Skyhill

Pretty entertaining.
The game itself is very straight forward; You just need to get to the 1st floor to win.
Once I got to the bottom, I did not want to play again because it feels like same old Sxxx but it takes more than some minutes to figure out how to get to 1st floor and it was worth it. Lots of strategy and randomness here. So pretty good rogue-lite i guess.
Also, there are several endings too for replayability.
In short, A good game! I was having a good time playing this.
<번역>
재밌다.
게임 자체는 굉장히 직관적임. 1층까지 가면 게임이 끝남.
1층 한번 가니까 다시 할 엄두가 안났긴 했는데, 1층까지 가기 위한 방법을 고안해내는데 시간이 꽤 걸리고 재밌었다. 나름의 전략과 랜덤이 어느정도 공존해서 좋은 로그라이트라 생각한다.
엔딩도 여러개라 다시 할만할듯?
좋은 게임이었다. 하면서 재밌었음.

tl;dr
As you set out on a 100 floor descent in order to escape from hotel's VIP suite as the entire place is now infested with mutants of unknown origin, you quickly discover Skyhill is quite lacking in the variety department. No matter how many weapons dependent on upgradable stats you find, or how much food you gobble and cook to stay satiated, each floor is exactly the same with two rooms and stairway there for you to scavenge through. Taking turns with the uglies in combat is on the simple side as well. There's nothing really WRONG with the game so I can't fault it, but keep in mind there's little here after those initial few runs are behind you and you have a tighter grip on how to build your protagonist. This is one of those titles where you are expected to die and learn from experience. There's just very little reason to replay Skyhill and even multiple endings do little to alleviate that fact.
Full Review
You could say there's very little to expound upon when it comes to Skyhill. Probably due to lack of general variety for a sort of game it sets out to be. Is that necessarily so bad when you observe the offering as a complete package? Well, I guess that's what we're here to find out.
Guy rents a VIP suite in a 100 floor hotel and is extremely fortunate seeing it has “the latest bio-hazard protection installed” because come tomorrow everything seems to have gone totally bonkers. Discovering the elevator system is malfunctioning he realizes there's an arduous descent awaiting him if he wants to reach the bottom floor and escape. Along the way some monsters, mutants or whatever lurk in the rooms on the lookout for their latest victim. Putting together all the resources he can muster, with only his VIP suite as safe haven, our protagonist embarks on his merry way hoping to retain fragments of sanity.
You know I'm a story kind of guy, but as far as direct plot goes that's kinda it – escape. There's a bit more in what you scrounge over the course of playing, though. Game drops stuff like New Europe info early on and you can tell this isn't exactly our world anymore. What really fleshes out Skyhill are notes you find. In fact, piecing of the bigger picture is how you get alternate endings. I actually fairly liked how different all three of those are even if the game is arbitrary about it in a sense they're independent of one another, but can be unlocked in a single run. For example, I made both alternate endings available, but one overrides the other so you don't get to choose. If you ask me the default ending is probably the most effective seeing as it's heavily hinted at if you pay attention to audio recordings protagonist comes across. I remember the initial crowdfunding pitch numbered three playable characters so maybe they would have expanded the story more had that come to fruition as intended.
Setup we're operating with here gameplay-wise is that every floor has a stairwell/elevator area + two rooms, one to each side. Moving from room-to-room costs you one unit of food, which feeds into the survival element because you have to keep your hunger in check lest you start losing health. I'll go into it later on when I talk about specific systems, but in each of these rooms are almost always containers holding everything from weapons, ingredients for all your crafting needs or consumables like low-tier food and health kits. You can move between your VIP and any floor with operational elevator access by spending two units of food which is a lifesaver when you're nearing the exit and need to craft and rest to heal. Trick is that sometimes a panel has to be fixed and you have to keep doing this whenever you see one because if the chain of working elevators is broken you won't be able to use them at all. Game does throw you a bone by not requiring a specific skill or to fix things, but rather putting a certain part requirement up OR you can improvise, spend some time and lose a random item from inventory with a chance of failure. In practical terms this was never an issue for me because you have plenty of stuff in your backpack and losing some wiring won't immediately kill you.
What just might kill you is combat, though. Rooms I talked about can also be populated by enemies you need to do away with before you can loot and they're also your main source of experience. I counted handful of enemy types, but considering how long a run takes I didn't find that terribly restrictive. Skyhill also decides to throw more dangerous enemies at you as you descend further and further while keeping in mind you CAN backtrack to the VIP room if you need a quick upgrade. You fight enemies by either simply clicking on them and letting the skill/weapon formula do its thing or you can enable the aimed attack mode where you choose three body parts to attack, each with differing percentage-to-hit and damage. Latter seems like a reasonable choice to go with as most of the time you want that fine control in order to optimize. If there was one enemy I dreaded coming across it was the toxic bloated one who would attempt to poison you if you didn't kill him fast enough. That's quite the problem as it sends your health ticking down without an antidote you must to craft. Speaking of which...
Crafting is a thing that I, much to my own embarrassment, didn't get the importance of while I was doing so well early on. Reaching low 20s and I understood not returning to the suite where crafting station and bed are located was a mistake. You see, you can upgrade your “home base” which lets you unlock more recipes and such. Those are key to acquiring better weapons and actually filling food because what you find as loot is just enough to get you by. Taking into account weapons depend on stat(s) you may want to plan ahead and work with those points you get with each level to put into Strength, Speed, Dexterity or Accuracy so you don't suffer handling penalties if one or more isn't up to snuff. Especially since some advanced weapons require you to have not only crafting ingredients but also other weapons. One issue that stood out was how final damage output could have been a bit more transparent. You can only see what effective damage, with skill bonuses factored in, your weapon will do once you actually equip it seeing as base damage is more of a guideline. It just leads to unnecessary back and forth until you find the best one.
While I'm on the topic of character development I should also briefly bring up active and passive Perks. Those are all locked at first, but as you play through the game they open up and can be quite the game changers. Lucky Bastard, for example, lets you one-shot anything and then goes on extensive cooldown making it something you save. Or Rampage where you always strike first, but cannot retreat from fights. Perks somewhat alleviate that absent degree of major differences across multiple runs in that they can also alter non-combat functionality like make you see through what's on other floors, start off with a strong medpack, etc.
On the production end Skyhill definitely subscribes to making good use of the chosen art style. Visual highlights peak at dramatically drawn shadows once combat is met for higher tension, but presentation also reveals mobile version as the likely baseline. Some detail work like weapon types having their own attack animations pleasantly surprised me and what is in the game certainly looks polished enough. Audio offering is sparse albeit functional, especially with creepy mutant noises. Ominous and moody exploration track is the one you'll grow accustomed to the most as it follows your every step and loops eternally.

This game has everything to make it likeable: a cool background story with secret endings, a bearable amount of RNG, plenty of easy-to-find "lore" with background stories and fun "facts", an adequate amount of perks, items and craftables that keep the game interesting, good balance.
However, what is it with developers of SURVIVAL games that they keep introducing achievements for high amount of DEATHS - eludes me. Like in many other similar cases I ended up grinding my deaths for the last remaining achievement.

Short but nice

Fun, but *very* RNG-reliant minimalist craft-and-crawl, Skyhill makes a great first impression that slowly fades to frustration as you realize how much of each run is governed by your hit percentage chance and whether or not you get drops from the items you inspect.
The plot is also extremely dark, in one of those ways where it quickly becomes apparent what you're actually doing after collecting your first one or two notes, and that's genuinely a shame because the worldbuilding they were doing before that was kinda neat. Normally a dark twist to a game wouldn't put me off, but the info from the notes makes it clear that the objective "best ending" is to die to the first thing you encounter, and that threw a bit of a blanket over my desire to continue murdering everything in the tower.
The crafting system is also a bit tedious, and a *lot* of the unlockable perks are just straight garbage, so some builds are going to be more correct than others---and all builds are going to be fully at the mercy of the rng.
I think this is a great pickup if you want to try something new for a little bit, and if you want to see a fairly simple game executed quite well, but I don't know if it has staying power compared to other roguelikes.
Pick it up on sale, mess around with it for a few hours, then youtube the ending.
If you're someone who has to play games through to the end, this one may not treat you kindly.

Too bad it crashed while on a very good progress without even saving the damn level. This made me mad, very mad...

Game type
Adventure Turn-based


Story
★★★★☆


Graphic
★★★☆☆


Fun
★★★☆☆


Difficulty
★★★★☆


Play time
★★★☆☆