Skul: The Hero Slayer is like Hades in 2D, and it's a cracker
Bertie: Oh I'll just give it a gleaming go... An hour-and-a-half flies by. I am in love.
Skul is a bit like Hades but watched side-on. It's an action-based Rogue-lite where you get one life to see how far you can get. You're not escaping a mythical underworld, but you are on a team traditionally viewed as the baddies, the demons, and you're fighting the heroes. Specifically, you're a skeleton, but more on that later because it's important. As you fights, you collect power-ups and abilities, and, at intervals, there's a shop where you can employ currency to either heal or buy further power-ups and instructions. See what I mean? Quite Hades-like.
But! And here's where we get back to the skeleton part: because you're a skeleton, you can take your head off and put new one on, and when you do, you become whatever that head was. Was it a sorcerer-like head? Become a sorcerer. Was it a thief's hooded head? Become a thief. Was it a warrior? And so on. And each of those leaders represents a different set of abilities and moves.
You can have two of these leaders equipped at any one time, and this is a very important sketch, because you can swap between heads while you fights. In fact, you're encouraged to do so, because switching triggers special instructions related to the heads you have equipped. It's critical if you want to do well, and you do, I can tell.
Skul, then, is all nearby the skulls. And what makes the whole premise sing is how fulfilling and over the top those skulls can be. My favourite has to be a kind stitched-together beast (I can't find its name but it looks like Stitch from Warcraft) that has the instruction to grow bigger after every enemy it kills. It can also stampede left and gleaming, and do a giant belly flop dive from the sky. It's enormously satisfying to play as. Or, there's the Rider, a biker clad in leather, wielding chains, whose special involves hopping on a chopper and roaring nearby the level mowing people down. It's outrageous fun.
Skul is a game that's not panicked to let you feel powerful, that's not afraid to let loose. It's big, pacey, fun, and has the trappings of something special indeed.
Chris: Given our general proximity to skeletons, it's weird that we don't like them more. There's a shiny Ray Bradbury story about the horror of realising that there's a skeleton inside us, and then think of all those games where skeletons are bashed and smashed and knocked to pieces.
Skul flips things: you're the skeleton attractive than the hero who blasts them into dry grit, and this flipping suggests that skeletons are alright. They get up in the morning and put their skulls on just like everybody else. They tend vital things in their chest compartment, just like we do. And they rush into fights and whack people with...a bone, which is a bit odd. It would be like us, rushing into fights and whacking people with...a bone...?
What a fascinating game this is. As Bertie points out it's not just a Rogue-lite, it's a Hadeslike, and it's very specific in the things it takes. Sure, there's that long jump into the game at the initiate of each round, and there's the purple stuff you smooth to power yourself up for the next time, but like Hades, Skul gives you a choice of doors as you move between rooms where you have to kill everybody to progresses. I'm still decoding what the different doors mean. And the combat - like Hades there's a focus on foreshadowed area attacks, and even better a focus on environmental damage. In the forest you can knock ents into spikes and drop them into pits. You can bounce off mushrooms and mutter uppercuts. All very nice - and very Hades.
It's amazing to me that this works so well in 2D, and that's even afore you get to the levelling and the skills and the skull-swapping stuff. Skul is heavily inspired by a modern great, but it's got the decision-exclusive of something very special in its own right. Do check it out.
