When I first saw the trailer for Skully, I immediately thought it looked adorable, and was thrilled to have a press build of the first two chapters at my fingertips shortly after. My first instinct was absolutely correct: it is adorable. It’s also surprisingly — and pleasantly — challenging, providing exercises in skill, finesse, and concentration that I haven’t experienced in a game for a while.

Through Skully, by Finish Line Games, you guide the eponymous character — yes, it’s literally a rolling skull — through an impressive range of landscapes, obstacles, and physical or mental challenges. Accompanied by voices and narratives from three additional characters who guide you along your way, you get to explore, learn, and adapt.

Skully will stretch you and push your buttons, but in a good way; and the rewards, when they come, feel hard-won and worth it. There’s something particularly satisfying about the checkpoints allowing (in fact, encouraging) you to submerge yourself in thick, bubbling mud pools. Playing this game as an adult makes me feel like I’m being encouraged to break the rules and get messy, and it’s great.

The graphics, as I mentioned, immediately pulled me in. Rendered in a fun, creative style I can only describe as cute, while being accompanied by an uplifting soundtrack, you don’t ever feel at any point like you’re playing a game marketed only for children.

The precision required to get past certain obstacles in the game only backs that up. Skully is a great testament to game development that can be rated “E” for everyone and still feel immensely fulfilling, engaging, and challenging to adult players. In fact, I’d be willing to bet the elasticity of kids’ brains will probably make them better at Skully than I am.

The story, in its own right, feels interesting and creative, too. Guided by organic, believable voice acting, you’re led through a narrative about pacifism, family, and environmental conservation, without feeling condescended to. There’s also something greatly pleasing in a game whose mythos has nothing to do with largely white or Western religions.

Sure, you may have to suspend some disbelief about the characters inhabiting this “lush island paradise virtually untouched by mankind” speaking English, or whichever language you play the game in, but given how much I already love this game, that’s quite a minor detail.

Admittedly, it’s not immediately clear why Skully was chosen to carry out the quest at the core of the game, or why we’re just a skull. Yet rather than turning me off, this makes me look forward to the full release of the game all the more. Why am I just a skull? Who was I before? Where am I going? All of these are questions I eagerly await being answered. In the meantime, it tickles my sixteen-year-old self’s Nightmare Before Christmas funny bone to no end. “And since I am dead, I can take off my head…”

The soundscape of Skully is something else I eagerly sunk my proverbial teeth into. The sounds of landing in soft sand or falling into water feel real and immersive. So do the remarkably uncanny sounds of mosquito-like insects whining in my headphones; I nearly thought there was one in the room with me. For those — like myself — playing Skully in the absence of a controller, these effects more than make up for anything that might be lost through not feeling that more hands-on experience.

Interestingly for me, as a gamer whose library is mostly made up of somewhat heavy-handed RPGs, horror games, and first-person shooters, Skully is very light. Not just in its content — though I was very pleasantly surprised to encounter a video game that was focused on life and restoration, not death and violence — but in its controls, too. Skully is the art of the light touch; the gentle tap. This is not a game for button-mashing. That’s something I learned the hard way… many times over.

Precision and timing are by no means a rarity in video gaming, but it was good practice to be forced to slow down, have patience and learn how to navigate a given challenge. I also had to learn to lighten up on the controls, instead of pressing harder out of a spike of nervousness.

Granted, there were moments when my game lagged to the point of making a section impassable, forcing me to quit and start that section over. Given how attractive, well-thought-out, and just plain fun this game is though, I’m confident those wrinkles will be ironed out.

In short, I’m really, really pleased with what I’ve seen of Skully so far. Frustrating could be a word for it, too, but in a good way. It’s the kind of frustrating that leaves you determined to do better, and offers a rush of victory when you do succeed. I think Skully has a great deal to offer, and I’m eagerly looking forward to hearing about other people’s experiences once the game is released in full on August 4th.

A PC preview copy of Skully was provided by Finish Line Games for this preview.

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Skully

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Adorable graphics
• Fun story
• Great soundtrack
• Engaging gameplay

Cons

• Might be laggy at times