2025 will go down and remembered as either the year of the ninja games, the racing games, or maybe even the year of skateboarding games.
The stars really aligned to have a new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game (albeit a “remaster“), a new Skate game (albeit an Early Access live service thing) and the unexpected Sword Of The Sea (more of a 3D platformer adventure, but with strong nods to skateboarding).
In hindsight, Skate Story getting delayed and delayed is a blessing for the gamer who yearns for yearly trends where out of nowhere a couple, in this case four, games from a niche genre suddenly drops.
Skate Story has a lot going for it. The premise of this surreal escapade about moon-eating demons contractually obliged to skate sounds like a fever dream, or a creation so intimate that its creator must stamp their name on the game multiple times.
Look, I love poking fun at a Hideo Kojima game as much as the next person, but if you’re going to put your name on your game it better be something else. Skate Story, by Sam Eng and a list of collaborators neatly credited at the start of the game, fortunately, is something else.
The first chapter of Skate Story, which the demo covers, set a convincing tone that this skater boi is landing his big trick long in the making.
And let’s talk about how the dreamy, surreal aesthetic it has. The world is full of darkness and glitter, with opaque cinematic black bars, aberrated through CRT-like effects and warped through a fisheye lens.
It’s an aesthetic that I’m convinced made by someone who achieved a higher state of mind—whether that they entered the flow state, or high on substances, or whatever that may be matters not. Now pair that aesthetic with an eerie, unnerving yet comfy and enveloping sounds of its soundtrack, with New York-based band Blood Cultures contributing a whole album’s worth of music, and it’s a whole transcendental experience. It’s a uniquely surreal depiction of hell and the underworld. One where philosopher’s statues made famous by the vaporware movement force you into limbo by pondering thoughts while another scream for a sip of legally distinct, cheap large can of tea. It’s all the more surprising that the aesthetic choice also incorporates authentic skater culture.
In its peak, the art of skateboarding is defined by clips recorded on a camcorder with those fisheye lens, usually zoomed to the legs and board of the skater rather than having them fully in frame. And Skate Story remembers that well more than the new Skate, to stick to that lowly placed camera, only to zoom out a bit for specific effects, like moving really, really fast.
Look, 30mph isn’t a fast car speed, but when you’re on a piece of plank with four tiny wheels stuck on them via some metal bits that may or may not properly screwed on after taking so much beating, it’s scary. And the game reflects that terror well, and used to good effect. There are sequences where you’re more or less travel in a straight line, but having to hang on to the skateboard that gets sketchier as you further skate downhill, it’s exhilarating. All I did was maybe jump over a few obstacles and steer the board a bit but it’s still hair-raising stuff. But that’s actual skateboarding, not like how video game skateboarding is.
Skateboarding, through the lense of video games, has been defined by how you can pull off cool tricks with ease. The Tony Hawk games skewed towards arcadiness. It’s grounded and informed by real skateboarding, sure, so it’s still valid representation of the culture, but it’s not realistic. You don’t do 100x string combos looping around the whole map all while being able to hold long, steady grinds and manuals in real life. But it’s totally fine to design an arcade skateboarding game like this—the OlliOlli series wouldn’t exist if developers didn’t embrace arcadeness in video game design and it’s crying shame if the world doesn’t get another new OlliOlli game (RIP Roll7). And more recently, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (with a sequel coming called Hyperfunk) infused its Jet Set Radio influences with the conventions of a Tony Hawk-style skateboarding game, where you’re expected to be able to hold a long, 100+ tricks combo while you loop around the map multiple times.
That said, that’s why Skate (and its spiritual descendants, shout out to Session and Skater XL) was revolutionary, as it attempts to ground skateboarding closer to reality, where a flip trick isn’t something you mash out to keep a long combo going, but itself a challenge. Though by Skate 3 and the new Skate, the series has gone outlandish again. But a seed has been planted that not all skateboarding games should play like each other.
And that’s Skate Story’s cue in this story. Skate Story has its own control scheme, where each bumper and trigger is essentially assigned to a specific way each foot manipulate the skateboard as it leaves the ground. You’d think it’s like Skate’s revolutionary “Flick-It” system where a flip trick reflects how you flick the right stick. But Skate Story’s implementation brings another nuance not seen in skateboarding games that reflect more of real skateboarding—how skaters adjust their footing before a jump to set them up for a flip trick. In Skate, you can just hold the right stick down and flick whatever way to turn what would be a simple ollie into maybe a kickflip or a pop shuvit or other tricks. In Skate Story, you press the bumper/trigger first, committing to a trick, before you jump and flick it.
It’s a small change all things considered, but it’s a paradigm shift in how you skateboard in games. I struggle so much with this control scheme because I wired my brain like how I play Skate. Hold jump first and you can flick into a different trick from there. Having to commit to a trick first really messes up with that. And I’m not complaining. The design of it makes sense, and Skate Story isn’t about pulling outlandish tricks. The premise of the game itself is already outlandish enough. Instead, the core gameplay grounds itself to portray something that, from a perspective of a person who only follows skateboarding culture from afar, looks like authentic skateboarding.
On that note, I absolutely love the glazing that comes from putting the art of skateboarding under the spotlight. You learn skateboarding tricks from reading ominous obelisks where deep breakdown and explanation of said trick is legibly etched in red glow which the Skater then memorises as if it’s gospel. But it is something I like to point out, as someone who only learns skateboarding through video games, I never really understood the real what each trick is and how would you perform them. If you were given a skateboard, how do you actually do a kickflip? All I know is you hit square and right, or flick doward and then upper-right on the stick.
I remember my mind blown by this video about the Impossible. It never occured to me how ridiculously impressive this trick is because it’s just another one of those tricks I mashed out over and over in other skateboarding games like it was nothing. It’s not called the Impossible for nothing! The physics involved is whack!
So here I am, reading how Shuvits and the “legendary” Kickflip is performed in Skate Story, a proper breakdown of each trick transmitted through this soul-keeping towers. Sam Eng indeed skates, and judging by what the game presents here, Sam Eng sure does want people to appreciate what video games have portrayed as “simple” tricks as monumental expressions of skill for any skater to pull off. Literally. Because you can also call the ways these tricks are etched on monuments.
With Chapter 1 of Skate Story, you really have four flip tricks, an ollie (which itself is a trick, deserving of its own obelisk, and not just a jump) manuals and grinds as part of your repertoire. But that’s enough for a game like this. Skate Story doesn’t want you to pull ludicrous strings of continuous skate tricks. You’re actually rewarded for popping a trick at the right time rather than simply spamming them over and over as quickly as possible.
The coolest way you can play Skate Story will not make you look like a Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 combo video, or be like Steezus pulling off Christ Airs over big airs to the tune of Pearl Jam’s Even Flow. Skate Story’s brand of skateboarding is grounded, gritty and as a result, authentic.
Of all the skateboarding games I’ve played, Skate Story’s mechanics are the ones that can closely replicate the wild challenges of Kasso—the Japanese game show where professional skaters have to skate through obstacle challenges that some describe as “Takeshi’s Castle but for skateboarders” (appropriately so, it’s produced by TBS, the same production of the wild game show that inspired Fall Guys).
Those speed runs where you must avoid obstacles and carefully carve around bends at high speeds? Yeah, I like that, in contrast to Sword Of The Sea where it compromises the skating physics so it can have tight 3D platforming moments, Skate Story uses its momentum-based movement and built traversal challenges around it. The only thing missing is how hard it is to maintain a balance in a long, winding grind and how tricky it is to skate at an angled plane.
That is to say, Skate Story’s brand of skateboarding feels like real skateboarding. Ironic given how everything else is surreal.
All in all, I am highly impressed with what Skate Story has to offer based on the demo. You skate, and there’s an intriguing story. Whether it nails the landing or ended up a gnarly slam remains to be seen, of course. But the mere existence of Skate Story should be celebrated.
Like the bright stars the underworld is filled with, Skate Story proves there are more ways to portray the beauty of skateboarding, and use skateboarding as a platform to tell your own tale, however weird that it may be, rather than having said tale be of skateboarding itself. You would think the skateboarding mines have depleted of all what it has to give. Yet here we are, witnessing how one indie developer and his collaborators just struck gold.
Skate Story will be out on December 8 for the PS5, PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch 2. Demo is now available on PC (Steam).