Skate Story Has Quickly Become My Most Anticipated Indie Of 2024 (2024)

Back in 2020, a mysterious trailer popped up on YouTube for an ethereal skateboarding game, aptly named Skate Story. The teaser was brief, but its distinct abstract style and mysterious premise immediately grabbed me. It didn’t hurt that I’ve been a lifelong fan of the skating genre thanks to Tony Hawk’s and, embarrassingly, Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure.

That initial trailer was four years ago, but Skate Story has managed to stick in my mind for the duration and has only looked better with each new, infrequent showing. It’s spent a lot of time in the oven, but after finally getting my hands on it for half an hour at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days, I can say with confidence that it’ll be more than worth the wait.

Screenshots From Skate Story

My demo seemed to take place right at the start of the game, as our glass demon skater protagonist decides that they’re going to set out to eat the moon. Naturally. After accepting a mysterious contract, our hero is then granted the raddest of forbidden vehicles and our quest to kickflip through the Underworld and taste the space rock begins properly.

A Beautiful Day In The Underworld

One of the first things that stands out about Skate Story is its excellent presentation, which combines abstract visuals with an incredible soundtrack by Blood Cultures for a true feast for the senses. It’s rare that a game’s art style and music work so well together, but there were several times during my demo that I let out an audible “wow”.

Skate Story is no slouch when it comes to gameplay, either. Going in, I already knew I was going to love how it looked and sounded, but I had no idea how the skating itself was going to feel and how it would be structured. Would it be arcadey like Tony Hawk’s or more realistic like EA’s Skate?

From what I played, Skate Story takes notes from both, but leans more towards Skate. There’s a lot of weight to your movements and each trick you pull off feels more deliberate than in Tony Hawk’s. Skate Story thankfully doesn’t have the same complicated right-stick wiggling inputs as Skate and instead just has button combos, but it still feels like the main inspiration.

Learning Slowly In Skate Story

No matter what Skate Story’s inspiration is, the important thing is that its skating feels great. You’ve got a lot of control over your glass demon’s momentum and movements, and pulling off even the most basic of tricks feels great because of it. The fact that you’re made of glass and liable to break into pieces if you mess up definitely plays a role in that, but I’m glad that Skate Story nailed its mechanics as much as it did its presentation.

One of the reasons why skating feels so satisfying is because of how gradually tricks are rolled out to you. When your glass demon first jumps onto their skateboard, they’re a complete novice who only knows how to push themselves forward and can’t even do an ollie. As you make your way through levels, though, you’re presented with new tricks that open up what you can do.

At first, this approach took me off guard as I slammed every button to try and gain some air, but it makes every successful kickflip and pop-shuvit a memorable moment rather than something you can do straight away without any thought. Skate Story’s creator, Sam Eng, told me as I played and cheered at getting the kickflip that it’s meant to represent how difficult skating is in real life, something I can relate to as someone who desperately wanted to be a skater boy but couldn’t even stand on a board.

Since I only had half an hour with Skate Story, I didn’t get far enough to discover how other tricks might play into the level design, but I can only imagine that learning how to grind and effectively using it is going to be a much bigger deal here than in other skating games. Learning how to skate seems like it’s going to be as much a part of the story as the actual plot, which has me very impatient to find out more.

And Now For A Completely Different Underworld-Set Skating Game

Speaking of the plot, one of the things that surprised me about my time with Skate Story was how invested I was in its world and characters. Although the story itself is purposefully abstract in the 30 minutes that I played, everyone my glass demon ran into was written with so much wit and charm that I didn’t care that I didn’t know why I was talking to a bunch of philosophising statues and ghostly rabbits.

Even if the Skate Story demo left me with my fair share of questions, my main takeaway was that I simply didn’t want to stop playing. Four years feels like a long time to wait, but if my time with Skate Story is indicative of the full game, then it’s going to be more than worth the wait.