Skellboy Refractured – PC Review

Skellboy Refractured is a PC release from UmaikiGames who’s original Skellboy was released on the Switch a year ago, with added features and updates. You Play as Skippy who is tasked to stop the heartbroken court magician, who was rejected by the princess, from destroying the kingdom with his army of monsters and undead. You must fight your way through multiple areas and find new weapons and body parts to enhance and overcome obstacles in this cute Action RPG.

Skellboy is a fantastic Action RPG with multiple biomes that include the castle, dungeons, and the surrounding areas giving you a lot of variety in the game. It also has trace elements of a metroidvania, such as finding upgrades and needing to backtrack through levels to advance further.

Running through the biomes for the first time is a fantastic experience with many variations that make each location feel unique from all others. Even the torture room has different variations from the other dungeons that it’s attached to. Returning to them at a later time, it’s easier to run through it but it still keeps its charm and I never really despised one location over the others.

The enemies in the game pose their own challenges and required strategies to defeat them. It’s not overbearing in the way you approach them, but it keeps the flow mixed instead of it being just a hack and slash type game.

Zombies, Knights, Birds, Goblins, and more will be encountered throughout your journey with some enemies having variants to them, even if it only seems to me to be a color change. They’re well detailed and the animations are solid even though they are limited to the Paper Mario style the world resides in.

Skippy himself has a very unique attribute to him since he’s a skeleton, he can swap his head, torso, and feet out with over 100 different body parts. Some give more health, some allow for a special attack, and some full sets give a special bonus. If you were to fully equip the zombie outfit, its special property is that no zombies in the game will attack you, but with the tradeoff that it has the least amount of heath of all the body parts. The body parts can be found by killing enemies, completing quests, or for the golden armor, forging them in the treasury. Skippy also comes with five unique weapons to clobber his foes, a sword, club, axe, spear, and wand are at your disposal with unique types to be found all around the kingdom.

They also have different swing styles, with the spears being able to be thrown, and the wands having different spells, giving you a wide number of options to vanquish the undead. The Club was my go-to because of its charged slam ability to destroy groups of enemies.

Since this is a PC release from a Switch game, they have added on some new elements to make it worthwhile. Two-player co-op is available on Steam remote play, so you don’t have to always wait for your friend to come over to play together. There is a New Game+ mode that has new items, enemies, and challenges. Sadly, I have not started the new game yet but I may leave a small review down in the comments about it when I get the chance. They have added more than 20 new items, improved the gameplay, and added a new randomized dungeon. The Dungeon is a fun add-on that gives the game hours of more content and gameplay.

Trying to reach the bottom can be quite the challenge. When you enter the submarine dungeon, you are stripped of all weapons and armor and are in the hub of the dungeon. In the beginning, you will locate a shopkeeper who you can later buy items to help you. You can buy these items with gems you find in the dungeon. You just need the shopkeep to fish them up when you find them. You can also do this with weapons and armor to stash them away for your next run through the dungeon and give you an even better advantage. It’s a lot of fun and I have spent the better half of about two hours playing it the first time.

Graphically, its cubed pixel art is cute and they make it part of the story. Being set in the cubed kingdom and always hoping you come back with all four corners. It adds the art style into the story, and I love that about this game. Sound design is also huge with wonderful music and the transitions the music makes for different areas are flawless and charming. There are some areas that don’t have music and all you can hear are the footsteps of the characters. This is one portion of the game I did not like, it’s repetitive and can get annoying after about a minute of moving.

Other than that, it was wonderful. So, I would highly recommend picking up Skellboy Refractured if you love adventure games. It’s cute but challenging and so much fun, and with the added content in this version leading to hours more of gameplay, you won’t regret it.

Credits

Article publisherMGN TV
AuthorIndie Direct
GameSkellboy Refractured

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