- Developer: Sam Eng
- Publisher: Devolver Digital
- Platform: PS5, PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch
- Release Date: December 9, 2024
- Price: $20 / Includes free PS Plus game catalog
- Genre: Skateboarding Adventure
“Skate Story” isn’t your average skateboarding game. Players become a nameless demon in an underworld made of glass and pain, embarking on a bizarre journey to devour the moon to escape the pain of its inability to sleep due to its light.
The demon presents the gamer with a skateboard and offers a deal: if he devours all the moons, his soul will be freed. The demon, now transformed into glass, skates across the nine levels of Hell in search of the moons.
After five years of development since its initial release in 2020, Skate Story has finally been released to the world. It is not just a simple sports game, but an interactive art piece that combines philosophical questions and surreal visuals.
A world where skating is both a battle and a meditation
The core of Skate Story lies in its skating mechanics. While the basic controls—moving with the left stick and accelerating with the A button—are familiar, tricks are achieved through a combination of the B button and shoulder buttons. You’ll naturally learn a variety of techniques, including power slides, ollies, pop shoo beats, heel flips, and front pops. These tricks aren’t just showmanship; they’re directly connected to the game’s combat system.
Points accumulated through skate combos are converted into damage in battles against demons, celestial entities, and hellish ontological structures. During battles, the screen explodes with kaleidoscopic psychedelic visuals, and skating itself becomes a weapon of metaphysical rebellion.
The combo meter tracks the player’s moves, and repeating the same moves will slowly increase your score. Varying flips and grinds, and timing jump releases at the right time, will earn you bonus points. Collisions or mistakes will cause the meter to drop to zero, forcing you to start over.
Over five years of development, Sam Eng meticulously captured the skater’s weight and momentum. With the addition of techniques like spins and reverts, riding a clean line becomes a moving meditation, managing speed, direction, and combo buildup.
The mission is surreal and full of humorous elements.
Skate Story’s mission design is unpredictable. While there are standard challenges like jumping over manholes, circling Soulflowers, and completing a set number of grinds, some stages involve a giant talking trash bag asking you to remove a stinking statue, or chasing after a demon’s clothes that refuse to dry after being washed.
After passing through the Lyceum, filled with giant stone heads discussing philosophy, the game expands into a larger adventure. Players enter the formless spirit realm with the ghostly rabbit Rabby, which serves as a hub for each story chapter and offers the opportunity to customize your skateboard.
The game’s sense of humor is consistently excellent, bringing the story to life. While it tackles dark, existential themes, gamers who aren’t averse to the term “postmodern” will find plenty to immerse themselves in the world of Skate Story.
The perfect blend of low-fidelity polygons and post-processing.
Skate Story’s visual style is quite impressive. While the skaters are literally polygonal masses wearing skate shoes, the way the glass surfaces refract and reflect light as they move is rendered with high-quality graphics.
The combination of low-fidelity assets and advanced post-processing techniques delivers highly efficient and high-quality visuals. Shards of glass fly as you grind along the hellish curbs, and the screen explodes with psychedelic colors during combat.
The soundtrack is also impressive, enhancing the immersion throughout the game. While the sound of the wheels scraping against the ground can be a bit loud, the atmospheric background music more than makes up for it.
Motivation for playtime and the likes and dislikes of operability are the keys to success.
Skate Story isn’t perfect. Its biggest problem is its lack of replayability. The game’s chapter-based story structure leaves limited options for replayability once you’ve reached the ending. While you can revisit past levels via Dream Space, there’s no clear system for achieving high scores, which leaves little incentive to replay.
Once you clear a level, you can no longer return to it, and you must start a new game to replay the level. Players expecting an arcade-style skate game may be disappointed.
The controls are a matter of personal preference. The trick system is intuitive and easy to learn, but the timing-based jumps and combo management using slow motion can sometimes feel tricky. While the thrill of successfully landing a trick is evident, the frustration of the process is no small matter.
Skate Story is available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2 and supports Korean. For more information, please visit the official website and Devolver Digital Korea official X (Devolverkr).
Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1263240/Skate_Story/?l=koreana
Advantages :
- Unique and stylish visuals
- Fantastic soundtrack
- Sophisticated skating mechanism
- Surreal and philosophical storytelling
- A delicate balance of humor and darkness
disadvantage :
- Lack of replay value
- Cannot revisit level after ending
- Some manipulations are tricky
- Absence of a high score system
Recommended for :
- Players who love indie and art games
- Gamers who value unique visuals and sounds
- Players who enjoy philosophical and existential stories
- PS Plus subscribers (free to play)
