‘Skate Story’ Game Review: Skateboard Through Hell To Save Your Soul
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a demon in Hell who is skating to save his soul and get out? Well, if yes, then Skate Story is for you. At first glance, you may think that it is just another skateboarding game, but there’s a twist that changes everything. Instead of skating and doing tricks through familiar places or natural environments for skaters, you’re getting dropped into an underworld full of strange, diabolical characters, mystical moments, and unusual challenges.
From the beginning, you notice that this game is trying to use a different approach. There are skateboarding tricks to learn, pieces of your board to upgrade, and a weird feeling that makes you get deeper and deeper as you progress. The world doesn’t stop moving for you to pause and think, and that’s perfect for that kind of game. It’s all about motion, momentum, skating, and craziness.
[Warning: Spoilers from the Skate Story game are below!]
The unique story and weird world of Skate Story
In the beginning of Skate Story, there’s a simple deal. To free yourself from Hell, you have to go to the moon and swallow it. Yes, that’s basically the basis of the plot. Even though it’s so crazy that it seems unbelievable, that’s what ties everything together. You move through environments that feel like a devastated urban city that’s slowly decaying.
You play as a demon made of glass and pain, bound by a pact with the Devil. Your task is to skate through nine environments beneath the surface of reality, reach the moon, and swallow it so you can be free. It’s a bizarre setup, and that’s the point.
It’s an artistic experiment that mixes casual skating mechanics with the craziest worldbuilding and abstract storytelling. All of it makes you fall in love with the story and the overall unpredictability of it.
At times, the dialogue and fragments you discover like tiny puzzles, some shards or other Easter eggs, start to make sense way later in the story. On the other hand, the further you go, the clearer it becomes that the game is missing a coherent narrative. Stakes are usually explained with changing tone and textures rather than constant exposition. You finish Skate Story with the impression that there’s more mystery than a proper conclusion.
But the artistic moments are a part of what makes this game unique. You aren’t just performing tricks while skating. You’re skating through a world that is filled with a lot of symbolism and reflective thoughts.
Gameplay feels like a breath of fresh air for the genre
Underneath that weird narrative, Skate Story is first and foremost a skating game. But it’s not like a Tony Hawk or any other arcade game experience that makes you feel like you’ve just experienced a great simulator game. The movement system is designed to focus on fluent experience and constant momentum. You can ollie, perform kickflips, grind ledges, and mix moves into amazing, outstanding combos.
Thanks to different moves, the game rewards your experimentation and crazy performances. Landing trick sequences are satisfying because they’re not just about mashing different buttons. It’s about timing, rhythm, and interacting with the surrounding environment.
Your timing, balance, and syncing up with the game to keep the flow feel like skating should feel. It’s all about a rhythm of movement that’s both mechanical and impressive. You’re not just hitting a series of random buttons to keep going. You have to anticipate and think about what you want to do.
That said, learning the mechanics takes patience and a lot of time. The camera sometimes feels much too close to the character, and lining up tricks on dangerous ledges and in rough spaces can be your end.
In the first minutes, you may find it unintuitive at first, especially if you get to experience the crazy camera controls and unexpected obstacles where you have to react and avoid them to survive. The game also uses the sections that were purposely created for the sake of doing anything other than skating. But that’s all part of the challenge.
Certain sequences feel like high-speed runs or boss battles where success depends on chaining huge combos and maintaining control through tricky levels and their structures. What also stands out is how movement feeds into the world itself. You don’t just skate across generic tracks created just for the sake of filling spaces. The underworld shifts, pathways open and close in unexpected ways, and the layout of different levels mixed with unique themes works for the better. All because it helps to discover hidden symbols and secrets of this world.
As you skate and complete trials, you can access new boards or parts. Among others, they are wheels, decks, trucks, etc. These don’t feel like traditional upgrades as much as subtle tuning parts to make your experience slightly better.
If I had to say how long this game is, the main journey can be finished in about five or six hours, depending on how many times you fail. This may be considered a good choice, as the game won’t be too short or too long, but it will allow you enough time to uncover many secrets.
Final thoughts on Skate Story
My feelings after finishing Skate Story are quite positive, but not very positive. It is a good game, but the lack of many additional parts to the story or gameplay works against it. But its unique mix of skating mechanics, artistic presentation, and atmosphere is worth mentioning and admiring. Even though the entire narrative feels a little weak, or that the pacing of the story seems slow in some open areas, that isn’t a huge disadvantage.
That being said, it’s a really fresh take on that genre. If someone asked me to sum up Skate Story in a few sentences, I’d say that it’s a game you’ll remember for some time. It takes something as physical and grounded as skateboarding and places it in a surreal, colorful artistic world.
My rating for this game: 3.5/5
Skate Story isn’t a perfect game. The narrative is deliberately abstract, which means not every player will have the same feelings about it that I’ve had. The world is designed with each level adapting itself, all for the changing of perspectives and symbolic spaces to achieve the goals that sometimes are deeper and more important than the story.
If you want to try this game for yourself, Skate Story is now available to play on Steam, PC, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5.
Also check out: Game Review: MARVEL Cosmic Invasion
