Video game speedrunning has grown alongside the gaming industry becoming more mainstream. Venues like Twitch make it easy to share world record attempts, while events like Games Done Quick have expanded to take place multiple times a year so players can show their skills to earn money for charities, with this January's Awesome Games Done Quick raising over $3 million. For Finish Line Games' Lead Designer Jason Canam, any player dedicating the time to tear a game apart is "one of the biggest honors," and something he is excited to hopefully see following the August release of the physics-based puzzle platformer Skully.
Speedrunning was part of Skully's design according to Canam, as there are shortcuts baked into the reanimated skull's adventure to stop a quarrel between a family of elemental deities. However, he feels these secret techniques and shortcuts are "just a starting point," and knows there are unintended routes people can find if they choose to put in the time. Game Rant spoke with Canam about the design of Skully's mechanics, and how they took inspiration from older titles to create something unique.
Canam said he has been developing games for almost 15 years, about ten of which were spent on indie development in Toronto, Canada — which he describes as a great collaborative scene, and one of the biggest indie hubs in the world. He runs his own studio, Household Games, which has published titles such as Way of the Passive Fist, and he has also worked with developers like DrinkBox Studios on the Guacamelee series and the action RPG Severed. While attending events like the Game Developers Conference, he got in contact with members of Finish Line Games and agreed to bring his background as an action game developer to Skully, the next game following its mainly narrative-driven Maize from 2016.
"That's kind of the goal they wanted to go with: Tell a great story and have interesting characters, but apply more gameplay depth to it. Skully is narrative-driven, but it's a platformer at heart."
The primary gameplay in Skully features its spherical protagonist rolling through 18 levels comprised of seven different ecosystems, such as beaches and volcanoes. Its design thrust was to have a "unique character" according to Canam, one that goes beyond the typical aim of a platformer by incorporating momentum when landing so players are forced to pay attention and adjust. Skully's design wound up informing both the narrative and world, the latter of which also takes cues from Rare's classic Donkey Kong Country trilogy.
In particular, the level layout of Donkey Kong Country 2, in which areas like pirate ships or swamps are repeated three times with escalating difficulty throughout, was emulated in Skully. Canam is a speedrunner himself, and has taken on games like Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie, and Mega Man X. He said these are more for fun, but he has held a top time on speedrun.com for an NES 2D platformer called Power Blade. "I love that game and I've been playing it since I was a kid," he said. "I put in time and became number three in the world. Then I took a bit of a break and went down ... I want to go back and get to top three, and I think I can."
Though platformers are a major inspiration for Skully's design, particularly 3D platformers that have been a mainstay in the industry since titles like Super Mario 64 helped to set the standard, they are only one part of the equation. A primary mechanic in the game is Skully using magical clay puddles to build one of three bodies the player unlocks throughout the journey: A strong form that destroys objects and fights enemies like water bubbles who dissolve Skully, a vault form that can double jump and levitate objects, and a swift form that dashes and jumps far laterally.
These three forms "play off one another and with each other" according to Canam, and inform a puzzle design that involves players figuring out the best way to advance through each part of the island. He compares it to 1993's The Lost Vikings, one of Blizzard Entertainment's original games on the SNES, which features three vikings with unique powers who work in synergy to solve puzzles. It's another title Canam has poured hours into during his 35-plus years playing games.
"We strived to create an experience where the original character becomes so second nature that players won't have to think about what to look out for. We tried to make it so there's only one thing players have to put their energy and thought processes into at a time."
Skully is a single-player experience created "from the ambition of having a high-quality game," according to Canam. He said a lot of care went into the story, told primarily through "excellent" voice acting for quirky and fun characters, and that the gameplay is designed so anyone can beat it even during more challenging moments. "It isn't intended to be devious and kill you constantly," he said. However, there are also incentives for completionists who like platinum trophies and GamerScore, Canam's favorite innovation from the seventh console generation.
Though speedrunning is built into the game's design, Canam said they were unable to get any dedicated speedrunners to test the game due to constraints at the end of production on account of the coronavirus pandemic. That said, he advocates for the community as some of the "best testers" for any game because they have intimate mechanical knowledge and know how to communicate issues succinctly. He has brought them in for previous projects.
The game had a lengthy prototyping phase before beginning its proper development in January 2019, which led to a "fluid" process with the team being all-in on its ideas and art style. Skully is a narrative-driven game underneath its blend of platforming mechanics, and Canam said the team is "looking forward to people getting their hands on it." Personally, he said he is excited to see those players who go back after they experience the story to put in another 50 hours, find everything, and push Skully to its limits.
Skully will be available August 4, 2020 for $29.99 0n PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.