How Sker Ritual reinvents the wave-based zombie shooter

I’m about a dozen rounds into a game of Sker Ritual, and I’ll be the first to admit that this demonic rite is not going well. I’m fumbling my way through an abandoned village straight out of Bloodborne, escorting a lamb to a church so I can get a blood sacrifice going. 

The zombie-like Quiet Ones are hot on my tail, wielding axes, bats, or simply their bare fists. An elite enemy with a diving helmet spews lasers from his maw, so I kite him around the run-down shacks, picking off lone enemies with my peashooter revolver. 

One of them drops an infinite ammo power-up, so I change tactics and rush them with my replenished pump shotgun, making enough of a dent in the horde to escape to the church. Inside, I upgrade my weapons, reload, and prepare to battle the next wave, hoping to generate enough “essence” from the kills to get the next MacGuffin that I need to open the vault door downstairs. On and on we go, with each round offering a new mechanism in this twisted Rube Goldberg machine of murder and mayhem.

Sker Ritual does not hide its obvious inspirations, and it’s all the better for it. Developed by Wales Interactive, this is a co-op zombie shooter in a style that you've almost certainly encountered before, whether in the murky halls of Left 4 Dead, the splattery chaos of Killing Floor, or especially the compulsive, just-one-more-round pull of Call of Duty’s various zombie modes. But Sker Ritual is more than just another entry in a familiar genre—its unique aesthetics and engaging level design stand out, and the game is only getting better.

On paper, Sker Ritual is quite a departure for Wales Interactive, which makes its quality all the more striking. The studio is best known for its atmospheric and story-driven mystery games, often featuring real-world FMV elements, like The Shapeshifting Detective. In fact, Sker Ritual is the unlikely follow-up to the tense horror thriller Maid of Sker, except this time you can really take it to the ghoulish cult known as the Quiet Ones with an electrified blunderbuss. Dr. David Banner, the studio’s co-founder and co-director, acknowledges that branching out into the co-op FPS genre required a lot of work on the developers' part, but that it was a more natural process than it might seem at first glance.

“After we [released] Maid of Sker, we felt that the world and characters we’d created would be something we’d like to revisit and expand upon,” Banner says. “But we didn’t want to do a straight sequel, and our ambition was to try a different genre of game. We really wanted to make a single-player horror shooter initially, so our first experiment was creating an FPS challenge mode for Maid of Sker as a free DLC to see if the idea had legs. The community liked it, so we decided to go a step further and spun out a new game, which became Sker Ritual.”

Though the untitled Sker follow-up started out as a single-player experience, the team’s ambition quickly grew. The developers knew that creating a co-op multiplayer shooter would present all sorts of challenges that they had never faced, but they were determined to see it through regardless. 

“I suppose…fans of our titles would have expected us to do another stealth-horror [game], but as a team, we always like to challenge ourselves creatively and technically,” Banner says. “We really wanted to make an online FPS co-op horror game even though we knew the learning curve would be huge for us. It’s basically our spin on the old-school zombie co-op shooters that we loved playing back in the day.”

Banner’s fellow co-founder and co-director, Richard Pring, calls Call of Duty’s zombie modes the main inspiration behind Sker Ritual, but he also notes that the wave-based survival shooter space is not necessarily as crowded as some might think. “We felt we could add a lot of the genre,” he says, adding that the team looked to popular roguelikes like Hades as well as Metroidvanias for new mechanics to add to the usual mow-down-the-zombies paradigm.

Sker Ritual’s Miracle system is perhaps the most impactful of those additions. Every few rounds, each player gets a Miracle point they can spend to harness powers from a Celtic deity of their choice. With these upgrades, you can essentially create an RPG-style build that develops as you progress through the labyrinthine guts of a level: You can shoot lightning from your gun to stun your enemies, create an ice shield to protect you from their attacks, or spawn a fire tornado to immolate the whole horde in one go. If you’re particularly clever, you can coordinate with your squadmates to grab abilities that synergize well together. Along with gun upgrades, power-ups, and wildly creative elite enemies that might show up at any time, this means that every playthrough feels distinct.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a survival shooter if you didn’t have some high-powered armaments to fire into the shambling masses, and this is another area where Sker Ritual shines. Your usual array of AK-47s, hunting rifles, and double-barreled shotguns make their appearance here, but I found myself returning again and again to my trusty crossbow, which could down most enemies with a single headshot. As you might expect, the special weapons are particularly impressive here; my personal favorite is the Howler, the aforementioned blunderbuss that fires electrified cannonballs that bounce around the room, devastating everything in their path. 

Anyone who has spent any time in the Call of Duty Zombies community knows that the fans care as much about the lore and Easter eggs as the action itself, and this is where Sker Ritual takes full advantage of the studio’s narrative chops. The Quiet Ones might shamble like zombies, but these masked cultists are far more disconcerting than any member of the walking dead. Most of the bosses in this game aren’t just the usual hulking monster-men with horrifying faces, but a variety of interesting designs, including a dapper, cravat-wearing gentleman that attacks you with a bizarre array of energy attacks and spectral rats. In addition to the sheer creativity of the enemies and level design, Pring emphasizes that the team layered in a number of hidden stories for players to uncover for those who are interested in the world’s lore.

Sker Ritual managed to capture an audience from its early stages, and Pring says they've managed to improve the game a lot simply through experience. The team has taken design and balance notes from its growing community—for example, Pring notes that one teleporting enemy had its AI significantly changed after players complained that it jumped around way too often, making it frustrating to fight. The game’s boss fights have also grown more complex over time. 

“I think one of our best bosses is the new Canwyll Corph boss in [the free DLC level] House of the Damned,” Pring says. “It utilizes environmental dangers combined with an ongoing range timer, adds an evolving move set to keep players on their toes…it’s not just a giant bullet sponge you run away from.”

Overall, Pring and Banner describe the experience of making Sker Ritual as a sort of “pinch yourself” moment for the studio, especially considering that only five people worked on the game. Indeed, Sker Ritual is a testament to the ability of experienced indie developers to not only pivot and try new things but to compete with the big studios in delivering a focused experience that pushes the boundaries of a beloved genre just a bit further.

“To all the people who’ve bought our game and supported us, I’d like to say ‘Diolch yn Fawr Iawn,’ which is Welsh for a really big thank you,” Banner says. “...It’s not just about downloads, though. As a passionate indie developer, it’s always very satisfying when an audience connects with something you’ve lovingly created in a darkened room for three years.”

Sker Ritual is available on the Epic Games Store. Its next big content update, Tides of Terror, is coming in October.