, and through a solid amount of heart. His bat friend and the personalities he meets along the way, including a Rat King, also make the adventure work. The creativity that was poured into this game from Ukuza was hard to ignore, even when I was cursing the heavens through the game. The story helped to make this journey easier and understandable. More importantly, the story gave me motivation to see Skully through to his end (again). The narrative design of the game from story to backend is thick in thought and good on its intentions. I’m an enormous fan of good stories. I’m glad that Ukuza spent some time refining and executing this one to balance out sadness, happiness, and conclusion. It also helped to give purpose through the bad times. There were plenty more of those.

The RPG side of tracks makes it easy to get engaged with the Skelattack’s world and keep exploring, even in its harshly planned design. Finding items, exploring different areas, and gathering enough coin/gems to improve Skully is good motivation to stick it through. The exploratory moments of the game help to also remind how big the world is that Ukuza built for Skully. There is a lot of areas to explore and find items that you might have missed. This platformer might make you angry as hell, but the above elements help in keeping that player agency moving forward. There was a lot of obvious love and care by the devs, that it is hard to ignore.

Another positive of the game is the hand-drawn animation. While not the level of Cuphead, I still got a nice Cuphead vibe from the care put into how the animation looks. It looked like it could be a Cartoon Network show, kind of like The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. It was gorgeous and visually appealing and a solid selling point for the game. It was another distraction from the game’s difficulty, which will always be present.

That said, and I can’t say this enough, the game is difficult. It’s sadistic and mean. It wants you to fail but rewards you for your journey at times. The difficulty might be a bit much for some gamers, which is understandable, but the above-mentioned elements (story, backbone, visuals) help to balance out the game out, so it doesn’t feel/seem impossible.

Overall, Skelattack is a solid game that will put you to the test as much as it will mesmerize you with story and visuals. It might be a bit much for some, but the story makes the journey worth the trouble.