Skul

Playing Skul was a little frustrating to me. It's got some nice pixel art and the roguelike genre is ever-popular, but beyond that impression, there simply isn't much to be found here that other games haven't done better.

Combat consists of fighting common enemies, minibosses, and bosses. The common enemies aren't particularly interesting - there's not a lot of different types, and many of them (particularly the sword grunts) just sit there stunned as you mash an entire horde of them at once repeatedly. In later areas, some of the enemies are more interesting, but many of the enemies are also just slightly stronger versions with almost the same moveset. More variety in each area would have really helped these sections feel more interesting. Besides that, there is no procedural map generation - all of the maps are premade and you'll quickly see all of the layouts of them.

The mini-bosses are slightly more interesting, as there's 7 of them, and you fight random ones each time! Unfortunately, the later areas use the exact same pool of mini-bosses, except you fight multiple of them at once. The bosses at least are more interesting, featuring terrain, large and dramatic moves, and interesting boss phases.

Skul's namesake mechanic is the ability to pickup and upgrade Skulls, which give you new movesets to use each run. In principle, this is quite neat - the skulls tend to play pretty diversely, featuring different attacks, abilities, and dashes. Skulls can also be upgraded in rarity during runs. The only criticism of this mechanic that I have is that it's often unlikely that you'll upgrade the Common skulls to this point when the skulls that start at Unique give you such a massive headstart on how much currency you need to upgrade them.

Skul also features a relic system, like many other roguelikes, with two differentiating features: you can only hold nine total, and they also have traits that activate if you have enough of each. I feel like the game simply has too many traits, as I never felt the desire to chase traits over just getting the flat stat boosts (like bonus damage or health). Additionally, unlike other roguelikes, you get no choice of your equipment often times - clearing maps that reward equipment just gives you a random piece rather than a choice.

Lastly, Skul features a meta-progression system where gathering Dark Crystals grants you upgrades. I really dislike these systems when they offer you objectively better stats as it makes you feel like you're wasting your time on grinding runs until you have your stats fully maxed. The difference of dealing 60% more phys. and magic damage, bonus max health, and a revive per run is so massive, but it'll take you tons of grinding to get to it. I would've enjoyed an unlock system instead of this.

Ultimately, Skul is an okay game, but I can't say that I would recommend you play this versus any other action roguelite out there. I hate to say it, but Dead Cells simply feels like an objectively better version of this game, having a better progression system, procedural maps, better enemy and boss variety, and smoother combat.

I'd give Skul a 4/10. I would only recommend this to people who can't get enough of Dead Cells and simply want more content to play.

I always tell my friends I don't really like rogue-likes/lites but it's probably my most played genre only 2nd to jrpg's and platformers. A huge part of why I don't "like" them is that often times the combat and idea is very well done but it's stuck in the genre of rogue-like instead of being in a full fledged game like say Hollow Knight. Of course, the point of the genre is to generate that "one more run" feeling so I can't really fault it and it's entirely a me thing. That feeling is irrelevant to me because often times I'll finish these games in a few runs and have little motivation to do more runs with challenges enabled because artificially increasing the difficulty instead of adding new content feels very dull to me. I'll stand by that Dead Cells is my least favorite rouge-like because while the combat was phenomenal, I "finished" the game ridiculously fast and didn't really feel the need to unlock upgrades I missed when I had already seen the true ending at the time and won with the weapon I liked to play. I bring up Dead Cells because Skul feels very similar as far as the action aspect of the combat goes.

While Skul might not be so interesting on the platforming side like Dead Cells was, Skul's combat is interesting in that it revolves around you getting different Skulls that change your current class. These Skulls range in archetypes from things like archer, knight, barbarian, etc. with there being some more interesting and powerful ones like Rider, Warlock, Predator. If starting with a weaker Skull, you'll have opportunities to upgrade them a total of one to three times depending on what type of Skull you acquire. With you being able to swap between two Skulls, each with one or two skills and passives, the combat can get really interesting and ridiculous, often mimicking the sort of combat that Action KMMO's are known for, which makes sense since this game IS a Korean developed game. This works both well and against it for the game.

While I believe almost every Rogue-like has the big issues of some builds/loadouts/weapons just being either straight up more broken or more fun than others to a huge extent, it goes double so for Skul because the game gets notably difficult in the late portions to the point where you're just gonna have a bad time if you didn't choose to fully upgrade one Skull or didn't get lucky with finding a higher tier Skull. Enemy density and variety is huge in the late portions and bosses are pretty wild in their patterns so you absolutely want higher tier Skulls that can clear out mobs and survive bosses damage even if it means you won't be playing a particularly fun Skull. Bosses aside, it's not that enemies are particularly difficult, but the density and the scaling of their health is to the point where you don't want them alive for too long lest you get overwhelmed by the sheer amount or a combination of their attacks creates a situation where you take a ton of damage. Of course, the difficulty spike is offset by upgrading your base stats at your base after each run so eventually this becomes more manageable. I can personally appreciate the difficulty but some might find it a bit daunting. It doesn't seem anything interesting happens after you finish a run either but I also don't feel like doing another run because just finishing a single run seems to put closure on the story and nothing obvious unlocked. Which is fine by me honestly.

Aside from that there's not much else to say. It's pretty much your run of the mill 2d action rogue-like. I can't say much for the story since its extremely basic but also translated weirdly and I didn't really care to try and make sense of it. I guess if you like Dead Cells, you might enjoy or appreciate this, and if you love the genre, definitely check it out.

Not sure why people seem to have bounced off this game. It's got everything you want from a good rougelite: a fun base set of mechanics that gets built on at a steady pace, a vast array of possible synergies, and that one overpowered item you look for every run and then you end up beating the game with your starter.

And the story's not bad, I mean it's pretty simplistic and not told in the most artful way, but compelling enough. I like that the demons are the good guys, and like actually the good guys, not just the protagonists. And it even kind of manages to bear the emotional weight of those two endings.

It's certainly got some issues. The English translation is not great, and not just in terms of poor grammar or awkward phrasing, but they actually have inconsistent terminology, so that I wasn't sure at first if "HP barrier" and "shield" were counted as two different effects. There's also the fact there's no way to actually see what all of your currently active buffs/debuffs are, so there's just a bunch of little symbols down at the bottom of the screen and you sort of have to memorize the important ones. And frequently if there's a passive that's tracking a number (such as the count on turret quintessence (oh that's another one, I think they sometimes just say essence?)) the number will get obscured (and it's not like it's that easy to read to begin with).

I also never really saw the use case for having two skulls and switching back and forth. It's hard enough getting the bones to fully upgrade 1 skull, let alone two, and I don't feel like the items that focus on swapping are all that great (though I guess I didn't look at them that closely). Which is unfortunate since that's obviously a big part of the game that they'd like you to engage with.

Still, I had fun, and if you like roguelites where every run is a new discovery, you should check it out.