Skyhill (Video Game)
Developed by Mandragora
Published by Daedalic Entertainment
Suitable for ages 15+
Available on PC through Steam
I always feel like horror lends itself very well to roguelikes. The implicit terror of slinking through halls clutching a sharpened spoon and half a roll of twine and unsure of if the next room contains one of the Seven Knights of Hell or a new set of pants lends itself very well to pants pissing. Uncertainty is terrifying, and the variance of a roguelike leads to more nail biting moments than a game about caveman manicures. As a result, there are a fair share of “horror” roguelikes, or at the very least games claiming to be as such. Most forget the psychological elements of horror, and even superlative games like The Binding of Isaac forego adult storytelling for cartoony poop jokes and flies.
So here we are with Skyhill, a more adult take on the genre with more story to uncover than boss-monsters. Masquerading as a roguelike, Skyhill is a game that draws out the playthroughs not through millions of builds and expanding content, but a story that unravels one thread at a time. Notes, voice recordings, and an enigmatic puzzle stand between you and the “ending”, and it will take several runthroughs to figure out all the pieces.
Well then, how hard is it to get through a run of Skyhill? Well, not very. In a familiar fashion, players descend 100 floors, with each floor containing two lootable rooms and the hallway. Exploring a room costs one stamina, which can be replenished with food. Each room can contain any of the various random loot, with the loot tables increasing in value as you descend. Each room can also contain a monster, which also increase in difficulty as you descend. Combat is simple, requiring you to decide between a regular and “focused” attack, with the focused attacks selecting a specific body area to target for increased risk/reward.
As players slaughter and loot, they accumulate experience, which can be used to raise your stats. Strength, Dexterity, Speed, and Accuracy all provide marginal benefits for every point put in, but essentially boil down to baseline requirements for whichever weapon you use. Damage calculation is wonky, as each weapon scales with the stat associated with it. Weapons that use a single stat not only have lower base damage, but also only benefit from that stat scaling. A weapon with multiple stats scales much harder, pushing players towards a varied build. The highest tier weapons all require an oddly specific distribution of stats, and will likely be unattainable to players who didn’t plan that exact distribution from the start.
In addition to looting, players also must craft items to make it to the bottom. Generally speaking, what you can make at any given time will be better than what you find. There’s a crafting tier system based on your penthouse, which can be upgraded to provide new recipes and more efficient recovery. It’s unlikely that you will be able to upgrade everything in one run, but the door strength and bed can easily be foregone for the kitchen and weapon crafting upgrades.
The game’s difficulty isn’t as much of a curve as a sinusoidal wave. There’s a spot at the beginning that is tough that largely correlates to a lack of food. It’ll be tight for the first 30 or so floors, after which you’ll upgrade your kitchen and be able to make bread and sandwiches out of your water and flour. Meat and fish can be cooked, providing double the amount of stamina. At this point, you’re basically set. The next tough part is when you begin running out of healing items, which is similarly fixed when the increased drops and decreased need for certain basic items allows you to craft more medkits.
Finally, there will be a big spike in difficulty when you reach the final enemy type. If you aren’t full health with one of the weapons a tier below the highest, you’ll likely be totally screwed. After you defeat your first of these towering monstrosities, it’s simply a question of remembering to top yourself off before entering every room and not losing an astronomical amount of dice rolls. This lasts for about 20 more floors, but since your ability to take and inflict damage from this point only grows, you’ll make it through easily. Because the combat is all spreadsheets and enemy hits don’t go much higher than 14, there’s not a lot beyond sloppy resource management or blind drunkenness that can kill you.
It’s a satisfying system that gets boring after you figure out how to win. There are only around five or six different enemies, and weapons don’t vary in anything other than damage dealt, so there’s little compelling you to start again once you finish a run. The only thing driving you to descend again is the story, which is where the game shines. The initial circumstance behind you being in the penthouse suite of the Skyhill hotel are unclear, with the loose explanation that a business trip and growing global tension has led you to rent the suite most secure against biological weapons in the whole hotel. Soon, bombs drop, and everyone but you turns into monsters.
As you descend, it slowly becomes clear that this world might not be what it seems. Subtle notes, newspaper clippings, and audio logs all allude to different stories and possible realities. By the time you reach the bottom, it is obvious that your perception of reality is very wrong. As the various plot twists are genuinely interesting and up to much fan theorization, I won’t go into them. It all leads up to a pretty creative puzzle that I will commend you if you figure out without internet assistance.
There are a lot of fun little bits here, but I won’t be finding them all. Of the game’s 52 collectible notes, I have found eight in my three run throughs. I figured out the final puzzle, and got the special prize. There are a couple other fun little side missions I could care about, but it’s not enough to get me to come back again. I really appreciated what the game had to offer, but it didn’t draw me in. The cleverness of the storytelling and narrative puzzle is well above that of a budget title like this. It is a mediocre game that gets raised to above average because of the narrative. Check it out when it’s on sale, and have some good budget fun.
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Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
