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Super Skull Smash Go! 2 Turbo is a charming retro style game with retro problems

By Amr (@siegarettes)

• Super Skull Smash GO! 2 Turbo
  
• Developer- TACS Games
  
• Publisher- Poppy Works
  
• PC, PS4, PS Vita
  

Super Skull Smash GO! 2 Turbo has a pretty ridiculous name. Thankfully, it also has a pretty simple pitch. It’s a retro style puzzle platformer where you jump on skeletons then collect their heads to smash into a holy temple. It’s about as fun as that sounds. The platforming feels good, the feedback on delivering craniums to the cross is great, and the boss fights are tense and satisfying. It feels a bit like My Owl Software’s Apple Jack series in the way it takes simple platforming and throwing mechanics and creatively builds upon them.

What holds SSSG2T back is how it manages to feel retro in a different way, which is how it tests your patience. SSSG2T is a challenging game, filled with instant death pitfalls and tricky platforming. It’s thankfully never feels unfair or ridiculously precise, but its easy to make a few wrong moves and find yourself restarting the stage. Stages are relatively short, taking only a few minutes or less to run through, so it’s never a huge loss…until a few worlds in.

Early stages are breezy and smartly paced, but a few worlds in stages become more reliant on back tracking. Since you can’t pick up more than one skull at a time, this forces you to cover the same ground repeatedly, trying to avoid the same pitfalls and immortal enemies. Imagine something like a tense Mario 2 level, but you have to carry an item through the stage multiple times, and every enemy is a variation on Dry Bones. This is particularly annoying on more vertically oriented levels, since it even with the ability to pan the camera platforms usually fall out of sight, leaving you to either backtrack or make a blind jump. And with how challenging SSSG2T gets suddenly a few minutes per stage turns into a half hour.

This is where I began to miss the small conveniences added to modern games. There’s thankfully not a lives system, but you’re still booted out to the map screen every time you lose, leaving several seconds before you can try again. This is particularly annoying on the puzzle and boss stages.The former which can be unbeatable if you accidentally toss an object off stage, and the latter bringing death swiftly with each attempt. Worse, accidentally hitting START on the map screen sent me back to the title screen, which wouldn’t be a problem if that didn’t send you back to the start of the map, forcing you to run all the way back to the current world and level. These small inconveniences aren’t game breakers, but they are enough for me to write three paragraphs of complaints instead of focusing on the breezy fun of smashing skulls and bounding across platforms.

Super Skull Smash GO! 2 Turbo is a fun romp with plenty of satisfying challenges that’s at its best when it focuses itself into small spaces. Unfortunately, it stretches itself out a tad longer than it needs to, and keeps you from getting back into the fray as fast as you’d like.