With the recent success of many indie games, it’s understandable that developers want to get their titles onto the console market. That being said, these games usually take a lot of work to adapt to different platforms and work well. When developers take the time to optimize these games for each platform, they can turn into amazing breakout successes, but when they don’t they turn into Skyling: Garden Defense.
Skyling was originally a mobile game that has made its way onto consoles but instead of actually changing the mobile version for the console they did absolutely nothing and just slapped an Xbox One sticker on it. Let’s get a bit more into what makes this game such a console disaster. If I were reviewing this game on Windows Phone, I would probably give it quite a high score because it’s fun and seems like it was designed for touch controls. It just hasn’t been upgraded for Xbox One and even the blurry graphics hurt the experience.
Skyling: Garden Defense is an isometric maze game that mixes Pac-Man and Q*bert. Sounds like a great idea on paper, right? Wrong. The problems become quickly apparent though with the blatantly unresponsive movement with the control stick constantly turning you in the wrong direction or just not letting you move. I thought this could be easily solved with the D-pad but was very wrong when that was very slow to respond so you could never outrun enemies. Even when Skyling would let you move it would do pointless movements like looking to the side which sounds helpful until you realize you can already see the whole map so it’s just another way to clog up your movements. Controls are the only thing this game really needed to focus on to make it work but the developers failed to make those competent.
The story is shown to you in a five-seconds optional “cutscene” and has you playing as a Skyling which are people that made beautiful gardens in the sky. One day monsters came to the Skyling’s gardens and destroyed them all and banished the Skylings. You may ask “Why would they do such a thing? The only reason the game gives is because they are mean and you stuck around to fight them. A story doesn’t have to be a huge thing in a puzzle game and this isn’t meant to be a hardcore story game but when the only reason given is “they are mean”, you can tell the developers aren’t even trying to make a decent story.
Since the story was so neglected, you would think that the developers would have instead chosen to focus on gameplay but you would be very wrong. Skyling has thirty short levels which all instantly unlock after beating the first couple of levels, which throws the feeling of progression straight out the window at the start of the game. Most of the levels revolve around you having to wait five minutes for a monster to pass and since the only way to get rid of these monsters is to pick up a slime enemy that rarely comes and throw it at them, have fun waiting for the slime as well. Even the UI is that of a basic mobile game and only has a single song for all thirty levels which you rarely hear since the sounds of monsters footsteps are annoyingly loud.
The only thing moderately enjoyable about the game is the 3D pixelated graphics. Sadly they never make a change to any platform in the game so have fun looking at the same thing from start to finish. While the overall art is beautiful, the graphics look blurry on Xbox One. It seems like the mobile version was just magnified for the big screen. Couldn’t they have gone back and redone the assets? Did they really have to just blow up the mobile version for a larger screen? Surely more effort could’ve gone into the port.
Summary
Skyling is a port of a mobile isometric maze game that is shoved onto Xbox One with no thought or effort put in. The controls are often unresponsive and usually cause you to die. The story seems to have been thrown together in five minutes with the hope that the player would just ignore it. While the story isn’t important, gameplay is. Sadly, the game is just a repetitive mess that I would only play for a couple of minutes on my phone to avoid eye contact with people on the bus. The one thing the game did right was nailing the art style but even that was repeated over and over again until that part of the game was also watered down. It pains me to say this but this game just doesn’t fit on Xbox One. The console isn’t a mobile phone. I really hope the developers address these issues if they’re going to release a sequel. Make a game that shows off what the console can do rather than making the gamer feel like they’re playing a mobile game on a large screen which isn’t even optimized for the console.
Noel was a regular ICXM contributor in 2016, publishing 83 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push.