Skye Tales review

Although I often love the tension and challenge of a particularly tricky video game, I’m not against kicking back with a puzzle or two. After a tough day of writing I’d rather ponder a line puzzle in The Witness than fight my way through a Roguelike run, so when I saw a trailer for Skye Tales I jumped on the opportunity to review it. After all, how many games let you soar through the air as a dragon and help people solve shape puzzles? Not enough that’s for sure.

On the picturesque island of Brinn, a lovely community lives happily together. This is mainly due to the inventor Theo, who uses his big brain to help solve everyone’s problems and make life easy for them. It’s tiring work though, so he plans a three day break to rest and recuperate. The other dunces on the island apparently can’t last 72 hours without needing help with something, so Theo summons a dragon (you) to do their bidding while he’s gone. It’s not the most complex story in the world, but it’s told via lovely rhyming Irish voiceover which is as charming as it sounds.

When I think of dragons, I think of fire breathing monsters with big claws that ruin your day. Skye isn’t like that, and really looks more like a flying snake. Controlling Skye is pretty simple, you point the stick in a direction and magically glide where you’re pointing. It sort of feels like the Sega classic NiGHTS, but much slower and more laid back. Skye can also pull objects, sing (which is more of a shrill squeal than anything) and do a little dash. That’s all there is to it, but that’s all you’ll need to start solving puzzles.

Especially early on, the puzzles are very easy, and honestly are probably aimed at an audience significantly younger than myself. Maybe you’ll need to move Skye in a circle to turn a wheel, or sing at different shapes in the right order to unlock a door. It doesn’t take too long for things to pick up a little though, and I got stumped a couple of times trying to guide a bucket along rails to water flowers. All the tasks you’re assigned are similarly quaint, and generally require you to dash at some switches or pull some objects about.

What’s interesting about Skye Tales is how these puzzles are laid out. You don’t just go from one room to another and try to figure out how to progress, each level of the game is actually a sizable open world to explore. From the word go you’re let loose to go flying in any direction, and each floating island you arrive at will usually have some sort of puzzle to figure out that will help you progress or give you a shiny collectable to add to your collection.

You’ll want these collectible pine cones and acorns too, because you can trade them for snazzy new outfits at the clothes shop. Flying around as a dragon is fine, but flying around as a Scottish dragon with a tartan hat or a dragon covered in sprinkles and cakes is obviously even better.

Although most of the puzzles you’ll be presented with in Skye Tales are pretty much pressure free, there are some exceptions to this rule. One of these you’ll find immediately is a target blasting mini game, which tasks you with knocking over enough skittles within the time limit to beat the high score (which took me an embarrassing number of attempts to do). Don’t expect too many of these more hectic moments, but they’re a nice change of pace when they do come along.

For me though the best part of Skye Tales is the exploration. Although the puzzles are the main event here on the island of Brinn, there are plenty of other charming interactive elements to play with on each stage. Zooming along a massive piano to play music just never stops being fun, and swirling through the sky into bubbles to pop them as a machine pumps them out just feels very playful. The world feels like a massive toy box, and I could sit and play all day.

You’re rewarded for being playful too. Each of the game’s four levels has a big list of things to do if you want to see everything, ranging from the main objectives to playing with all the instruments or making sure flags are unfurled. If you rushed to complete the main puzzles the game would probably be over in a couple of hours, but there’s so much more to do outside of that in the big floating stages.

There are some great accessibility options in the game that should be highlighted as well. The lack of difficulty already helps with some of these potential hurdles, but there are also a selection of visual filters on offer and the option to add extra hints and prompts if needed. It’s really nice to see a smaller title (and one aimed at a younger audience no less) including as many people as possible.

I really enjoyed hanging out in the colourful world of Skye Tales, but if I had to find something to complain about it would be how simple a lot of the puzzles are. It’s hard to be too unimpressed by that given it’s definitely aimed more at children than salty old reviewers, but don’t expect to have your brain tested too much.

Skye Tales is a charming and playful puzzle game that I honestly couldn’t put down once I started. The pure joy of flying through the world and playing with all the interactive elements is infectious, and the puzzles, while simple, are a lot of fun to solve. Younger gamers might get a bit more mileage out of it than grumpy grownups, but even they might be quite taken by the adventures of the friendly dragon.