Indie games are all the rage the last few years, with high-quality properties increasingly making their way to market either directly or through publishers rather than being funded by major studios. Square, Steam, GOG, and many other companies are supporting a lot of these efforts, and Kickstarter has played a huge part in the transformation of independent game releases. One company that has been conspicuously silent however is Konami. With only a handful of games coming out, the loss of Kojima, and other setbacks, Konami has managed to fall off the radar of many gamers. But it seems Konami is taking the right steps now, as they’ve just partnered with indie studio Ukuza to bring out Skelattack.
Skelattack, as you might surmise by the title, is a game that features an animated skeleton, aptly named Skully, and his bat buddy Imber. Skully is recently deceased and has been tasked with both finding out why humans are invading the dungeon that the dead reside in and fulfilling his Remembering, a rite of passage for the recently passed. With a huge number of quips, jokes, and groan-worthy commentary, Skelattack leads you through an surprisingly well-written and interesting story focusing on the exploits of Skully and Imber.
The first thing you’ll notice about Skelattack is the cartoonish animation. This is a game that looks like a cartoon from the ground up. All the animation, background art, everything about it is like a living, breathing cartoon. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to the only other animation-styled game of this type in recent memory, Cuphead, but this is a fundamentally different feel than that title. Skelattack is more like a stylized doodle-book of an artist, lovingly rendered into a full-fledged world. Where Cuphead mimicked the style of 1930s cartoons with great success, Skelattack is entirely its own beast, a creation that stands on its own and doesn’t seem to draw from any outside influences. The music is jaunty, the artwork is smooth and crisp, and everything about Skully’s environment oozes charm. But it’s not all as playful as you might think.
Once you start playing Skelattack, you’ll realize quite quickly that this is not a casual game by any means. This is one serious platformer and it requires split-second precision, patience, and attention to detail in almost every aspect. Skelattack is hard. Like Dark Souls hard. Surpassing a death count of 350 isn’t even surprising in a game like this and Skelattack tracks your deaths throughout its 3-4 hours length. It is an absolutely grueling game, and devilishly fun to boot or it wouldn’t even be worth looking it. Levels are long, complex, and require some backtracking, and many different types of environmental hazards can kill you instantly at a touch. Fortunately, there are multiple resurrection points in almost every room and you are instantly whisked back to the last one you touched with no load time, or the game would be utterly unbearable. But that’s the great thing about Skelattack. It’s designed so that you die over and over but it isn’t an inconvenience and you’re forced to improve if you want to proceed. Sure, you might die 20-30 times on a single ridiculously challenging jump, but even though there’s no penalty for death other than losing a few blue gems, you feel like you’ve really accomplished something when you get through a particularly challenging area.
As you progress you’ll slowly acquire items and abilities which empower Skully to succeed in his quest. Bone boomerangs, health spells, weapon and skill upgrades, bone broth, and more will help you brave the perils of the dungeon and stop the filthy humans from invading. Filthy humans. Yuck. However, be aware that power-ups can absolutely be missed entirely and missing them will make the game exponentially harder. For example, Imber’s hearling ability is hidden in a particular section of the dungeon. The character that gives it to you is visible, but nothing in the game forces you to take that side passage to get to him, so you can just go past because, for example, you’re health is low (or you’re an idiot like some of us). This leaves you too weak to survive some of the boss battles and environmental hazards later on and can cause an exponential increase in your death count, although that count has no actual bearing on the game itself.
Regardless, you’ll be running, jumping, and bounding across the length and breadth of the dungeon in no time. This isn’t a long game and if you really sit down with it , Skelattack will only take you around 4 hours unless you suck heinously and don’t have the reflexes you used to (also like some of us…). There are however, a few issues with Skelattack. The biggest problem here was definitely the collision detection. While Skelattack is a very smooth game that runs well and loads fast, even on the Switch, the characters are rather large and the jumps and fighting are exceptionally precise. It’s quite hard to tell where the edge of your hitbox is, which makes it easy to die over and over and over and over and over again. Missed the jump by a couple pixels? Dead. Didn’t move back a pixel or two? Dead. Skelattack is a constant battle between the beauty of the graphics and the frustration of knowing that your hitbox is way too damn big and you’re going to die again and again. To be fair, if it wasn’t for that challenge, you’d probably finish the game in an hour, but it’s almost an artificial way to increase the difficulty, rather than an organic one.
In addition to the hit box, a few other things are odd about Skelattack. You collect blue gems to use as currency, but there are only a handful of places to use said currency and usually, the dungeon areas are so hard that by the time it’s time to spend your cash, you don’t have any left. This inevitably leads to farming blue gems in previously played areas just to upgrade your skills to survive the game’s brutalizing difficulty. Ironically, most of the bosses are ridiculously easy and the real challenge here is simply to survive to get to them, but that still minimizes the value of the blue gems, an odd choice especially considering they’re hidden all over the game like they’re valuable. Add to that the potential to miss items, equipment and skills while still completing the game and you’ve got a few few missteps in an otherwise incredibly solid and fun adventure. By the end of the game, there were still a lot of blank spots in the inventory screen and no clue as to what they might be or where they might be found. None whatsoever. It’s an odd choice to hide items with no clues in levels that are so frustratingly difficult that you’ll be afraid to re-enter some of them once you’ve completed them.
Ultimately though, aside from a few questionable design choices, Skelattack is an absolutely fantastic game. Skully and Imber are simply awesome together and honestly probably deserve their own animated series, if not at least a sequel. All the characters are well-written and interesting, and the plot is quite well-done. The game is hard but playable, and the simple fact of the matter is that it’s a fun game that’s well-worth playing. Weighing in at $20 isn’t a reach for this one even though it’s a bit short as the quality of the game itself more than justifies the expense. Hopefully this is only the start for Konami on a return to greatness, as they were once one of the greatest third party game studios of all time! Kudos to them for supporting Ukuza and bringing Skelattack to us! Konami realized how great it was and you will too!
This review was based on a digital copy of Skelattack provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and was absolutely excellent in both. It should be noted that Skelattack lends itself well to undocked play on the Switch and is a joy to play, even on Joycons (no pun intended). Skelattack is also available for PS4, Xbox One, and Steam! All photos are of actual gameplay! Now enjoy some skeletal-based music from the Delta Rhythm Boys! Also, attention Konami! You NEED to make a new Suikoden. Make a new Suikoden, damn it! Just do it!
