Skate Story Review – And Let Me Skate Among the Stars
Somewhat unexpectedly, the actual skateboarding in Skate Story feels pretty damn good with controller in hand. Landing a decent grind can be a tad tricky, but I’ll take it. Considering that the word ‘skate’ comprises the first half of the game’s title, one might argue that my expectations about said skating were overly cautious, and maybe they were. Still, it’s hard to look past the tidbit where the second half of said title is ‘story’, and harder still to look past literally any screenshot or video that has come out in relation to the game.
Drowned in an aesthetic that might mistakenly be simplified as just Lynchian, but is more likely drawn from intermission screens of early airings of Rage crossbred with, somehow, a selection of later episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion on a VHS that has been run through the player so many times that the degradation to the tape itself has become an essential part of the texture, Skate Story feels more birthed from the dark corner of an art academy than it does any park with a halfpipe. And that stupidly long sentence that I just wrote scarcely touches the surface. Perhaps, though, it may be simpler to say that if your typical, garden-variety Skate or Tony Hawk game ripples with attitude, then Skate Story, instead, soaks in vibes.
And, damn, does it ever ooze them as a result.
Unsurprisingly, Skate Story doesn’t so much as dip its fragile toes into the waters of pure skating. The demon that players take control of isn’t skating for the pure, unadulterated joy of skating or the high of linking an insane number of tricks and grinds together; they’re skating for the far more relatable reason of wanting to eat the moon. Apparently, reaching this spherical sky snack isn’t possible on foot, and so a skateboard is offered. In order to become The Skater, then, the demon must sign four contracts that insist on things such as being required to eat all of the moons of the underworld and, most notably, being born of glass.
The effect of this is rad. The glistening, reflective skater model looks great, and it allows collapsing tits-over-arse to be incredibly and swiftly violent, while never being remotely gory. It’s, as is perhaps expected, something of a vibes thing, vibes that are lifted up by a soundtrack that swings between evoking detective noir-like curiosity and pulse-pounding danger while never once touching base with pop-punk, hip-hop or jangly indie rock.
The glass aesthetic of The Skater against a largely dark world does bring to mind Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, and while closer as an audio parallel, it’s still not quite right. Nonetheless, the idea of a rainbow that is somehow composed more of darkness than of light helps as a descriptor of the aggressively low-fi visual style. For all of its abstractions, murky lines and walls, this world – populated as it is with chatty rabbits, strangely proportioned frogs and screenwriting pigeons – feels remarkably real and tactile.
Perhaps this is the key to what makes the shard-like pieces come together. Skate Story may feature strange fetch quests and story beats where the board isn’t involved, but it is nonetheless a skating game at heart, even if that heart is made of glass. For all of the included arthouse charm, it seems clear that developer Sam Eng has a very real fondness for skateboarding. Tricks are named and given respect and, notably, are dolled out at a smart pace that encourages gradual learning and mastery. Skate Story seems to earnestly want the audience to take an interest and maybe gain some appreciation. It is completely possible, should you be more experimental, to perform tricks that are as yet explained, and the balance of teaching and discovery comes together well.
Notably, while there are plenty of structured paths to speed (and it’s worth noting that speed blesses tricks with additional impact) down, Skate Story features its share of hub areas, each with simple ‘go there, do that’ objectives, as well as a customisation shop because, for all of its arthouse leanings, Skate Story still allows you to trick out your deck with a random assortment of stickers. While it is possible to use so-called Skater Vision to highlight where an objective lies, this is smartly left to the discretion of the player so as to allow these spaces to fill the playground role they were also designed for, where manholes can be leapt over and tricks practised in silly safety on the way to feeling out the next key objective.
Again, it’s worth pointing out that Skate Story actually feels good to play. There are some limitations, such as very occasional wobbly surface detection (I managed to skate along an invisible wall at one point), that may explain why half-pipes are incredibly far and few between; the skating here is more about gaining speed and chaining grinds and jump tricks.
The skating itself is often at its best when the game leans into simple strings of linear paths, where the skater can build blistering speed, and spinning in the air provides a greater thrill of vertigo. These typically lead into each other, one and then the next, at great speed, and because everything takes place in highly stylised layers of an underworld, Skate Story is able to make them increasingly untethered from any kind of plausible real-world functionality.
Skate Story isn’t a skating fantasy, but it is also perhaps the greatest skating fantasy. Boss fights exist, sometimes directly against the moons that players are tasked with consuming, other times with other strange entities, and through these, Skate Story pulls perhaps its greatest trick by the incredibly simple dint of merely leaning into the fact that it is, when all is said and done, a video game.
Combos. All kinds of video games have them. In extreme-sports related titles, they typically take the form of chaining tricks together. But that’s almost an outlier. Plenty of games have score combo timers, Street Fighter accidentally made combo attacks its bread and butter, and character-action games? They’re the most combo-y of all! Skate Story leans into this and simply asks: What if trick combos were also attack combos?
And so it is that, with the help of a manually triggered finisher, Skate Story uses a stacking of tricks as attacks that gradually whittle down a health bar. It’s simple, approachable and, frankly, low-key brilliant.
In many ways, all of Skate Story is. Its core skating mechanics are solid, but it knows that they can’t possibly be polished enough to go toe-to-toe with AAA alternatives, and so it uses its world, its structure, differing objectives, and a story that, for all of its obscure dressings, actually has a pretty coherent centre, to build itself into something immediately unique and gradually engrossing.
There’s room for improvement, sure. The actual sound of skateboarding itself bugged out numerous times through my playthrough, and a handful of other glitches also show from time to time. There are moments where the stage design was just a little too obtuse or didn’t facilitate flow as easily as it perhaps could have, but Skate Story is nonetheless a unique and enjoyable game that is an easy recommendation to anyone who isn’t shy towards its abstract presentation.
Skate Story was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
