Earlier than any of the in-your-face vaporwave aesthetic of Skate Story has an opportunity to overflow my senses, I’m struck by one thing stunning—the sound of skateboard wheels rolling throughout a barely gravely floor. It sounds precisely like skateboarding ought to. It’s a small element however one which instantly makes me really feel that, regardless of all of the visible aptitude and absurd story at play, the core of this indie skateboarding recreation is a deep love for each side of the game. The remainder of the demo equally surprises me with intricate however not over-the-top mechanics. Skate Story was considered one of my standout video games from the Tribeca Movie Pageant’s video games choice and it’ll make you fall in love with skateboarding.
All I actually knew about Skate Story earlier than my hands-on demo, which consists of the sport’s first chapter, was that it’s a skating recreation starring a glass protagonist leaping over flowing obstacles whereas in Hell. Regular stuff for a skateboarding recreation, proper? After I begin my demo, I do get a number of the regular stuff: it teaches me how you can flip, slide, and push the board ahead to achieve pace.
When Skate Story does lastly educate me how you can do a trick it’s a easy ollie, one thing you’ve in all probability finished 1,000,000 instances with out thought in a recreation like Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater. The in-game textual content talks up the trick, saying how elementary it’s to all of skating, and finally teaches me to carry the controller bumper and press a button. I do some hop and it feels good. I imply that each mechanically and simply as a reward—I really feel achieved for doing one thing so minor.
That extends to all of Skate Story’s methods. The primary chapter solely teaches me three they usually all have a button combo to execute, with additional leap top added if timed correctly. None of it’s as flashy as most of in the present day’s skateboarding video games are. Skate Story gives quick tutorial screens for every trick, which present you a visible of how a skater’s ft transfer on the skateboard to perform it. It’s utterly pointless because you aren’t really doing it, however it’s clearly about displaying a love for the little points of skating.
Throughout an interview after I had performed the demo, developer Sam Eng (who confirmed as much as the demo with a skateboard in-hand) referred to the circulation state of skating and the way the sport seeks to seize that vibe. “It’s nearly like a dance,” Eng says. (If it’s a dance it additionally has the right music to maneuver to because of indie band Blood Cultures, which provides to the already wonderful sonic profile of the sport.)
For Eng, issues just like the tutorial movies educate the participant a bit about real-life skating. “I need on the finish of the sport for folks to really feel like ‘possibly I can skate’.” That’s one of many causes you don’t see the glass skater within the recreation doing any wild triple flips and twists whereas getting large air. It simply doesn’t really feel true to the skating expertise, particularly Eng’s private expertise. “I can’t do loopy fucking shit,” he admitted.
Even whereas there’s an nearly holy reverence for the act of skating, Skate Story additionally parodies society’s notion of skate tradition. The whole recreation’s premise is a joke about how skaters are delinquent, as you’re a glass demon skateboarder who’s trapped in Hell however desires to eat the moon. At one level you’re sentenced to imprisonment for the crime of skateboarding, which a floating bust of an historic Greek thinker notes is a “sin past sin.”
This all comes collectively by the tip of the chapter (the complete recreation could have 9 chapters to symbolize the 9 circles of hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy). The participant should face off towards the thinker statue in a take a look at of skating talent. It’s a boss battle principally, however it’s gained by stringing collectively methods to deal harm. However although there was a time restrict and I used to be ostensibly in a combat, the one factor in my head was how I may string collectively the right combo of methods that will really feel clean and look cool. Regardless of the vaporwave aesthetic, large statue heads, and large moons ready to be eaten by demons, I got here away from Skate Story feeling extremely at peace. That’s that circulation state Eng talked about.
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