I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy Raskulls when I first heard about it. Game developer Halfbrick has done a bunch of iPhone games I’ve never heard of (outside of Ninja Fruit) and I wasn’t really impressed by the gameplay footage I had seen. Once I started playing, however, these little Raskulls blew me out of the water.

Raskulls centers around a fictional land ruled by the King. An evil race of Pirats crash land on the planet and decide they need a new power source. Luckily for them, the Raskulls kingdom has just such a power source – the Shiny Stone. The King decides that in order to keep his kingdom safe and to hold onto the power source, he has to hold a tournament and give the power skull to the winner. What if the Pirats win, you ask? Well, they simply can’t because then the kingdom loses the power skull. Gosh, don’t be so negative.

The good thing about the story is that Halfbrick realized the story isn’t going to matter. So instead of working on insane backstory that nobody was going to care about, they created this hilarious and campy story that creates the perfect tone for the game. I haven’t laughed this hard (intentionally) because of a game in years.

The gameplay is basically divided into two different kinds of levels; ones where you have to get to the end really fast, and ones where you have to get to the end really fast perfectly. As a gameplay mechanic it is beautifully simple and deceptively complicated. There is so much unexpected diversity in the few modes that are offered that it can get quite insane. All you have to do is clear blocks but they make it such a god damned challenge every single time. There’s a lot of strategy involved; which path do I take? Which blocks do I destroy? Should I frenzy now? Should I start spamming fireballs? Did I leave the oven on? Will my loved ones still love me by the time I complete this level?

Every time you beat a level you get a medallion. Some areas are locked off until you get a certain number of medallions. The levels past these are hair-pulling insanely difficult but they can be beat. Sometimes it takes a few hours to beat a twenty-second level. There are multiple paths to go in order to get to the end. Towards the end of the game I was getting a little burnt out, but for the most part I beat every single task I was given, even the stuipidly hard ones. On some tasks they’ll offer you another medallion if you complete the similar task but this time meeting x criteria. Often it’s a “beat the clock” kind of thing, but there’s a few that say “without getting squished” or some similar such nonsense. Your reward for beating so many things is the ability to unlock characters for multiplayer and unlock “cheat codes.” They don’t really do much. One turns you into an apple, another makes your head huge, a third gives you an afro. The best part is you can combine most of them for hilarious effect. And boy is it hilarious.

The multiplayer is great, although kind of limited. You pick one of a handful of characters but it doesn’t matter who you pick. The only difference is aesthetics and that’s kind of disappointing. It’s kind of interesting that they include characters from other games (and also Destructoid). As much as I hated ilomilo, I have to say there is a certain amount of joy playing such a cute character and trash talking the shit out of your friends. They score you after your races and you get experience points for your win. You can level up, but I’ve yet to see it matter. They don’t score you with people on an equal level. Also they haven’t come up with a perfect tie-breaker system. Each prix has four races. My friend and I were playing – he won two, and I won two. The winner of the prix was determined by whoever one the last round. I’d like to see them fix this but it’s not a huge deal. It actually makes winning the races that much more important.

Raskulls has everything I look for in an XBLA title. The art direction is simple, neat, and unique. The gameplay is fun, challenging, and rewarding. The world is interesting, detailed, and imaginative. When you’re done the main part of the game there’s plenty for you and your friends to do. And it’s funny. It’s honest to goodness one of the funniest games I’ve played in a long time since Psychonauts. It has its flaws with the lack of diversity in the multiplayer system, but they don’t detract from the game in the slightest. Go get this game. Right now. Why are you still reading this?! Go!

Mr. Hawkins says… “I was very skeptical about Halfbrick transitioning from the iPhone to the highly competitive big leagues of XBLA. Their Indie Game, Echoes, was impressive and addictive, but definitely not of the scale of most XBLA releases. Raskulls, however, came through in a very surprising way. In a nutshell, Raskulls is a fleshed out party/racing take on Mr. Driller, but with a lot of humor, challenge, and speed mixed in. I really liked Halfbrick’s Monster Dash and Age of Zombies on iOS, but it’s good to see they have the chops to make a bigger experience. To be honest, as fun as Raskulls (and its DLC) was to complete, it’s still on the edge between mini-game and full game. Let’s hope that the exposure, success, and popularity of Raskulls gets Halfbrick motivated to keep evolving and to continue developing for XBLA.”