Skyhill
Developed by Mandragora
Platforms: PC
October 6, 2015
Reviewed by Jess Landry
Indie games are usually pretty hit or miss. I mean, either way you have to respect the time and effort that goes into making a game but sometimes things don’t work cohesively enough for the game to be enjoyable. It’s disappointing for the player and, ultimately, disappointing for the games’ creators.
That being said, Skyhill is fucking rad.
It’s a simple premise – World War III has begun in all its toxic glory. You’ve taken up shelter in the Skyhill hotel after a bio-nuclear explosion. Nestled in the penthouse suite on the 99th floor (uh, can I just stay here and order room service?), it’s up to you to escape to the main level of the hotel without being stabbed, impaled, whipped, clawed, murdered, etc. by the mutated monsters and psychopaths roaming the floors below. As you head down level by level, you’re free to explore the two darkened rooms on each floor (one to your right, one to your left). If you choose to ignore a room, hey, that’s your prerogative. But that room you pass by could contain supplies pertinent to your survival. Or a pissed off monster.
The more you travel, the more your hunger meter goes down so it’s best to stock up on food and stay well fed. If your hunger level happens to reach zero, then you start to lose health points. Strategy is key to surviving the descent – it may be tempting to rush down and escape the hotel, but sometimes you just have to sleep it off for one night, or head back to your penthouse and craft a new weapon. And the more times you play, the better you get at the game.
The fact that there’s only two rooms per floor to search seems easy enough, but with the rooms being blacked out until you enter, you never know what could be lurking in the shadows. Inside every room, there could be monsters, there could be supplies or there could be jack shit. Do you risk taking a point from your hunger meter to explore the room, or do you keep on heading downwards? The choice is yours. If you do enter a room with a giant, honking monster in it and think to yourself ‘uh, maybe not,’ you can always leave the room without engaging in a battle royale, and sometimes even remain unscathed.
The illustrated set-pieces and characters add an element of the fantastic to this game. It plays more like a graphic novel come to life than anything else. It doesn’t try to be overly realistic or too complex, and that simplicity is part of the game’s appeal.
My only qualm is that you can’t save your progress. Skyhill is pretty much a one-shot stop. And if you die, whether it be on the 98th floor or the 2nd, you don’t come back to that spot. You start over without anything you had previously, which can be frustrating especially if you’ve crafted a badass weapon.
For a survival horror point and click RPG, the scares are a little few and far between but that’s okay. You’ll be having too much fun crafting weapons, eating spoiled fruits and wandering from room to room to even notice. All in all, Skyhill is one of those rare indie game that’s well worth your time.
