Skate Story Review

I’m drawn to games on the unconventional side. There’s something about throwing out the creative rulebook that strongly appeals to me, and any game that questions standardised conventions in pursuit of innovation will always merit a second glance. Of course, ‘weird’ in and of itself is far from a guarantee of artistry or success, but when it works, it can create the kind of imaginative experiences that make indie gaming in particular such a treasure trove. Skate Story is up there for eccentric premises, following a glass demon on its quest to eat the moon, but the creative risks pay off and the result is one you won’t easily forget.

Skate Story is equal parts narrative and skateboarding, and the story fits together using a brand of logic that determinedly skirts the irrational. It all starts because the light of the moon is stopping you from sleeping, so you decide to eat it. A demon obviously cannot reach the moon on foot, but after a quick bit of paperwork, you get your hands on the skateboard that apparently can get you there, so off you go – eat that moon. This style of reasoning, where explanations function for barely one layer before shattering into the absurd, is a heavy feature in the storytelling; questioning ‘why’ often won’t give you meaningful answers, but ultimately I think this is because the answer often isn’t the point.

In many ways, Skate Story feels more about the experience of your journey and how that plays out through the act of skating than the narrative events taken individually. This is a game about tortured souls, the underworld, and eating the moon, sure, but it’s also about skating, freedom, and picking up your shattered pieces every time you fall – even if dusting yourself off and trying again all but locks you in for another round of the pain that just broke you again in the future. The story ends up being significantly emotionally weightier than you’d expect from its surface dry humour (which occasionally had me laughing out loud), but it’s a perfect balance that helps to create a game that is truly one-of-a-kind. Some may find the use of metaphors such as the glass skater to be a bit heavy-handed, but this game doesn’t do things by halves, and it’s the kind of experience where embracing the unconventional and letting the game sweep you along with its ambitious creativity ends up being miles more rewarding than pulling apart the individual threads and trying to make order within them.

May you find what you’re looking for

This experimental, boundary-pushing design extends beyond the narrative into other aspects of the game, including most noticeably in the visuals. Skate Story is stark and sharp, blending dark urban streetscapes with physics-defying environments that you skate through during challenges. Concrete, glass, and metal feature heavily along with the fire and brimstone you’d expect to find in the underworld, and the result is a severe but arresting aesthetic that’s central to the game’s distinctive identity. There’s also a continual sense of reinvention with surprises around every corner to maintain engagement as you play, and it is impossible not to revel in a world of such self-assured and abundant artistic imagination. I can’t stress this enough: it’s nothing short of stunning.

This artistry, however, does come at a cost. As a lifelong Nintendo gamer, I’ve never been one to prioritise top-of-the-line graphics, but Skate Story suffers from some performance issues such as stuttering and occasional slowdown, and you have to adjust the graphics settings to prioritise performance over visual fidelity for the best gameplay experience. These settings introduce aesthetic tradeoffs, and while the game is visually impressive regardless, there was never a moment when I wasn’t quietly yearning to experience the game without these concessions. While I can’t speak to how well the game would run on a different system, if you have the option to play it on something more powerful than the Nintendo Switch 2, I can imagine you’d have a better time of things there.

Skate through striking environments on your journey through the underworld

Of greater consequence than the visuals is the gameplay, though, and Skate Story reads like a love letter to the sport in a way that is recognisable to even a non-skateboarder like me. The level designs are incredible, thoughtfully combining ramps, rails, stairs, and other obstacles in interesting ways that encourage you to take joy in every moment of skating. Within the urban city hubs that function as your base for each chapter, there’s often no rush to move onto the next thing, and I regularly found myself holding off on advancing the story to pull off the perfect grind down a particularly enticing ledge or master some other trick.

With that said, it is in progressing the main objectives that you’re bound to have the most fun. There are skate sequences that lean into more of a linear arcade racer style, and the creative level designs and wide variety of obstacles make for some highly satisfying and fast-paced gameplay. There’s almost always more than one way to skate through a given level, which grants a structured freedom within these challenges, and I often could be found throwing myself down a set of stairs and shattering over and over rather than taking an easier and more obvious path, simply because of just how satisfying it is to finally pull off the tougher combos that the level designs make possible.

Skating feels solid – and it looks damn cool

There are also challenges that function like boss fights, where you must chain tricks together to build combos that deal damage against an adversary. You have a lot of scope for creativity here thanks to the extensive trick list, and the input combinations for tricks are thoughtfully designed and easy to learn, even if the list does get so long by the end of the game that it’s difficult to remember them all. The technical gameplay is also highly satisfying; the visual, audio, and haptic feedback help to create an experience that feels weighty and solid, and although there are some areas where it can feel awkward to pull off the needed tricks, it’s free-form enough that you can always find a way. The accompanying soundtrack is also outstanding, with Blood Cultures’ bold and resonant indie pop often at odds with the brutal aesthetic of the underworld, but evoking an important sense of freedom and adding depth via that contrast.

Unfortunately, though, the challenge sequences are heavily broken up by the game’s narrative and exploration segments, which leads to a constant sense of stopping and starting during play. It often feels like you are just getting into the swing of a challenge when it wraps up, and this prevents the kind of deep, immersive flow that sets the best games above the rest. You also cannot revisit the challenges you’ve already completed without starting an entirely new save, and there isn’t quite enough of the fast-paced skating between the slower sections to make replaying the game in full feel worthwhile. The forward-only progression also means that you can accidentally miss some content permanently, which feels like an oversight.

Final Thoughts

Despite a few issues that prevent the game from reaching its full potential, Skate Story embodies the kind of high risk, high reward creativity that makes indie gaming so special. With its mildly absurd narrative logic and humour, it might not appeal to traditionalists, but if you’re willing to embrace the weirdness, the experience is bound to impress.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

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