I played Darkened Skye.
This game was released for Windows and GameCube in 2002. I played it on GameCube.
Darkened Skye is a comedy adventure fantasy platforming shooter game. You play as Skye of Lynlora, on her quest to defeat the evil Necroth who has sealed away the magic of the world.
The adventure starts off with Skye as a simple shepherd. One day she finds a strange, round, bright orange artifact labelled with an "S". And when she picks it up, it transforms her shepherd's crook into a magical combat staff.
Soon after finding this mysterious artifact, she meets with a friendly gargoyle named Draak, who takes her to see the wise old crone who lives in the nearby village. Upon meeting the crone, Skye learns that the orange artifact, is in fact.... a Skittles® candy. In this world, Skittles have the power of the Rainbow, and they are the key to restoring the magic and colour that Necroth has stolen.
Skye is now the hero destined to use the power of the Skittles to defeat Necroth and return the power of the Rainbow to the world.
Yes indeed. Despite not mentioning it anywhere on the box or in the marketing at all, it turns out that Darkened Skye is actually a Skittles-branded game all along! What fun!
Darkened Skye is a game that combines classic adventure game tropes with platforming and shooting combat. ...And when I say "adventure games", I mean stuff like inventory puzzles. For example, in the first area, there's a town with an exotic animal merchant. You can find a weird bunny in a tree in the forest, trade it to the merchant for a lamp-fish, use the fish to light up a nearby dark cave, find a rock in the cave, use the rock on a catapult to knock down an archer goblin, who then drops a clue you need to progress. ... ... You know, those kind of adventure gamey shenanigans. I always liked this kind of stuff.
Also typical of the adventure game genre is the overall tone and sense of humour. This is a game that does not take itself seriously at all. It's "the Skittles game" after all lol, you can't make it too serious.
Skye herself has a fun sense of humour and wit. She takes everything in stride, and always has some kind of lighthearted sarcastic remark for whatever's going on in the journey. Though she will also take things seriously whenever necessary, too - there is a subplot involving the whereabouts of Skye's mother which is not made fun of at all. I appreciate that the game doesn't turn everything into a joke just for the sake of shoving humour into every corner.
Draak the gargoyle acts as Skye's sidekick throughout the adventure, making wisecracks and playing off Skye's banter.
......okay, tangent time, but... I recently played The Legend of Spyro series, and oh man... in that game Sparx, the comic-relief sidekick, would not shut up with the sarcastic remarks every single scene, whereas Spyro's personality in that game was very straightforward and no-nonsense. Which gave the impression that the two were always at odds despite being "best friends". Spyro's main interaction with Sparx would be to tell him to stop goofing around, and Sparx's main interaction with everything was to complain and complain and complain and never take anything seriously. It got so tiring so quickly.
But Skye and Draak on the other hand actually play off each other quite well. They're both prone to a bit of sarcastic banter, but they seem to be in good spirits throughout. They actually seem to enjoy being adventurers together in this silly Skittles quest, and even when they're poking fun at things, it's never too mean-spirited. It's just fun. ...And it felt like such a breath of fresh air after playing Legend of Spyro, haha.
Skye and Draak are the main source of the majority of the game's humour - the actual world is a standard fantasy setting with forests and dungeons and castles etc, and the other characters are all various fantasy creatures that are fairly played-straight, which I think was a good decision. It makes the absurdity all the more fun when there is some actual normalcy going on too. It's a fine balance, and I think Darkened Skye pulls it off well.
But even though they don't make jokes, there is still humour to be had with the other fantasy critters - for example, the fish people who give you hints in the second level. They swim up to Skye, then proceed to say something that sounds like someone trying and failing to speak while underwater... no coherent words whatsoever. And then Draak translates their dialogue for us. ...It's one thing to have them speak in fantasy language, but it's kind of hilarious that their language just sounds so ridiculous. And that the stupid-sounding speech is played perfectly straight, as if it was a normal fantasy tongue. Oh it's good. This game has good humour.
Additionally, Skye will write in her quest log after every point of progression, and some of her comments are actually... kind of really witty and funny? There's one comment where she just straight-up complains about the game design, saying how "oh they only made it hard to figure out so they could sell more strategy guides" and all that. ...If there's a fourth wall here, I haven't seen it in a while.
So yeah, the humour is really good. In fact, I think the humour is the best aspect of the game.
But now it's time to talk about the actual gameplay itself.
...
The game controls like a regular third-person 3d twinstick game - you move and strafe with the left stick, and aim Skye's facing direction with the right stick.
Skye can jump, attack with her staff, and shoot magic with her staff too.
The default controls are really weird on the GameCube's controller - attack is L, jump is R, and B is entirely unused...??? why is it like this? I guess they wanted you to be able to jump and attack without taking your thumb off the right stick? It doesn't quite work with the GC's thick shoulder buttons tbh. ... Thankfully, the game provides controller remapping options. I put jump on A and attack on B so it could feel like a normal game. I don't normally tend to want to alter default control schemes very much, but this game's defaults were just so weird to me.
Skye uses her staff to fight - she can bash enemies with it, or shoot magical projectiles from it.
The close-range combat is pretty loose and not very deep. You kinda just keep pressing the attack button, and Skye will keep swinging the thing around. There isn't much nuance to it, though you do have the option to attack while moving at the same time, which can be helpful to avoid enemies' attacks, or to weave in and out of enemy range. Annoyingly, sometimes I manage to trigger a more elaborate attack animation that forces Skye to stand in place for a while, and I still have no idea what input is required to do this attack. It's annoying when this happens because I do enjoy the ability to move and attack at the same time.
Shooting magic blasts is generally the better way to engage with enemies - your magic blasts can reach a very long distance, though aiming can be a bit finicky with the right stick, since it doesn't allow for subtle adjustments at long distances, and there's absolutely no lock-on auto-target feature or anything. You really gotta be good at twinstick aiming to hit those faraway targets. Which means a lot of tiny fidgety adjustments with the stick.
I actually think the long-range shooting in this game feels kinda okay, though it's not amazing or anything. Taking out enemies from a distance with the magic blasts is always satisfying, especially because enemies in this game do not respawn. So it's entirely possible to clear out the whole level of enemies to give yourself the space you need to solve the puzzles in peace. I always enjoy when that's an option.
Whenever you attack an enemy, the feedback isn't great - they often don't visually react to your blasts at all, even though they are taking damage. You just kinda have to trust the process.
The enemies in this game range from annoying to very annoying. The majority of enemies have some kind of projectile attack, and their aim is annoyingly good. You can use the terrain as cover if you can find a good spot to do so, and weaving in and out of cover is a good way to go about dealing with them. It's not very in-depth, but it is manageable once you get a feel for it.
The most annoying enemies in the game are the swooping bat things. They pester you from the skies, and very quickly swoop down toward you, and immediately fly out of range again. There isn't really any way to get cover from them, and you really can't get anything done until you deal with them first, and sometimes there can be many of them all swooping at you at once. Aiming at them is tricky too. Blehhh.
I should mention, this is a game where you are going to die a lot, because the wonky combat and annoying enemies can often lead to unfair deaths. However, this isn't actually a huge issue in the grand scheme of things because this game features quicksave and quickload.
Hmm... Actually, I think this is the only GameCube game I have ever seen that has quicksave and quickload? Normally that's a PC game kinda feature. But it's right here on the Cube, and it works surprisingly as you'd expect. Loading is instant, as long as you're not loading into a different level than the one you're currently playing.
While quicksaving and quickloading are often easy on PC games (it's usually on the F5 and F6 keys, or something like that ), on a GameCube, it's less convenient. You have to pause with Start and scroll down to either the Save Game or Load Game options in order to quicksave and quickload. And annoyingly, these options are positioned right underneath the "New Game" option. which means that, if you're making heavy use of quicksave and quickload (which is pretty much mandatory to do), you may very well accidentally keep selecting New Game... And then you have to wait for the game's intro cutscene to load, skip the intro, go back to the load menu, and reload the level you're on.... just from a simple misinput. It's rather annoying.
And you cannot ignore the quicksave feature in this game - whenever you die, the game puts you at the start of the entire level. And a level in this game isn't short. Each level has multiple sections and multiple objectives with multiple puzzles. There's no possibility to get through the game without making heavy use of quicksave. ...so yeah, I do wish they didn't make it so bothersome in the menus.
If they had just let me map quicksave to L and quickload to R, it would have been so much better!!!
Maybe it's less annoying in the Windows version of Darkened Skye? oh well.
...
So. Anyway. Let's talk about the game's magic system.
At first you only have one or two spells in your magic list, but as you progress the game, more and more spells get added to the list. You have 23 spells in total by the time you reach the end of the story.
In order to actually equip a spell, you need to slot in the correct number of Skittles into it within the spell menu. So in order to use True Sight, the spell that uncovers hidden objects, you need to slot in one Red and one Orange Skittle. In order to use Prismatic Pulse, the first offensive projectile attack, you need to slot in one Yellow and one Green Skittle.
The Skittles are found within the stages. They float and emit sparkles and are generally positioned in conspicuous locations so you don't miss them, though some of them are a bit more hidden as well.
Skittles are not a consumable resource - when you grab a Skittle, it gets added to your Skittle pool and stays available for the whole journey.
Whenever you use a spell, the Skittles attached to the spell get drained of their power, which will slowly recover over time on a cooldown.
This becomes more interesting when you have multiple spells you can swap between - When your Skittles powering Prismatic Pulse are recovering, you can switch over to using Pyro Pulse so you can keep attacking. But Pyro Pulse is a much slower projectile, so you have to adapt the way you play to accommodate this.
Additionally, you may have situations where you can't equip two different spells at once because you don't have enough spare Skittles in the pool. One of the stronger spells is Lightning, which takes 2 Yellow, 2 Green, and 2 Purple to equip. But if all of your Green Skittles are currently equipped to Polar Pulse (which requires 1 Orange and 3 Green), then you'll have to swap them out in order to change spells - but if the green ones are still recharging from you spamming so many Polar Pulse blasts earlier, then you'll still have to wait for them to recharge before your Lightning is available. But then later on, you might find another couple of Green Skittles to add to the pool, so now you have more flexibility when it comes to slotting both spells at once and swapping quickly between them.
It's actually kind of an interesting dynamic? The way you can use your magic does actually adapt and evolve in interesting ways as you progress through the game. I think it's cool.
The spells have a good variety to them - The offensive spells all have different properties in their attack speed and power. The Lightning spell is a continuous zappy bolt, but drains energy quickly. The Pyro Pulse and Polar Pulse spells are quite slow, but pretty powerful compared to the fast but weak Prismatic Pulse. It's nice when different attacks actually feel different to use and have their own utilities.
However, many of the non-offensive spells aren't so useful.
Strength Sap weakens an enemy, Impede slows enemy movements, Madness confuses enemies, Affliction poisons enemies. ...these spells unfortunately seemed pretty useless overall. The effect they have on enemies is not obvious - most of the time it looks like nothing has changed. And generally it's too fiddly to keep swapping out your Skittles to equip things like these and then swapping back to offensive magic... it's easier to just keep the offensive spells equipped and not bother with the debuffs at all.
There are some other non-offensive effects that can be pretty handy though: Veil turns Skye invisible so that enemies don't attack, Diminish makes her tiny so she can fit in small gaps, Fire Walk allows her to walk over lava pits, and Wind Glide lets her float, though of course, it's only available in the final few levels... The fun ones are always only at the end, aren't they.
Overall, the spell system in this game is quite interesting and fun, though a bit fiddly since you keep needing to go into the menus to slot the Skittles in and out.
The progression of the game is very linear. There are 25 levels you play in a row, and there is no way to return to previously-beaten levels. There is no chapter select menu or anything either. Bit of a shame - the game is quite long, so it would have been nice to be able to return to your favourite levels whenever you liked.
...So, uh, apparently the levels in this game are based on various fantasy-themed Skittles TV adverts they had in the past...??? One Skittles advert supposedly features a woman on horseback at Stonehenge, summoning Skittles from the sky. ... and there's a level in Darkened Skye that involves taking a white horse through a badlands that does feature a Stonehenge at some point. ... I have to say, if they really went as far to reference specific TV ads in this game, that's quite impressive dedication to the Skittles lore.
The levels have quite a nice variety to them in the locales, the level layouts, and the puzzles and scenarios. There's a sunken temple, a swamplands, a hilly plain, a goblin dungeon, a palace filled with mechanical traps, a secret laboratory, a catacombs... There's a good variety in terms of item puzzles, NPC puzzles, environmental puzzles, and also good old-fashioned enemies to fight. I enjoy how there's a level that takes place entirely with Skye in her shrunken form from her Diminish spell, too - it's always fun to play in a small environment where the flowers look enormous.
Overall, this game does have a nice feeling of adventure, and I enjoy the levels aesthetically quite a lot.
Some of the levels do feel a bit long-winded and confusing at times though - there's no shortage of mazelike layouts, which can get annoying when you're trying to solve the maze while fending off creatures at the same time.
There's one level that takes place in the sky across a series of magic carpets with no enemies or items to collect at all - it's just jumping and jumping and hoping that the carpet you're on goes the right way. It can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming.
Throughout the levels, you can come across various items that can help you - life potions are always helpful, bombs can give you a way to attack enemies more effectively, and then some levels have specific environmental items such as the "Spongite" which is a sponge creature you can throw into the water to create a temporary platform.
Items are not permanent - At various points in the game, they'll just remove all of your accumulated potions and bombs from your inventory. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to when this happens.
The platforming in this game is definitely on the janky side - it's got controls optimised for shooting and strafing, so the jumping does feel a bit off. Thankfully quicksave and quickload prevent the jumping from being too frustrating. Just make sure to save before every jump, eh? ...
The game does feel a little shoddily-built at times. There's one level where you're expected to hit switches in a certain order, in order to raise and lower the pillars to allow you to jump across to reach the next switches in sequence. However, it is possible to hit one of the switches early by doing some tricky jumps over water with a Spongite... and if you do this, then the level becomes unsolveable because the pillar heights are messed up. ... This is annoying, but thankfully, since dying resets you to the start of the level, you can get back on track by jumping in the water to die to reset the whole level, even if you don't have a quicksave from before you messed it up. So that's good at least?
...I'd say, generally ...you have to be in an agreeable mood to play this game. Y'know, you gotta meet it halfway. The game provides funny dialogue, while the player provides the patience to deal with all the platforming jank and fiddly menu jank. It's a good tradeoff, I'd say.
Overall... I genuinely enjoyed my time with Darkened Skye. It is no game design masterpiece by any means, but it is so cute and charming and really funny. It is so... unapologetically itself. You just can't help but see the love they poured into this stupid game about Skittles. It's great. It's honestly one of my favourite weird obscure games now.
