A touch of Shantae, a pinch of Corpse Bride, a ‘sidekick’ companion in the form of a bat-like A Vampire Story but more similar to Sonic’s Tails, and echoes of Cuphead in terms of visual and sound details. Skelattack must be credited for wanting to pose a playable challenge and not just a walk, in addition to seeking his own personality. But the result ends up being less than what it promises, especially to be the standard-bearer of the new indies edited by Konami.

“Drive your chariot and your plow over the bones of the dead”William Blake

The Invasion of the Living

In the usual Burton twist, Skelattack presents us with a world of the Dead, an Underworld or ‘Underworld’ in which precisely the Living is bad, and the dead, happy discussing the existence and the past – as there is no one. Good jazzy orchestra in the canteen-, they are being invaded by tall, rough guys with robotic movements and who want to loot their ‘loot’. And right here the game starts, which immediately shows its cards: here we have come to jump, dive and repeat, always repeat.

The story is minimal, although the enormous verbiage of the characters -almost sometimes it seems that some gullies from the Underworld of Tarantino & Avary have written the dialogues- tries to give it weight. Sometimes they succeed -Imber and Skully’s relationship-, but other times they become empty and they cut your rhythm in the middle of a playable session for attending an existentialist exhibition is annoying, plain and simple.

In any case, this is a classic platform, so the narrative is on a secondary plane and what is important is the playable part. Here you will find 5 themed levels with their 5 Final Bosses and a design that looks at the Metroidvania school, but without applying it to its ultimate consequences – think of a Castlevania Mirror of Fate. There is backtracking, but not so much, and to lighten it there are also a series of portals that move us from one point to another of the level, so in about 5 hours on average you will have finished it.

Usually, the levels do not stand out too much, although some like the one in the Crypt do have their point, because in this case, it brings back those obligatory sections of platforming in the 3rd and 4th Gen in which the advance depended on the lighting of the elements of the level, with platforms and enemies that appear and disappear. Special mention to unlocking skills, which increase the pace of the game, especially when your bat companion begins to be able to use her ‘skills’ -one of them in the true Tails style with Sonic-, which gives her more vibe to the gameplay.

The main basis of this 2D title is platforms, pure and hard. Jumping is what is mostly done, followed by exploration and combat, which is rather in the background and sometimes forced – to put a random enemy here and there on the places that we have to jump or guarding a key or switch that we must find / press. In fact, the only grace of combat is when you face a Final Boss, which are at least more varied and fun. The rest of the enemies in the level seem to be set to stop you or make you press another button apart from the jump since the combat system is simple.

A design error

Looking for experiences closer to Super Meat Boy or Cuphead, that Skellatack wants to be a difficult game we like. As if it were a bad phase made in the editor of Mario Maker to challenge friends, each level from the same start in phase 0 to learn to control the fundamentals of the game is a challenge, sometimes crazy for the number of elements of the stage, mobile or static, that is going to kill you. Because right on that wall you have to climb there is a crossbow shooting at you, spikes and huge blades or the boomerang of an enemy, everything coordinated to give us a tiny and exact window of space and timing to hit and move on to the next area. Or die over and over again until we succeed.

What we cannot forgive him is that what could have been a deliberately difficult and enormously gratifying joy to overcome – like Cuphead – becomes a frustrating experience at times due to an element of its gameplay: bouncing on surfaces. Like many 2D platforms, Skelattack has a climbing movement on targets that is done by bouncing with the character from one side to the other, an action that does not require a spider/stick + jump button, but only the spider/stick, moving them from one to the other so that our character climbs the surface to the end.

You can help yourself with the jump and the (very useful) double jump -in fact, you get to use a triple jump in the game-, but the problem is that if you don’t maintain the momentum, the character slides across the surface until falling or until you start bouncing to the other side.

The problem is fixed this action on the stick – crosshead exclusively, since apart from feeling strange and unnatural, many, many times it will be this damn movement that will take you directly to some spikes and bam! Instantly dead. Yes, we have a checkpoint next door, but despairs not so much because the area is difficult, but because the gameplay becomes unnecessarily complicated For this reason since it does not have the stick + jump button combination to bounce and give you greater control.

Something that also affects the mechanics of collecting crystals to unlock things, since although you lose them when you die, in the style of other games the loot stays there waiting for you. The bad thing is that if you die several times in a row at the same point, You will lose all the crystals no matter how much care you have put into keeping them with you.

It is a pity, the truth, that This control mapping was chosen to simplify handling ends up being the opposite and affects Skellattack gameplay, which on the other hand is like that of Cuphead in terms of very tight character control, the kind where you feel like you have complete control of this and it perfectly obeys your orders, without lag, or going one frame further or further. Fluid control with a single black point.

Visual Miscellaneous

One of its strong points, without a doubt, when you play Skelattack its graphic environment enters you first through the eyes. The designs seem to take on that animated ‘cartoon’ touch that always gives a game its own personality. It is not as brutal as Cuphead -basically there is no game like that-, but taking ideas from here and there they succeed a personal art design and beautiful to see that could be transferred to a ‘Stop Motion’ film.

At the level of execution moves well and is very fluid, but in sections such as enemies or elements here and there on stage, the potential that was on paper is more intuited than the final result shown on the screen for reasons of time and/or budget – after all, we speak of an indie.