Skull Smasher: Puzzle Game from Gilded Skull

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by LordGek

Holy Hand Grenades!

I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the final release and this game is pure creepy frantic clicking skull smashing Hell (in a good way)! Besides the death metal riffs and clearly demonic artwork, there is even some really sick text scrolling by in the upper right (hard to read it while playing, but from what little I've seen, it ain't happy stuff).

There is just the one game type but with 3 difficulty levels which I can only assume indicate the rate at which the baddies spawn.

The core gameplay mechanic has been done a million times before. Tap any skull in the fray and as long as there are at least three same type skulls in that cluster, they'll blowup for some points. As the screen fills with more and more skulls your health (a big vial of blood in the lower left corner) will drain away, faster the more skulls that are on the screen. Simple stuff...but that is only the beginning!

Everytime you clear a cluster of skulls, a skull of that same type somewhere else in the playfield will start glowing (sympathy pains?). If you manage to tap a cluster with 3 of these glowing skulls you'll increase the game's multiplier (I think this goes down slowly over time or completely resets on your death).

Sometimes when clearing a big cluster a blood bat will spawn and start flying about. If you manage to tap this wily flying rat before it flies off screen you can earn yourself some extra points and a little extra blood back in your vial. The catch here being that in trying to tap the bat, you could easily miss by a hair and clear some cluster you've been trying to setup (either to get the 3 glowing bits or simply to make one huge scoring cluster).

Occasionally a BIG skull with a red circle around him (indicates his current health) will join the fray. These guys don't match with the little skulls so the only way to kill them is blow up a bunch of adjacent little guys or blasting him with one of the game's weapons.

Weapons!? You bet. Various grenades will work their way into the fray of skulls that you simply tap to set off (some might require an additional tap to indicate their target).

Lastly, you have the ability, although fairly limited, to pick off individual skulls if they get in your way. Just double tap on a skull and it will disappear at the cost of some blue mana (indicated right there by your health vial). Continued normal tapping of skull clusters will slowly refill the meter if you ever run out.

5/5

[metalcasket]

Did someone say Heavy Metal?

Ummm..Y U NOOO iPHONE RELEASE?

[gildedskull]

Originally Posted by metalcasket

Did someone say Heavy Metal?

Ummm..Y U NOOO iPHONE RELEASE?

When we do complete iPhone, the app will become universal.

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by gildedskull

When we do complete iPhone, the app will become universal.

Cool.

But how would this game work on the iPhone? Wouldn't the skulls need to be near microscopic?

[gildedskull]

A few more screens:

[LordGek]

Technical question!

When taking down a giant skull, is the damage I do by popping skulls based only on the number of adjacent skulls popped or is it the size of an adjacent group popped that counts (even if only one of the group of popped skulls was touching the giant skull)?

[gildedskull]

Originally Posted by LordGek

Cool.

But how would this game work on the iPhone? Wouldn't the skulls need to be near microscopic?

The skulls are proportionally larger (by a tiny bit). It's all about balance: fewer might spawn with each 'dump' of new skulls, less health would be lost when the skulls reach the edge of the screen, giving you more time to tap. I'll post some screens as soon as we have something we're 100% happy with.

[metalcasket]

Originally Posted by gildedskull

When we do complete iPhone, the app will become universal.

Fantastic. This has shot up straight to one of my most anticipated releases now.

[gildedskull]

Originally Posted by LordGek

Technical question!

When taking down a giant skull, is the damage I do by popping skulls based only on the number of adjacent skulls popped or is it the size of an adjacent group popped that counts (even if only one of the group of popped skulls was touching the giant skull)?

The damage to the bosses is calculated based only on the skulls that are directly touching the boss at the time the group is smashed.

If there's a group of 20 skulls and only one is touching a boss when it is smashed, the boss will take damage from that skull only.

So, for example, a boss would take more damage if they are completely surrounded by a group of skulls of the same color that are destroyed all at once.

So, it's better to wait until the bosses are surrounded by like skulls before you tap the group.

The hammer is a pretty efective boss destroyer. It will cause 1/10 DAM of the bosses total health per tap (in hammer tap mode)....so any boss can be destroyed with a maximum of 10 hammer taps, less if they have already been damaged!

[gildedskull]

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