Considering the number of games about survival and collecting resources in the middle of a zombie or some other apocalypse, one can conclude that today this is not only the most popular, but also the easiest genre. However, the difficulty is precisely in doing something unusual, something that stands out from the competitors that have flooded the market. Russian studio Mandragora together with German publisher and developer Daedalic Entertainment managed to stand out..
Scary hotel
Skyhill offers a very unusual survival formula. Young businessman Perry Jason came to an unnamed city on business, rented a VIP penthouse in the most luxurious hotel, and after a couple of days his mansion turned into a fortified base. The long-term war between the Confederation and New Europe (yes, the action takes place in an alternative universe) turned into a large-scale biological attack, and now most people either died or turned into monsters. Including the inhabitants of the Skyhill Hotel, where Perry Jason lives.
He was faced with a dilemma about how to die: either from despair, hunger and thirst in his securely protected room, or bravely, in battle, still trying to break free. Perry chose the second, and now we, together with him, have to gradually descend a hundred floors down to the exit, collecting resources and fighting monsters along the way.
Perry’s most important resource is food. Each descent down one flight of stairs and each entry into the room to the left or right of it takes away a certain amount of food, and when its reserves drop to zero, the character will begin to lose health points. Taking the elevator down is less expensive, but on many floors the electricity doesn’t work and we have to fix it, wasting precious resources and effort.
Searching drawers, boxes, shelves and corpses with the mouse, you will find a variety of foods – a high-calorie bar of chocolate or, for example, a rotten bell pepper, which with a 50% probability will poison you and take away 8 health points. You have to eat something right away – especially when hunger sets in, and there is no life-saving elevator nearby. It’s better to take something to your room: there, in the kitchen, according to the recipe, you can prepare some more nutritious dish from different ingredients.
Crazy hands
There, in the VIP room, there is https://whaleiocasino.co.uk/ a workbench and a bed. You sleep on the bed – every hour of rest makes you hungrier, but restores your health. True, something unexpected can happen during sleep – you have a nightmare or, for example, someone wakes you up with their heart-rending scream. In this case, rest will not bring the desired relief. If you dream of something good and no one will bother you, then the effect, of course, will be even more favorable than you expected.
To reduce the likelihood of trouble, you need to make an “upgrade” to the front door. And for sleep to restore more health, you should improve your bed. All this can be done on the workbench. On it you make various useful things from the found trash (gears, sticks, nails, electrical tape, a generator, etc.), which will be used to furnish the room (including the kitchen and the workbench itself), to make various weapons, as well as to repair elevator equipment.
Finally, Perry knows how to make his own medicine from found bandages, pills and bottles of alcohol. At the same time, recipes are available to him initially, and “upgrading” the workbench and kitchen opens up new ones.
Strike first, Perry!
Hunger is no big deal, but monsters are even worse – they can send even a well-fed Perry to his forefathers. Especially if he fights with his bare hands. "Onestrela" in Skyhill no, so you have to use knives, cutlasses, pipes and even mops. You can make something more powerful on the workbench. Or trade some cool double-edged sword from one of the few survivors you accidentally met on one of the floors in exchange for a cheese sandwich.
The battles themselves are always duels, and turn-based. Each one attacks in turn, and you can choose the area of attack – the head, arms or torso. It is, of course, more difficult to hit the head, but the damage will be more significant. Perry misses much more often than monsters, but he initially has many times more health. True, on the lower floors (not to mention the first) there are very tenacious and impressive mutants.
In order to hit more accurately and stronger, in order to dodge attacks more often and get a chance for an extra move, you need to “pump up” the corresponding characteristics – “accuracy”, “strength”, “dexterity” and “speed”. And experience here is given for each victory in battle, as well as for performing some other actions – for example, if Perry finds a computer in one of the rooms and communicates with an unknown person who loves to speak in riddles.
lucky chance. Or unhappy..
Mechanics Skyhill simple, and in some places even primitive. Recipes are available initially, items cannot be disassembled, combat is rudimentary, there is no detailed character generation, there are no firearms, moral choice and stress resistance parameter.
But there is random generation of levels and all their contents. Here it must be said that the game was initially designed for the fact that you will not be able to get to the bottom floor on the first try. The player will try to go down further and further over and over again – and this will open up new “perks” (active and passive) for him, which will help in a new passage. One, for example, allows you to instantly eat to your heart’s content, another allows you to build a free “upgrade” for your room, the third reduces the amount of food that is spent on going down, but increases the chance of getting poisoned when eating food. And this is not the entire list.
So, with each new descent, all content is generated anew randomly. Therefore, you never know when and where you will find a powerful cleaver, meet a survivor who will offer a profitable exchange, or notice a phone with an SMS informing about a stash on the 86th floor… All this, of course, increases the factor of chance to the skies, but this makes the game more unpredictable, and therefore more interesting.
It is also interesting to collect various diary entries, audio files and newspaper clippings that shed light on what happened in this world and how he came to live like this.
Skyhill not to win laurels, for example, This War of Mine or Darkest Dungeon – there’s a lot missing here. Nevertheless, the game has its significant advantages that are unlikely to make you regret the time spent playing through it.
Pros: unusual plot; “random” generation of levels; replayability.
Cons: The game lacks many standard features for the genre.
