Skelattack Review
It’s now the second week of major protests for racial and social justice and some progress is being made. The four officers involved in the murder of George Floyd have been arrested and charged, “no-knock” warrants like those that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor have been banned in a few cities, the Confederate flag has been banned at NASCAR events, and at least one city has voted to dismantle their police force. In spite of this, people need to keep protesting, petitioning, and donating to worthy causes so that we can excise the deep-rooted problems within the American justice system. Amid this, I still feel weird about writing video game reviews, but will keep doing it because it gives me, and hopefully some of you, a way to rest your mind and recuperate from the stresses of modern American life. So this week, I took a look at Skelattack, a game that looks at a classic story from a new angle.
In Skelattack, a group of adventurers have stormed a dungeon full of the undead to retrieve a powerful artifact that will save the life of their king and now must defend the kingdom against a skeletal warrior who seeks to reclaim the treasure. However, unlike most other games, the dungeon-delving adventurers are actually villains who, unprovoked, attacked a peaceful town of undead just trying to live their afterlives and stole the Blue Flame, a magical item that can restore life to the dead. If the Blue Flame is taken above ground, all of the undead will die a permanent death, so Skully, champion of the undead, is dispatched to reclaim the treasure and save the underworld.
The biggest issue with Skelattack is that it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. As Skully, players must navigate the dangerous terrain of a classic adventuring dungeon, full of traps and perils normally meant to keep humans out, but must also contend with human invaders. This lack of focus made me unhappy as I played, because just when I was in the middle of a challenging platforming section, I had to stop and whack some stupid human with my sword a couple of times, entirely disrupting the flow I had developed. The platforming itself was good, with creative and sometimes infuriating challenges that pushed me to improve, but the combat was dull and poorly done. There’s only one attack button in Skelattack and no complexity to the combat. Without any combos or special attacks, all players do is mash one button at an enemy as Skully blandly swings his sword until the enemy dies. On top of all this is a weird attempt to be a Souls-like game. Because Skully is already dead, reducing his hit points to zero doesn’t accomplish much except for scattering his bones and wallet. Every time the player dies, they lose a portion of the crystalline money used in the afterlife and, should the player die again before reclaiming that portion, it is gone forever. This, combined with the fact that Skelattack’s levels are littered with instant-death terrain, meant money vanished at a lightning pace. However, this doesn’t matter very much because I never found it that difficult to take a detour to smash some humans to earn more, so losing money on death felt pointless. The absolute ephemerality of the money made it feel like a pointless inclusion and just one more way the game felt unfocused. This was especially painful, because 90% of all of the extra-challenging bonus platforming puzzles rewarded the player with money, and often very little of it, making the bonus challenge feel hollow and pointless, especially when there are other, more interesting upgrades in the game that players get without much challenge.
It’s worth mentioning that, in spite of all its other problems, Skelattack is adorable. The art style is part of why I was so interested in the game because all of the characters are rendered in a cute, cartoony style that is surprisingly good at conveying facial expressions on a protagonist who has no skin or muscles with which to express himself. Similarly adorable is Skully’s ally Imber, a rambunctious bat who travels with Skully and provides excellent conversation and counsel throughout the game. Not only is Imber delightfully animated, but the conversations Skully has with her are often genuinely heartwarming. Though Imber is the highest concentration of touching dialogue, there’s also quite a bit of writing regarding not being ruled by one’s past and growing as a person that, while maybe not revolutionary, is still well done. These moments are a nice change of pace from the rest of the game and help reinforce the game’s over-arching premise of the mistreatment of the undead by the humans. Admittedly, this style of introspection is very much overshadowed by the current political problems in America, but still they are good, gentle moments that allowed me to empathize with the characters.
In spite of how funny and cute it is, I don’t think you should buy Skelattack. It won’t commit to being either a sword-swinging adventure or a pulse-pounding platformer and there are better ways to spend $20. I think right now we should all be donating what we can to the victims of police and racial violence and organizations that will help improve the future of this country, like the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Community Bail Fund. If you’d like to help while also expanding your video game library, I recommend itch.io’s Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, a bundle with 1658 games and game development tools for as little as $5, but I’d say pay more if you’re able.
Don’t buy this game
I hate to say it, but there’s nothing here worth spending your money on
