Are you in the mood for a simple but absolutely unforgiving platformer? You are? Well, Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona from 70’Strike and Valkyrie Interactive is absolutely unforgiving. I mean, I’ve played some hard games in my time…
The story of Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona is pretty simple, all things considered. The game opens as our hero, Derek Ericona (I think Derek is a good strong hero type name) is killed by treachery. Now usually, someone popping their clogs is the end of the story, not the start, but Derek refuses to take being dead lying down – no, he gets back on his now skeletal feet and starts to look for revenge. But can Derek find out what happened to him, and why? Well, that is down to your skills, to put it bluntly!
Looking at the presentation of the game, and here the news is pretty good. Derek, his enemies and his allies are quite well animated, and the graphical style is certainly intriguing. The backdrops appear to be hand drawn and look very nice, whilst the enemies and Derek himself appear to have been laid over the top of the backdrop – complete with a thin white outline around the sprites of the things that are moving. The effect puts me in mind of early animation, even the old shoebox theatres we used to make back in the day.
The game is presented in a 2D style, with the action viewed in multi-level platform arenas almost – finding your way around can be a bit of a challenge. The animation works well, with a couple of exceptions – for some reason we are able to jump up ladders, and the animation for that does look odd, but by and large it gets the job done. Add in the sound of battle and dying (a lot) and you’ll have everything you need to play a game.
But let us get into the main part of the game – the way it plays. I have to mention the difficulty of Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona as it claims to have been inspired by Dark Souls, as so many games are. One thing is for sure, it has certainly nailed the difficulty curve of the great game itself.
There are bonfires where you can level up your character, increasing their available pool of health or stamina, for instance, and just like that other game, resting at one of these bonfires not only refills all your health, but also rejuvenates the enemies on the level that you had killed. Luckily, in this game, there has been a bit of a nod to the challenge of killing things, and if you die, once you respawn at the last bonfire or lantern (they act as checkpoints) the enemies that you have killed stay dead. This is very welcome, believe me.
You see, combat is a bit of a mixed bag. The actual swishing of the sword or whatever weapon you choose to use, is pretty good, but the issue I have is that the fighting is numb. By that, I mean you have no real feeling that you are swinging a pointy bit of metal at enemies, or that they are attacking you in return – a lot of the time you only know that you are injured when you fall over dead. This is especially an issue in the boss fights, which are incredibly hard, in keeping with the theme of the game.
It’s good though that you have the usual kind of abilities that you’d expect – a double jump (I guess skeletons have to have some perks, no?), a dodge and a block move, as well as new powerful attacks that can be learned.
So far, so normal, but in keeping with the inspiration of the game, even run of the mill enemies can really ruin your entire day. Killing enemies gives you a kind of currency that you can use to level up (I don’t know if they are souls or what, sadly) and when you die, you drop the “souls” you are carrying at the point of death – if you can get back there, you can pick them up again.
Exploration is the other plank of Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona, and you will come across dead ends as you explore. But there is usually a way around if you look hard enough. Luckily, there is a quite helpful map to check out to keep track of where you have been, and this is very much appreciated. Still, trying to stay alive long enough to find your way to where you are going is no mean feat.
Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona is a game that packs a real challenge; a game that will test your patience as well as your reflexes. The basic premise is engaging and it tells a good tale, but the extreme difficulty and numb combat will make you question your life choices.
If you eat Elden Ring for breakfast, have at it, but the rest of us mere mortals will have to approach Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona much more cautiously.
