Skatemasta Tcheco is an autoscroller platformer, and a love letter to those 8bit stages where you had a skate and loved/hated to play, refined and distilled into 8 (+1secret) big stages. It’s the creation of the sole developer of the first game, Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio, Marcelo Barbosa.
Graphics and Atmosphere: Just like the first, 8-bits pixel art, it does not limit itself completely to , so we get gradients, a good amount of parallax, and beautiful backdrops, except for the bosses, who get a single color background.
Music and sounds: gorgeous chiptune music, fits perfectly the mood and the throwback premise. Credited to Oskar Hanberg, same as the first game, but I couldn’t find the music anywhere, youtube, bandcamp, or anywhere else. The sound effects are an improvement on the first game. In the sense that they are at a more adequate volume now, considering we can’t separate it from the music, and the death sound no longer kill us each time we hear it.
Story and Setting: There is no story, basically. The setting is Brazil, with numerous references, jokes and memes that will go over non-brazilians, and of a certain age at that. But you don’t really need those to appreciate the setting and the most important: the gameplay.
Options: Much better than the first game. Meaning we even have options this time around. It has still some ways to go, we still have music and sfx as a single volume adjust, and few graphic options. Language still needs to be changed thru steam, and there are no control options.
Gameplay and Controls:
It is an 8bit platformer, so you know what to expect. You move around and jump. You attack enemies and get money to get points. Fight a boss at the end. You have a high score in your menu, and it also serves to unlock an extra stage.
You have 8 stages, all unlocked from the start, and can choose the order in which you can play them. They have a difficulty meter, shown as stars, and I’d say they are mostly spot-on. It might seem too few stages, but they are quite long, and each have a unique boss at the end. Also, the difficulty will have you retry most stages multiple times until you beat it. One downside is that after you beat the stage, you can’t go back to it, unless you start a new game. It has a save system, but only one slot.
Throughout the stage you’ll find money. This is your score, and is used to save the game. After each stage you have the chance to save for increasing amounts of money, it does not matter which stage you picked, just how many are completed.
This time around Tcheco have the Skate for the whole game, so his gameplay is auto scrolling. The stage auto scrolls, but also Tcheco. He moves at the same speed as the stage when the dpad is not pressed, even in platforms, which can throw some people off. It also compounds on a “problem” I’ll explain in a bit.
You start the game with 8 Hearts, and each Heart can take 2 hits, so 16 hits to die. Falling down a bottomless pit also only hit you for ½ a heart, so it’s very forgiving. Problem is, you don’t fully heal after a stage is completed, you heal an amount, say 5 hits or 2 and ½ hearts. You can input a secret code to start your saved file from full, thou.
In the first game you had no way to attack of your own, but now’s different. Tcheco can jump in the enemies’ head to kill them, or make use of his 2 attacks: A forward dash, that can go back if you hold left, and a downwards dash with another button. Both can only be used in the air. And in this move lies most of the negative opinions you’ll find for this game. Since the button to jump and the forward dash are the same, and you have falling platforms, you will at times think you’ll jump, but you dash right over a bottomless pit. Then you get desperate because you fell, dash as soon as you spawn in the air and fall again. You have to be very deliberate while playing this game. In later stages the platforms might be very small, disappear after you touch them, or you’ll have to wait a bit for them to appear.
I say, this game is called Skatemasta, not Skatechump. If you die, go again. It’s forgiving in its system to be able to be challenging in the execution of its level design. Those who understand this will surely appreciate their short time with it.
Also, in each stage you’ll find letters. Collect all of them and a character from other brazilian games will come help you with that stage’s boss. If it’s help at all, because sometimes their attacks either never hit the boss or make you miss your attack. Not that you’ll need the help, anyway. The bosses are varied and goofy, a good time.
Completion, Extras and Achievements: It’s a very short game. In a couple hours you can finish it. You might want to keep playing, because there is an extra stage after the initial 8, that require you to amass a million points in total. And since you can’t go back to stages after you complete them, you might want to either reset, not save a couple stages, complete them in different orders, etc. It’s a clever system to make you come back to the game.
Sadly, again, there are no Achievements.
Conclusion: If you are not completely averse to the idea of an auto scroller platformer, play this game. It’s super cheap and worth the experience.
