Background: Skully
Foreground: Jolly Jumper, Strong Silent, Fleet Footer
Foreground: Jolly Jumper, Strong Silent, Fleet Footer
Skully is a puzzle-platformer game developed by Canadian company Finish Line Games, released through Steam in 2020.
A little skull awakens on a sandy beach of an uninhabited island, gaining sentience after contact with enchanted clay and having the ability to move around by rolling. Bestowed life by an earth spirit called Terry, the skull - nicknamed "Skully", because why not - is out to explore the world, tagging behind Terry, who wants to seek his estranged elemental siblings whom had since driven apart after a feud centuries ago and now rules four different corners of the island.
Of course, little Skully - which the player controls - isn't a rolling skull for the entire game. Thanks to Terry's magic, every now and then Skully can immerse itself into clay pools, and transform into different golems with various abilities. And soon enough, it's clear that Terry and his siblings aren't willing to collaborate and settle a centuries-old feud. Somehow, it's up to Skully to prevent the rogue elementals from destroying earth.
The game is available for the PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
The story of a tiny skull, destined to save the world...
- Action Bomb: The game's most common mook enemy, sentient water-blobs with faces, will explode themselves whenever Skully (either in skull or golem form) approaches, and getting caught in their blast radius deals damage. They don't die after exploding though, simply reforming themselves, and only Skully's Strong Golem form can defeat them for good.
- Attack of the Monster Appendage:
- Levels set in swamps and underground pools will often have gigantic black tentacles sticking out the surface, attempting to knock Skully into the water. The tentacles are fixed on a single spot and their owners remain unseen.
- One of the last areas have Skully trying to avoid a gigantic stone hand summoned by Terry who chases him around a cavern, which can be spotted via Worm Sign.
- Advancing Wall of Doom:
- Skully and Terry's first confrontation with Wanda doesn't exactly go as planned, with a pissed-off Wanda sending a tidal wave that washes Terry aside, and Skully needs to outrun the water or lose a life. The fact that Skully's sole golem form at the time is the Mighty Glacier isn't helping.
- Fiona sends a lava wave at Skully that it needs to escape from. This time there isn't even a clay pool for Skully to access it's golem forms.
- Bittersweet Ending: Terry, in his final form, has been ultimately defeated and all his elemental siblings released, but the Heart Of Nature has grown unstable with a visible crack. Skully ultimately decides to use itself to seal the crack, performing a Heroic Sacrifice - despite Terry begging Skully to stop, because there's got to be a better way. Eventually, the Heart is restored and everything's back to normal, just as Mother Nature reveals herself to the siblings. As Terry, Wanda, Brent and Fiona holds hands, the screen fades out as the story ends.
- Blackout Basement: The underground cavern stage Skully ends up in after escaping Fiona's wrath is pitch-black, with earth cubes coated in glowing fungus being one of the very few sources of illumination. It gets real difficult in one of the dark sections with Skully hopping over platforms while trying not to fall off a lake.
- Cave Behind the Falls: The waterfall in Wanda's swamp has one such cave behind the cascading water, which Skully can enter by jumping through. Some health loss is inevitable, but there's a conveniently-placed clay pool behind for Skully to heal itself.
- Checkpoint: Clay pools serves this purpose in the game, and Skully can use them to regenerate it's health besides swapping his Golem forms.
- Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity: Skully needs to scale a steep cliff (in skull form) in order to reach Brent's hideout, and the wind elemental periodically sending powerful breezes capable of pushing Skully to it's death isn't helping.
- Cycle of Hurting: There's a lot of these during gameplay; getting stuck in shallow water in Skully's skull form and trying to jump upwards without success, running in Fleet Footer form through a rainy area only to be caught in a corner, unable to access an available Golem form in time, all which shaves away Skully's health via water erosion until a life is depleted.
- Elemental Embodiment: The elemental siblings are made of the elements they represent, Terry having a body consisting of earth, rock and grass, Wanda as a humanoid made of water, Brent a living tornado with a face and Fiona as a lava humanoid shrouded in flames.
- I Fell for Hours: Terry and Skully both fell from the heavens after they're tricked by Brent into climbing all the way up his mountains. It's as long a fall as expected.Terry: Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
[cue LOADING screen]
Terry: ...aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! - Classical Elements Ensemble: The four elemental siblings who are Elemental Embodiments: Terry has a body made of earth, rock and grass, Wanda is a humanoid made of water, Brent is a living tornado with a face, and Fiona is a lava humanoid shrouded in flames. And they're unable to see eye-to-eye, with Terry being the only one actively taking action to pull his family together.
- Golem: Skully can turn into clay golems by sinking into pools of enchanted clay. It can even eject a golem form to turn into another, should the clay pool is close enough.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Skully spends the whole game collecting golden leaves, of which there are several hundreds scattered about each level. Gathering enough leaves will unlock artwork.
- Lethal Lava Land: Fiona the Fire Elemental's stage is set within a volcano, and it's filled with lava lakes and rivers that Skully needs to cross via platforms. Falling in will lead to A Molten Date with Death, expectedly, and after Terry made Fiona really mad she then raises the lava level, and Skully must out-climb or be baked alive.
- Lily-Pad Platform: The swamp and lake levels has Skully (either in skull or golem form) crossing the water with gigantic lily pads. They're either fixed on the spot, floating freely, or tends to rise and sink at random - missing a jump leads to Skully losing a life.
- Mêlée à Trois: After Terry's attempts at bridging his siblings' issues goes south, leading to Wanda, Brent and Fiona fighting each other in a cutscene with Terry and Skully shoved aside. An agitated Terry has to interrupt them by eventually sucking all of them into his vase and declaring if they're not going to work together, he'll resolve things his way.
- Platform Hell: The game runs on platforming, from the lily-pads in swamps to stone pillars leading to the heavens and floating rocks atop lava. It's in every stage for good measure.
- Run or Die: If lacking a golem form, Skully's only means of dealing with enemies is to flee by rolling away at maximum speed. Heck, the Fleet Footer and Jolly Jumper golem forms doesn't have attack abilities either and can only speed or jump through obstacles.
- Sibling Rivalry: The game's plot is kicked off by the feuding of four elemental siblings which threatens to destroy an island, and the quartet's eldest brother, Terry, trying to set things straight only for his attempts to backfire hilariously. Unlike other examples of the trope however, the four siblings do eventually make amends by the game's conclusion.
- Sound-Only Death: A non-dying variant, but Terry finally losing it an devouring Brent, Wanda and Fiona are only heard in the background of a level near the end. When Skully meets Terry again, he's already assimilated all his siblings.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Terry's reaction when realizing his magic has brought life to... a single skull. Without a body attached.Terry: Wait, where's the rest of you? Ah, it doesn't matter! I can work with this...
- Suspiciously Cracked Wall: Tends to show up every now and then, where a wall blocking Skully's only way to proceed has web-like cracks on their surface. Skully needs to access a Strong Golem to punch the wall down.
- Storybook Opening: The game starts with a book with Skully on it's front cover flipping open, which leads to the title screen. After Skully's Heroic Sacrifice and with Terry making amends with his siblings, the book then closes before the credits.
- Toppled Statue: What makes Terry finally decide to revolt - seeing his three siblings Wanda, Brent and Fiona fighting, and destroying the giant memorial statue of Mother Earth, their mother. Something in Terry finally snapped...
- When It Rains, It Pours: There's a stage where Skully needs to flee from a rain, which delivers buckets trying to dissolve it. Even in Fleet Footer form and dashing at maximum speed Skully barely makes it to the other shelter. Justified because it's magic rain delivered by Wanda.
- Never forget what Skully did here today. For you, and for everyone. Draw on your friend's courage, for strength. Together.
