The stark presentation can threaten to be overwhelming at times, especially when nearly the entire screen descends into a mass of yellow pixels. But the simplicity of the colors also makes it easy to unfocus your eyes and instinctually plan a path away from the red and yellow threats and through to the safety of the inky black void.

Skigill also benefits from allowing players to speed up or slow down time with a quick tap of the shoulder buttons. This is a lifesaver for the tedium of the early parts of runs, when the enemies are coming in at a relative trickle and you don’t want to stand around for awhile waiting for the actual challenging part of the run.

Where Skigill suffers most, for the moment, is in an overall lack of variety. The recent Early Access release only has three different playable characters and four different skill-tree maps. While they differ in some important ways, the options fall far short of the dozens of arcane unlockable options that can keep players coming back to a game like Vampire Survivors for dozens of hours.

For replayability, Skigill currently relies on a difficulty system that simply scales up the quantity and health of enemies alongside a secondary skill tree that lets you purchase more permanent upgrades from the main menu. Unfortunately, even at the higher difficulty levels, you’ll see the same four yellow-on-black enemies filling your immediate vicinity, with little in the way of interesting movement or attack patterns to mix things up.

The developers promise on Steam that Skigill will see at least three new characters “along with more weapons and build possibilities” as it goes from Early Access to a Version 1.0 launch. We’re happy to hear that, because even this limited, somewhat repetitive taste of the game has had us coming back for the fun take on an old RPG staple.