Published 29/12/2022

Skullmonkeys

I feel like everyone who’s *really* into playing video games has that one game from their childhood they’ve never heard anyone else talk about. And like many, my personal pick for that particular title has been dancing about my mind for over two decades, a bizarre little platformer that could’ve only existed in what many would call the heyday of gaming’s evolution. Today, I’ll be talking about my time with Skullmonkeys for the Playstation 1, a bizarrely beautiful 2D platformer with some of the genuinely incredible art direction and audiovisual design on the entire console - perhaps the entire generation - though this is stymied by a brutal difficulty and occasionally stagnant - but still enjoyable - platforming.

I first played Skullmonkeys over twenty years ago. As a very small child, I’d go with my Dad to one of his best friends' houses, usually most Fridays. As an aforementioned tiny boy, I couldn’t care less about them talking music, wrestling, and whatever the hell else they went on about, and so I was given access to my Dad’s friend’s Playstation and a gigantic treasure trove of games, some of which were so obscure I can only remember images and moments, no names. But of all these innumerable games, Skullmonkeys always stuck out for me. Was it the eye-catching claymation cutscenes? The incredible, relatively insane soundtrack? The brutally hard platforming? No, it was very likely the opening lines of the game’s intro that have lived rent free for the vast majority of my twenty-eight year old life.

Either way, Skullmonkeys has been a part of my formative gaming history, even though, being a stupid child, never getting past the first or second level - though for one, I absolutely don’t blame young Mitchell for that.

Despite its prequel not being available on the PS1 (or sadly, at all, these days), Skullmonkeys is a direct sequel to the point and click title The Neverhood. That is to say there is very little narrative to be found here; the previous game’s antagonist, Klogg, has crashed landed on the world of the Skullmonkeys, convincing the bony primates that he’s their leader. After ordering them to a build an ‘Evil Engine #9’, Neverhood’s hero, Klayman, is sent to the planet of the Skullmonkeys to once again stop Klogg. And, for the most part, that’s the narrative of the game, as all of the half-dozen or so cutscenes that play between worlds are essentially non-sequitur, extended gags that exist only to be some of the most hilarious comedy I’ve seen in a game in a long, long time.

But onto the game itself! Skullmonkeys is, despite the incredible presentation, a fairly standard platformer. You control Klayman, traveling left to right, dispatching Skullmonkeys, leaping over tiny platforms, and unless you’re very, very good at this game, falling into a LOT of bottomless pits. As the game wears on, you’ll gain access to a variety of consumable abilities, ranging from green laser bullets, a literal clone to test the waters ahead, and most hilariously - the Universal Enema, that’ll clear everything from the screen just like that. Despite the brutal difficulty SkullMonkeys boasts, everything in this platformer gives you the opposite impression. The skullmonkeys are a foe that had me giggling every time I heard their baboon-like screams, and Klayman, our hero, leaps and bounces like something out of a Wallace and Gromit cartoon.

Anyways, the fundamentals of this game are very solid, even if I wouldn’t really call them anything to write home about. Basic platforming to begin with - bounce on enemies, jump over gaps and threats, y’know, basic stuff. And as the game goes on, this won’t change - you’ll just be juggling more and more threats as the levels wear on. New mechanics - like a glider you’ll use to clear large differences and rise up through steam vents, whilst still dodging airborne foes - will be dotted in here and there, whilst slowly but surely stacking the deck against you. The various items you’ll use to try and balance the scales don’t really impact the situation too much; at best, they’ll be used to thin the herd and give you a little bit more leeway, but with how easy it is to drop to your death, or even clipping an enemy will surely spell devastation (unless you’ve got a shield), it can only do that much to help. At the end of the day, this is a game that requires dedication to get through, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you spend an hour or more on certain levels of this game - that damned thorn forest lives in my nightmares!

Whilst I wouldn’t say it has the Everest-like difficulty of Nintendo-difficulty-esque titles, Skullmonkeys starts from being a tough but satisfying platformer to a ridiculously challenging, occasionally frustrating marathon. It doesn’t start super easy, tough but fair, but after a mere couple of levels the obstacles you’re faced with rapidly begin to ratchet upwards in challenge, number, and frequency. Jumps that require pitch-perfect timing and momentum, armadas of foes and deadly balls of energy, and the odd boss that’ll kick your ass here and there. The fact that you only return to the start of the stage upon losing all your lives doesn’t help with the hardest moments of the game, where brutal combinations of platforming horror are presented back-to-back without any save point between them. Seriously - there are moments, such as in the jungle level, or the sky bridge, that throws multiple nightmarish moments that kicked my ass Hell, there’s a sole auto-running level that, whilst not that difficult, just goes on forever with a ton of annoying obstacles to trip you up riiiight at the end. I’ll be honest, I did use save states to conquer this game. Not a ton, mind you - just in moments where staggering back from the very start of the stage became unconscionable. Also, I actually wanted to beat this game in a relatively fast time frame, not slog through it like the devs intended. Does that make me bad? Yes. Do I care? Well, a little bit.

There are a handful of boss fights that break up the worlds of Skullmonkeys that are just as brutal as the platforming you’ve come to expect, but the frustration is lessened by the fact that even if you die, you’ll be back in mere seconds. These fights are absolutely the non-gameplay visual highlight of the game, as the already insane designs of the Skullmonkeys hits totally new heights. Seriously, I’m just going to throw up the design of the second boss as an example of just how genuinely insane this game can get.

What the hell. Anyway, the boss fights, whilst challenging, aren’t particularly complicated, usually fitting the old format of ‘dodge x amount of projectiles, attack when vulnerable’ that’s oh-so-common in virtually every side scroller platformer, though the ‘dodge’ part of that equation is challenging because of just how small the windows to react can be. Seriously, that monstrosity I showed you up there took me a good ten minutes just because of how long his barrages last, with your chances to react growing smaller and smaller as the battle goes on to an almost maddening degree. The previous issues I mentioned regarding power-ups do, strangely enough, apply to the bosses. Many of your offensive powers do, in fact, affect the bosses, even outside of their normal vulnerable states. It rewards the god-given skills of the people able to make it to them without dying, but I gotta say, it’s a little demoralizing to have to do it the ‘ol fashioned way just because one couldn’t cope with the brutal challenge of the game.

Whilst the general format of the game - left to right platforming - never really changes, the game does occasionally change things up. A few stages in a later level are totally vertical affairs, using the glider to navigate between foes, and the penultimate level is an auto-scrolling vehicle section - a brutally difficult one, to be fair, but variety is the spice of life and all that. To some, I think the lack of variety could be a bit of a drawback, but the general experience is so exciting and consistently engaging, despite the sheer brutal difficulty you’ll be facing, it didn’t really occur to me much during my time with Skullmonkies.

But I gotta talk about the true highlight of the game at length - the audiovisual experience. To begin with, right from the get-go, you see the design aesthetic of the game. The cutscenes are all created in a claymation style, giving all of the hysterical going-on’s visual humor a lot of emphasis. Seriously, I challenge you to watch either the opening cutscene or the ‘hamster’ cutscene and not laugh, it’s genuinely impossible. Seemingly in the footsteps of The Neverhood, the animations of Skullmonkeys are entirely claymation - fairly simplistic animation, especially compared to the cutscenes, but it does a lot of heavy lifting in making the game stand out from its peers, both on the Playstation and beyond, and when upscaled via *ahem* certain methods, the game does an incredible job of holding up decades on.

The soundtrack matches the fantastic visuals beat for beat, covering an incredibly wide variety of genres and styles. The composer, Terry Scott Taylor, went above and beyond making a catchy, atmospheric, but above all insane soundtrack that fits the barely-contained madness that really embodies Skullmonkeys. A notable, yet understated, element of the soundtrack is utilized as you move through the stages that encompass each world; in many, the song of that world will be simpler, but as the complete each successive stage, new elements, like vocals or additional beats will create a more ‘complete’ experience, so to speak. Seriously, I could throw on the soundtrack at work or whilst writing, and time would pass in no time. And if you really need to brighten up your day - throw on the bonus room theme. I ain’t gonna tell you why, just go do it. You’ll thank me later.

It’s funny, coming back to a game I hadn’t played in two decades. In my head, it was one of the best games ever - nothing else matched its irreverent visuals or tone, and its platforming kicked the ass of everything it released alongside. Now that I’m older, hopefully wiser, and absolutely more critical, it’s a little sad that the result doesn’t match the memories. It’s a brutally difficult, occasionally repetitive and frustrating title - that I can’t deny. But it’s also a game unlike anything else, a game that makes me burst out laughing from every visual and music track. It’s satisfying to push through, hilarious to experience, and in a lot of ways, that pushed me through the sheer brutality of the game. Objectively, if I gave out number scores, Skullmonkeys is a 7 out of 10, at best. It’s got its issues, and I found myself swearing more than a few times across my seven or so hours it took me to push through. But it’s a game that I find charming enough - and personal enough - that I can look past these downsides. Skullmonkeys isn’t remotely perfect, but you’d have to go far to find something as visually dazzling, and downright funny on the PS1.