Here's a message from one of our project co-lead, Altier:

We're reworking how skills are going to be handled.

We really liked the idea of the skills but having them tied to the characters meant that:

• Every character has to have a unique move (and there's a lot of them... especially now).

• Balancing would be a pain- especially once characters are leveled up.

Now that we're building off of the original Runners codebase, we have all of the buddies implemented from the original game.

Some of the buddies from Reloaded were essentially reskinned or slightly modified versions of buddies from the original Sonic Runners. So in order to avoid having buddies that are just clones, we'd like to rework the skills and make them into new abilities for some of the buddies exclusive to Reloaded. Some buddies from the original game will also be updated as well.

Though we still liked the aspect of characters getting something unique in the process, so certain buddies will likely grant additional effects & bonuses when paired with a certain character as a nod to the original idea of the skills. So for example...

• Phantom Ruby: Every X combo will cause it to attack all enemies on screen (Combo is lowered when paired with Infinite).

• Heavy King: Pressing down when landing has a --% chance of initiating a Drop Dash (Chance increases by --% when paired with Classic Sonic).

• RC Tornado 2: Extra Rings when Rings are banked (Increases Tails' flight time by --%).

• Chip: Chance of continuing after being defeated once per run (When paired with Sonic, grants a temporary boost every -- Combo).

NOTE: The above ideas aren't finalized and will likely change as we continue development.