There’s an awkward phenomenon that happens with this job from time to time: you might play something for a bit pre-release, not feel it at all, and then see a bunch of your respected peers start lauding it with praise. You expected this game to come and go with minimal chatter, but now people you know and trust are assuring you it’s worth seeing through. That’s what happened to me with Skate Story, a game I (perhaps dismissively) said “could have been a screensaver” and I would have liked it more. But hey, I’m not so closed-minded that I’m not open to being wrong.
The roughly 60 minutes I put into Skate Story was admittedly a delight to the senses, most of the time. Its glassy, minimalist art style is gorgeous, and skating through its environments, bedazzled in lovely blue and red contrasts, gave me the same wistful feeling I get when walking through a city at night. Meanwhile, the game’s atmospheric, electronic mood music by the pop group Blood Cultures captures its ever-shifting tone, with some levels feeling like a comforting skate through a starlit evening and others like a more hectic, beat-driven obstacle course.
To say that Skate Story is a vibe is such an understatement that it doesn’t quite capture how artfully its disparate pieces come together. Every rail you grind and ramp you ascend is accompanied by a delightful, evocative earworm. It all helps build upon the ethereal nature of its world, and the existential threat at the center of its minimalist story. You are a demon who’s made a deal to get out of your terrible fate of living as an easily shattered glass creature by devouring moons, and to reach them, you must skate. But like I said, you’re made of glass, so the slightest grazing of a hard surface once you’ve gained some real momentum on your board will shatter you.
Skate Story is full of character, with so many weirdos saying crazy shit to you as you skate through this world. Their comments are sometimes funny, sometimes profound, but all of it reminds you that you must skate to escape this beautiful nightmare. It exudes an almost Suda51-style irreverence that, when juxtaposed against the seriousness it sometimes delves into, feels like an extension of that back-and-forth between skating as something meditative and something hardcore.
This is the kind of focused artistic piece that reminds you that people make games, and that allowing them to execute on a specific vision is how you get something special. Skate Story is a stunning marriage of different art forms, all reading from the same page. I love watching it…but playing it?
Skate Story is hard, but not for the reasons you’d expect. Yes, your glass body means that you’re one gentle tap away from shattering all over the ground, but for me, the challenge came from fighting with a control scheme that felt tailor-made to make sure I hit every obstacle on the way.
Skate Story’s early levels are hallways with spikes, poles, and other things designed to get in the way as you speed along on your skateboard. In my early time with it, I found its overly complicated control scheme made it harder to react as I approached obstructions. The game keeps the camera at your back, so you’re essentially steering side-to-side on rails as you speed up, slow down, and jump over obstacles. Its camera follows your glass demon’s movement so precisely that your entire orientation shifts at the slightest turn, and it’s disorienting trying to make even the most minute changes to your movement at that point.
These hallway-like levels are also a problem when you’re forced to make a sudden turn, which, as far as I’ve gotten, Skate Story doesn’t give you a means to do without practically halting and losing all momentum, and it’s not helped by the awful sound of your board scraping against the glass over the otherwise delectable soundscape.
Maybe I need to give Skate Story another chance, but the way the experience of playing it grinds against everything I truly admire about the game was enough to make me want to find something else to do with my time. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack the entire time I’ve been writing this, and even though I only spent a fleeting moment with Skate Story, images of skating down its obstacle courses still fill my mind. It’s made an impression, both good and bad. In writing this, I think I might have convinced myself to see which of those feelings pans out by the end.
