Back in the old days of home gaming when the industry was still transitioning out of the arcade mindset of “break the player’s bones so that they have to keep putting quarters in,” most games started out as miserable experiences. Only after committing to them and learning to work around their rougher edges could you discover the fun they had to offer. The Skylia Prophecy reminds me of those types of games, though with an added degree of indie-roughness that snowballs into an unfortunate series of cheap shots. There are difficult sections that are a joy to learn to work through, and then others that are such a giant middle finger of randomness and poor hit detection that I simply set the game aside and refused to finish it. It’s my hope that a future patch changes some of the hit detection (and hopefully, also some of the more questionable progression decisions) so that I can come back and finish the game off one day, but I can only comment on The Skylia Prophecy‘s current state, which is far too rough to recommend.

The Skylia Prophecy‘s writing is background fluff that justifies fighting rooms of monsters

The game begins with a text scrawl laying out the basic story so that the rest of the game doesn’t have to. Basically, there was a Dark Lord who was defeated for the good of the world but left alive for fear of the resulting power vacuum, only for main character Mirenia to kill him for the purposes of averting a Prophecy written in the “Book of Shadows” that she worried about. Doing so causes monsters to start going crazy and killing people, just as the smarter denizens of the world predicted, and the resulting chaos is only tamped down thanks to the efforts of a group of heroes led by Mirenia’s foster aunt, Artiya. In response, Mirenia has the bright idea to once again use the Book of Shadows, this time to perform a dark spell that draws dark energy together into one spot so that it can be trapped. Again, I haven’t finished the game, but it seems pretty obvious that this will result in the Dark Lord being resurrected, or at least something bad appearing and not being shackled. The Skylia Prophecy forces you to play as an idiot.

Artiya, meanwhile, follows Mirenia to halfheartedly ask her not to break the world again in a way that suggests that she, too, is rather dull. “Hey, you,” she practically says, “stop. For real. No? Then I guess I’ll just sit back and do nothing for a while. Best of luck with your stupid plan!” Of course, it’s possible that she shows up later as a boss fight or something, but the laissez-faire attitude she displays when catching up with Mirenia at the very beginning of the game is beyond frustrating.

The Skylia Prophecy doesn’t concern itself with storytelling beyond its opening minutes, anyway. Outside of towns, the only person I ever talked to was a demon guy who wanted me to make a Faustian deal with him in return for the items and upgrades I missed in earlier areas.

Towns aren’t huge narrative hubs, either. You always have a guy who gives you stats about how long you’ve played and how many monsters you’ve beaten, a guy whose text box consists of dashes, a guy who rambles verses from a holy book that mean nothing out of context, and several NPCs who ramble about nothing most of the time. Rarely, their ramblings offer a hint about what to expect in the next area. Mostly, though, they’re just flavor text dispensers whose conversations sometimes incorporate sexually charged content for no real reason other than adding crudeness in an attempt to give the writing an “adult” edge. It’s the same reason that many statues (including save statues) are naked. It’s also why there’s such an emphasis on sexual assault despite that adding literally nothing to the storytelling or worldbuilding. Without a nuanced story that plays off of these elements, the explicit content comes off as exploitative and fetishistic.

The gameplay is immediately confusing, but it can be entertaining once you’re used to it

I was in over my head mere seconds into the gameplay. Mirenia begins the game with the ability to punch forward with her blade, jump, and block, but the second enemy you encounter crawls low on the ground, and your blade can’t reach them. You have to figure out through trial and error that your shield inflicts damage, then use that for opponents who your normal attack can’t reach. Then you have to figure out how to beat the next guy by moving close enough to an explosive barrel to set it off with your shield, but not close enough that the explosion hits you through it.

These first few minutes highlight what it’s like to play The Skylia Prophecy. You’ll constantly be using your shield as a secondary weapon and blowing yourself up after getting too close when detonating explosive barrels. And since your shield doesn’t have a cooldown, unlike your normal attack, it can be quickly spammed for huge damage. Doing so comes with big risks, however—you take damage when coming into contact with The Skylia Prophecy‘s enemies, and this contact damage can kill you in a single hit in some cases (weirdly, different enemies do different amounts of contact damage).

The Skylia Prophecy is all about this seesaw of “hey, that’s kind of cool” followed by “well that sucks.” For example, any enemies you killed are dead forever. That’s really great. If you finish off several screens of monsters and run back to a save point, they’ll be gone for the rest of the game. The downside is that you level up your health, strength, and mana pools by defeating them, so accidentally pushing forward to the next level before you’ve defeated everything means leaving experience on the table. Enemies die for good, so grinding out the difference isn’t an option.

Then there are the save points. The Skylia Prophecy only saves at save points, which is very old-school and gives you more control over what you want to lock in. However, statues can only be used once each time you enter a room, and late-game dungeons are set up as one room, meaning that you can’t lock in enemy deaths at will anymore. That’s doubly painful since these dungeons are filled with the cheapest, most annoying enemies ever.

One-way only doors and inaccurate hitboxes further undermine The Skylia Prophecy

Just like The Skylia Prophecy never explains that your shield can be used as a weapon, it doesn’t bother detailing how its quest system works. The short version is that each area has a little guild that gives you sidequests, and finishing these is important because you need the money to purchase health potions, mana potions, and items that give you temporary invincibility. You can only carry one of each at a time, but they’re highly expensive and the only free full HP heal you get in the game comes when you level up your health (which can’t be relied on; you won’t always be able to cross that threshold before going up against a boss). The tricky thing is that your quests are location-dependent, and there are some doors that Mirenia will arbitrarily refuse to go back through. If you go through one before completing sidequests, you either have to quit out and lose all of your progress since your last save or make peace with the fact that you can’t afford the healing items that are so useful that they’re borderline mandatory.

Doors with symbols appear to be the ones that are one-way only. Knowing that ahead of time could make for a smoother gameplay experience. I didn’t know that ahead of time, though, so I ended up missing out on several areas worth of sidequests and not having enough money to heal myself. “Play again from the beginning and do better” isn’t a reasonable option four hours into a non-roguelite, and even if it was, I encountered so many weird bugs and issues early on that I’d prefer not to replay the early parts; the textures glitched out in a big way, with doors becoming invisible and others teleporting me into walls while platforms stopped corresponding to the sprites.

And even if I finished every sidequest, you can still only carry one healing potion, one mana potion, one auto-resurrect, and one invincibility item at a time. Up against the late-game enemies who caused me to throw in the towel thanks to their outrageous hitboxes that deal at least half of my life bar in contact damage despite the pixels being nowhere near me (if you haven’t read through my impressions, here’s a screenshot one frame before I was instantly killed), I’m not sure that would be enough, and even if it was, I’d then have to go up against one of The Skylia Prophecy‘s tanky bosses without those items. Until the giant spider ladies have their hitboxes fixed, this game is unplayable. You can’t be punishing and imprecise. Especially after taking away the ability to save at will.

The visuals hide things but are pretty good, while the soundtrack stands above all else

One of the things I’ve come to love about covering smaller indie games is how they handle the audiovisual side of things. Even in the pixel art space, there are so many different ways of drawing/animating characters and environments that it’s fascinating seeing what route a game takes. Now, I have some complaints about the visuals that primarily boil down to the color scheme’s tendency to hide enemies against backgrounds of a similar color. The animations also don’t have as many frames as they could, and I noticed that one of the village guy’s pants change color as he bobs around, but that’s all incredibly nitpicky. The Skylia Prophecy‘s enemies are all distinct enough to know exactly which you’re dealing with at a glance, its areas often (but not always) have enough unique landmarks to figure out where you are when you’re teleported somewhere, and the overall style is dark and familiar without coming across as derivative or uninspired. It all sort of balances out so long as you don’t blame the visuals for the hitboxes.

I’m more enthusiastic about The Skylia Prophecy‘s music, mainly because I have a deep-seated love of the pipe organ. The fact that someone once thought, “hey, instead of putting up a boring wall there, let’s add in a giant keyboard that sounds like the full weight of Catholicism crashing down on unwed teenage mothers and condom salespeople” fills me with unmitigated joy, and the instrument’s history intermingling with that of the church means that it’s a perfect fit for games like this that incorporate religious iconography. And The Skylia Prophecy doesn’t waste it, either, with its tracks focusing just enough on melodies and chord progressions to be interesting. Not all tracks manage to be so worthwhile, though, and there’s one that uses an annoying harpsichord sound and plays during a teleport maze, ensuring that you hear far too much of it. Overall, though? I like the music.

Story: 1/3 Gameplay: 0/3 Visuals: 1/2 Music: 2/2 ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ – 4/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

*A Steam key was provided for this The Skylia Prophecy review. It took me 4.3 hours to hit a point that I couldn’t get past because of the ridiculous hitboxes and contact damage instantly killing me.

The Skylia Prophecy review – Goodness, badness, and madness first appeared on Killa Penguin