Before we knew what a horrible year 2020 would be, developer studio UmaikiGames released their Switch game Skellboy. One year after this release, the boys are back with an updated version of their action RPG adventure. Say hello to Skellboy Refractured, a game where you play as Skippy, a cute little skeleton fighting monsters and the undead. The game was released today and it has a launch sale so you can get it with 10% off! I can already tell you that this game is absolutely worth the money.
We played Skellboy Refractured for over 8 hours on PC.
What we liked!
- Graphics: When I first started playing this game and saw the graphics, it took a little getting used to, I’ll be honest. As the developers state themselves, it’s ‘a vibrant 2D pixel art style that comes to life in a 3D world’. So while you walk around in a 3D world, the characters, objects, etc. look like they’re made out of paper or something. However, after playing a few minutes, I got used to it and loved the art style. It’s a very colorful world filled with bright characters, and it all looks very cute and appealing.
- Become your enemy: You start as Skippy, a skeleton. But as soon as you meet your first enemy, you’ll see that you can become anything you want. I absolutely loved this feature. You just killed a zombie or goblin? Why not swap your head for its head! Or its torso or feet. This way you can swap your set of bones for over 100 different body parts and items of enemies (and friends). It’s actually quite interesting to try out every part because some (sets) give you special abilities like more health. I ended up switching my character a lot, not just based on the extra effects, but just the looks, because I thought this was a great extra in the game.
- Extra content for PC: Skellboy was originally a Nintendo Switch game. For the PC release, some extra playable content was added. There’s a randomized dungeon where you can spend quite a while. There’s also a New Game+ that unlocks after you finished the game. This extra mode has new items, enemies, and challenges. Also new in this PC edition, is the co-op mode. There’s a local co-op mode but playing with Steam Remote Play is possible as well. I tested the local co-op mode for a bit with my boyfriend and everything worked as it should. It was fun playing with two, definitely because I could not seem to get past a boss by myself lol. I believe it was a good call of the developer that they added some extra content for the PC release because the Switch version only has about 8 hours of gameplay I read.
- Gameplay: Travelling through different scenarios was really fun. I enjoyed the environment every single time, even when I had to go back to a location I had already been, it didn’t feel at all repetitive. The enemies aren’t too difficult to deal with and the boss fights are challenging. There are plenty of checkpoints (and three saving slots) where you can save your game so there’s absolutely no need to worry about dying and losing a lot of progress.
- Achievements: I’m not an achievement hunter at all myself, but Skellboy has a lot of achievements ready to unlock so I thought I’d mention it for those who do love unlocking everything. There are 71 achievements, and since there are this many, you can probably guess that some are really easy to unlock. You can see them both in the game, as well as on the Steam page. So if you want to keep them a surprise (which I think is more fun), be sure to only look at them in-game.
Somewhere between
- Camera: You cannot adjust the camera yourself, which I didn’t really mind. However, sometimes there were angles in the game I could not see because of this. For example, I was walking in a dungeon and for a few seconds, I could not see my character move because he was behind a wall. I, for one, like having eyes on my character at all times, because now I was worried I could not see certain destroyable items behind said wall, you know.
- Sound: You’re either going to love or hate the sound design. I loved it. It’s so energetic and matches perfectly with the vibrant graphics. Walking around, jumping, and attacking all have sounded as well, and they are just as lively. However, during some parts of the game, the soundtrack seemed to just disappear for some reason? These moments became a little bleak, so I would definitely suggest keeping the soundtrack throughout the whole game.
What we disliked
- Bugs: I do have one small remark that annoyed me from time to time. For example, at one point I was walking around with my sword, and it just disappeared into the ground. Or my feet just became one with the stairs I was walking on. It felt a little unnatural and threw me off a bit. These seem like small ‘bugs’ that probably won’t bother everyone but I do think it’s worth mentioning and looking into.
CONCLUSION
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Head of PC team. PC, Switch, and Xbox game reviewer. Also a marketeer, concert and animal lover, and photographer in training 🙂
Steam: Mauitje
Xbox: Mauitjexo
