Skateboarding video games live and die by their vibe. The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles were anarchic, arcade fun while the recent return of EA’s beloved Skate franchise offered competent yet jarringly corporate realism. Skate Story, which is mostly the work of solo developer Sam Eng, offers a more impressionistic interpretation while capturing something of the sport’s essential spirit. It transposes the boarding action to a demonic underworld where the aesthetic is less fire and brimstone than glittering, 2010s-era vaporwave. It is also the most emotionally real a skateboarding game has ever felt.
The premise is ingenious: you are a demon made out of “pain and glass”. Skate to the moon and swallow it, says the devil, and you shall be freed. So that is exactly what you do. You learn to ollie first, a “delicate, precise trick” according to the artfully written in-game text. Then come the pop shuvit, kickflip, heelflip and more.
The controls are easy: one button to ollie. If you’re holding down a shoulder button at the same time, you perform a more involved trick. Beyond the ravishing visuals, what’s most striking is the exquisite fluidity, the delicious “gamefeel”, of the actual skateboarding: the way the knees of this glittering demon bend just the right amount after landing a trick; the way you can see their foot stretching out across the top end of the board in order to apply just the right force that will cause it to flip.
The vaporwave aesthetic is not Skate Story’s only bold design choice. You will fall many times on the ghoulish asphalt and when you do the action cuts to first-person, causing you to see the world tumbling for what feels like a tormenting eternity. Along the way, you meet a bizarre cast of characters: a mystical rabbit, a pigeon trying to type a screenplay, and a ghost hanging out in a launderette.
The game’s action can be divided into two types: narrow, linear tunnels that you hurtle through at breakneck speed, and wide-open sandbox levels. The former are furious, momentum-filled thrill rides that demand utmost precision; the latter, set in nightmarish, nocturnal visions of New York, feature many offbeat objectives, such as chasing spooky laundry. In these levels, there is ample room to enjoy the deceptively deep skating mechanics.
Gradually, a melancholy surfaces in this crystalline universe. Of course, the skateboarder wants to be free of the underworld, but they also seem enraptured by the idea of devouring these moons. As you thread together tricks with manuals and grinds, scoring ever-larger combos, all as a brilliantly downbeat electro soundtrack chimes away, questions arise. Why is this skateboarder so hungry? Why do they seek pain? In some ways, we’re reminded of the physical risks of skateboarding in real life.
These questions – and the sadness buried within their answers – distinguish Skate Story from its traditionally zany video game counterparts. Rather, Eng’s gently emotive work is more in touch with the likes of acclaimed documentary Minding the Gap and Jonah Hill’s movie Mid90s.
The result is a skateboarding game of rare poetry. There is the poetry of the skating itself, the miraculous interplay of body and board rendered with aplomb. There is the actual poetry that accompanies the end of each level. Finally, there are the tender emotions that refract through, and seem amplified by every bailed kickflip in this surreal, shimmering take on hell.
