Nov 25, 2021

Skul: The Hero Slayer - Skul: The Hero Slayer

Hey, everyone!
This is our seventh dev blog and where we'll be talking about the direction we're going to be taking with Skul: The Hero Slayer.
Currently, our scheduled date for the major Skul reformation update is in early February.

Our apologies for the delay in both the blog and the update.
SouthPAW has grown tremendously over the past year through your support and as such, we are facing new quests that surpass our current capacity. We're grateful to everyone for getting us here, but it is true that the team is just not big enough to cover everything.
We're actively recruiting new members and transforming our environment to set a smooth working pace and continue polishing Skul.
The team may be under pressure now, but we believe we're right in the middle of another milestone that'll push us forward to become a greater team of developers. Rest assured that we're working hard to achieve this milestone and make Skul a fun and lovable game.

So first, let's talk about what everyone's been waiting for: the skulls.
A diverse pool of skulls defines fun in Skul.
Including the Awakened ones, 100 skulls currently exist in Harmonia. We realize some of these skulls have flaws, big or small.
Not only that, but there are also skulls that can be really fun to play, given the right change in mechanics.
These are the reasons why we're working on skull reformation- in order to mitigate the flaws and amplify the fun.
Let's walk you through what kind of changes are coming.

1. Skulls that were designed early in the game were comparatively weak or inefficient and were not as fun

Yaksha's stomping skill is quite unique.
You can stomp on your enemies with normal attacks or by using skills; on your fifth use, you can deal great damage with Yaksha's giant foot.

Yaksha was a huge character, originally, but we downsized it a bit throughout development.
Despite the change in physique, we kept the idea of Yaksha brutally stepping on its enemies. The concept was maintained when developing its passives and skills.
We were satisfied with how we conceptualized Yaksha's skills in the game, so the character hasn't seen much change since its appearance in Harmonia.
However, after the addition of far more interesting skulls, the signature Yaksha stomp ended up being more bland than unique. Yaksha couldn't quite provide an exciting gameplay experience.

We decided to be bold with Yaksha.
The concept we originally had in mind wasn't just stamping feet, it was the idea of brutally crushing the enemies with a massive and menacing physique.
Wait, it doesn’t look that intimidating?

The new Yaksha uses power stacks to open the Domain of the Wicked. Within the realm's boundaries, evil spirits reign the world.
Yaksha returns to its true form, Rakshasa, in the Domain of the Wicked. As Rakshasa, its basic attacks and skills are stronger.
Yaksha doesn't just stomp around anymore- you can now use its ability to open the Domain of the Wicked and swing a giant club at your enemies.

2. Skull's mechanism wasn't uniform through the Awakening process

In Skul, Awakening means to obtain the true power of the skull’s owner.
Awakening wasn’t part of Skul’s development plan; we’ve implemented it through our players’ feedback during Early Access.
This is why early skulls that were already made before the Awakening feature were difficult to design when we had to create Awakened levels for them, since they were made without taking upgrades into consideration.

We had an especially hard time designing the Awakened skulls for the Ent Skull.
The concept at the moment is that each Ent Skull has the characteristic of its matching Ent enemy found in the Forest of Harmony.
Due to this exceptional design, the Ent Skull’s attack type and play strategy continued to change with each Awakening, which wasn’t the direction we meant to take.
Through the reformation, we’re going to define a single play style for the Ent Skull and allow its Awakened skulls to build up on that style.

We’re going to focus on shaping the new Ent Skull into a melee fighter regardless of its type.
It pounds on the ground as it advances, and can enlarge its body part to reach enemies that are standing slightly farther.

The Ent Skull will be able to plant grass using seeds.
When you use a skill while standing on the grass, you’ll receive helpful buffs such as shorter cooldown times or the activation of stronger skills. Different buffs are available depending on the Awakened level.
The grassy area is not big, but you can plant multiple patches around the map. Where you plant and how you plan to use the seeds will be strategically important.

3. Sometimes, enemies and other aspects of the game made it difficult to use the skulls to their full potential

We put a lot of thoughts into balance each time we design a new skull.
Three main elements we take into account for each skull are concept, fun, and efficiency.
We found that if we focus on just one or two elements of the three, by the end of the development it makes the skull feel rather incomplete.

The Ghoul grows in size and strength by devouring its enemies.
We designed the Ghoul’s skills and passive with this concept in mind, which led to quite a disappointment in terms of efficiency considering Skul’s gameplay mechanics.

As the Ghoul, you grow in size and receive stat bonuses by acquiring flesh chunks or Swallowing your enemies.
A big body means increased attack range, but it also means a huge hitbox in favor of the enemies. This worked as a double-edged sword for Ghoul players.
Allowing your enemies to land hits on you is a huge risk in roguelike or roguelite games like Skul. Keeping your health bar full is of utmost importance.

All of the Ghoul’s skills require you to defeat the enemy.
This is useful against a mob of enemies, but becomes a huge pain during one-on-one battles.

The new Ghoul can “digest” the chunks of flesh it has. Digesting uses up all the flesh chunks you’ve got; you’ll restore some health and return to your normal size.
In addition, chunks of flesh have a chance to drop each time you hit your enemy, which will help you fight adventurers and stage bosses.
We hope this will help make playing the Ghoul less challenging and, in turn, encourage our Ghoul lovers to tackle melee fights against powerful enemies.

Last but not least, Throw Hook is now a basic attack.
In Skul, where you can only have up to two skills, deciding which skills to make “essential” always comes with much contemplation.
Skulls with essential skills will have much less skill combinations, so we try not to lock the skills down as essentials.
We made Throw Hook an essential skill only to realize that it was a poor choice.
There aren’t many reasons to make Throw Hook an essential skill.
We still do, however, think that Throw Hook is an interesting and fun technique, so we decided to turn it into the Ghoul’s basic attack.

4. Some were simply not as good in terms of efficiency or control

The Water Skull uses up moisture, which is obtained via basic attacks, to attack and strengthen its skills.
This means basic attacks are crucial in using the Water Skull, but short range and slow attack speed unfortunately had a negative impact on the Water Skull’s efficiency and controls.
Additionally, the waves you can create with moisture have shown the adverse effect of pushing your enemies back. This inconveniently relocated the enemy at unwanted times.

Our goal with the Water Skull is to improve the efficiency of its basic attack by increasing the attack range and speed.
We’ve also changed the waves so that they will no longer push the enemies around.
The idea of tides creating knockback makes sense, but in all reality, did not provide a satisfying gameplay experience.
The new Water Skull’s waves now focus on dealing swift damage.
The longer your battles are, the more powerful your Water Skull will become. The skull’s increase in power will be visible to the eye when fighting in smaller areas.

5. Combining physical and magic attacks (hybrids) didn’t work out sometimes

We’ve categorized the attacks to physical and magic in Skul.
So-called hybrid skulls came into play because we wanted to create skulls that utilize both physical and magic types.

Piercing Shot is the only magic attack the Hunter has. Any other attack by the Hunter deals physical damage.
Since it’s inefficient to buff your magic attack only to use Piercing Shot, the skill was absolutely useless to Hunter users. As such, we changed Piercing Shot’s attack type to physical.
Like so, we’re going to switch the attack types of various moves accordingly, and continue to research new ways to make hybrid skulls fun to play.

That’s all for today!

Problematic skulls aren’t the only ones changing through our upcoming reformation update.
We’re constantly trying out different ways to help you enjoy Skul even more.
The skulls we’ve shared with you today are only a part of what we have planned. Many other skulls will see changes, whether they be big or small.
We’ll continue to do our best to ’balance the fun’ and make each and every skull fun to play.

Thank you all for your continued love and support.