It's been a good long while since the kingdom of Karpathia has needed the heroes of YEET.  The Yeoman Eldritch Extermination Team had knocked the undead horde into shape and brought years of peace to the land, which was both deeply appreciated by the people who just wanted to get on with their lives and also a reason for the members of YEET to relax and drift away.  The problem with the undead, though, is that it's hard to keep them down, and a new threat has arisen that's going to require all the old heroes and a pile of new ones to defeat.  YEET may be shorthanded with only the old knight Elgar and ice witch Yvaine available for duty, but they've got the necessary skills to punt a horde of skeletons, slimes and zombies all around the level until reinforcements arrive.  What they can't combat, though, are a host of bugs ranging from deeply unhelpful to "reset the level" unpleasant.

Skeleton Crew is an action-platformer brawler with a focus on kicking things around the level with great force.  Each hero comes with a standard set of attacks, mostly horizontal but with a rising stab and ground-pound to get some vertical action in there, plus ranged attack and defensive ability.  Even before kicking things comes into play there are a good number of combat options available, but heavy footwork is where the real damage and crowd control come into play.

While kicking isn't everything, it's about fifty percent of everything, and a good chunk of a busy combat area can be spent lining up the perfect attack.  Got a small swarm of skeletons?  Grab a rock and kick it straight through them.  An enemy blocking all attacks?  Kick that shield right out of its hands and then kick the shield through whatever is left standing.  Boss revealed a weak spot?  Grab the heaviest item around and boot it straight on through.  There are more than enough enemies and enemy types that combat is by no means easy, but Skeleton Crew isn't stingy on the ammo supply and there are always options available to keep even the busiest encounters manageable.

The kick also comes in handy for exploration, with each one of the hand-crafted levels having a plenty of secrets accessible by booting a chunk of rock through a fragile wall.  The levels are all designed for strong replayability, with certain areas requiring the capabilities of a specific type of character to access.  The necromancer can turn to a shadow form and squeeze through thin gaps, for example, while the healer has a light aura that illuminates the threatening darkness.  It takes a bit to start earning new characters, with the entire first set of six levels needing to be cleared before anyone joins Elgar and Yvaine, but the roster quickly grows after that.  It takes a bit of backtracking to get everyone, but the levels all have indicators showing missed secrets, number of energy orbs found and other goals including new characters.

Between each level YEET returns to home base, which is a large area with a good number of secrets all its own.  Rescuing civilians in the main levels starts populating the place, sometimes with helpful shopkeepers while other NPCs just wander around and add life to the area.  One of the main areas is right at the start of home base, and that's the shrine where the energy orbs found in the levels can be spent for upgraded abilities.  Each level has a set number of orbs available with a list showing what you've found or earned and what you've yet to acquire, plus a portrait if there happens to be a new character hiding in there somewhere.  It doesn't take long to start being able to spend the energy orbs on the good upgrades, leading to a satisfying power progression that includes more damage, better healing, enhanced skills and even new magic abilities.

There's a lot of great brawling action in Skeleton Crew even before grabbing a friend and heading in for multiplayer, but it too far too frequently gets shot down by bugs, glitches and other weirdness.  Health potions get caught in the walls, trapped and unusable.  The inventory says it's full when there are multiple slots open, leaving you unable to stash a scroll or other item until its needed.  The background music plays when it wants at whatever volume it feels like, frequently dropping from "dramatic confrontation" to "near silence" for no known reason.  The last time I played before writing this, when I was wondering if I was maybe being too hard on the game, saw twenty minutes of exploration ended when a hit teleported me away from the level to float aimlessly around the skybox, no way back other than to manually exit and restart the area all over again.  There's a huge amount to enjoy in Skeleton Crew, but the game has to not regularly get in the way of the player actually playing it for any of this to matter.

Closing Comments:

Skeleton Crew is currently broken in a way that makes it hard to recommend.  The game that it wants to be is excellent, with nicely chaotic combat, intricate nonlinear levels filled with secrets, plenty of areas to explore and fight through, and fantastically-clever challenges.  The large number of characters with different play-styles let you switch up the approach to the levels, and when everything's working as it should the areas are a huge amount of fun to perfect a run through.  Toss in some excellent high-resolution 2D art and Skeleton Crew looks and plays like what we dreamed the future would be back in the Genesis/SNES days.  At the moment it's just not where it needs to be, but if it's got anything like a decent patch schedule, then it's one to keep an eye on.