• Price: $14.99 USD
• Developer: 70’Strike
• Publisher: Valkyrie Initiative
• Release Date: August 7, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Valkyrie Initiative on behalf of 70’Strike. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: Rated T for “Blood, Partial Nudity, & Violence.”

Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona is a non-linear Metroidvania with multiple endings. It’s inspired by games such as Castlevania and Dark Souls. I must confess that I have never played Dark Souls, but I have heard that it is extremely challenging. So I braced myself for some tough times ahead!

Before you start, you get to make a few decisions on how you want to play the game. Both choices can only be made once at the beginning of the game. Choose between Exploring Mode, where you explore on your own, or accept some hints on the map in Journey Mode. They thoughtfully included the option to censor the partial nudity and “scenes of brutality” in Special Mode, but you can also decide to play this in Original Mode.

The story opens in the ominous Field of Massacre, with your undead character bursting through the ground. There’s not a whole lot of exposition, as you get straight to work. Loot the other bodies on the field, a gruesome scene that seems familiar to your character.

Your equipment’s weight is important to consider, so be sure not to weigh yourself down. You’ll need some sturdy equipment to protect yourself from the monsters, who are quite vicious and strong. Engage in action combat against them, doing your best to prevent any damage; your access to healing is limited.

I frequently found myself sent back to the most recent save point when defeated. There seem to be 2 ways to save: a campfire, which allows you to save, level up, and fast travel, or the simpler lantern that only saves. A key difference is that saving at campfires respawns enemies, while dying and respawning at a lantern won’t. But in both cases your potion stock will be restored.

There’s an additional challenge in that you do not level up automatically; instead, you must build up experience and return to a campfire to level up when you have enough. If you die, you drop all of your experience, but can get it back by returning to the place where you were defeated.

When you level up, you get to allocate a single point to one of your stats. Finding hidden Essence Shards,” which enhance your “Artifact,” provides you with knowledge points to use on your skill tree. It’s hard to decide which stats to boost, but apparently if you change your mind there is some way to reset everything.

It’s pretty fun to explore each area and try to discover all of the game’s secrets. You navigate the environment in a side-scrolling style, and jump around to find new items and areas above and below you. Use ladders and cling to plant roots to swing across chasms, and avoid environmental hazards such as steam vents and bubbles of poison.

As this is a non-linear game, you may find that you’re unable to access some parts of an area, but you’re able to backtrack later. I battled particularly irksome bosses, which took me a while to defeat as I learned their movement and attack patterns. It seems like you learn new abilities – such as the double jump – by defeating a boss.

One boss I faced would summon allies to really increase the challenge. After much trial and error, I defeated them, and the game gave me the option to kill the boss or let them live. I wonder how that affects the different endings. 🤔

You can’t really avoid bosses if you want to advance to the next areas, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. I figured out that in certain situations it was best to jump over the minor enemies to prevent them from damaging me. On occasion my max HP appeared to be decreasing after several defeats, but eventually it was restored to the correct amount. I wasn’t sure if that was a feature or a glitch.

I think that the comparison to Dark Souls isn’t unwarranted (at least as far as difficulty is concerned). Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona can get very frustrating, but at the same time it’s not completely unfair due to its fairly frequent checkpoints.

One complaint I had was that the dialogue text was a bit small for my tastes. But performance-wise I think it runs well; I didn’t notice any frame rate issues and loading is almost instantaneous.

I still have yet to finish the entire game due to its difficulty (I seem to be about a third of the way through). However, from what I’ve seen so far it’s impressive from a gameplay standpoint as well as an artistic perspective, with a cool opening movie and a soundtrack that really suits the mood of the game. It’s especially impressive considering that this comes from a solo developer. They clearly put their heart and “soul” into the game.