Skate Story is a video game about a skateboarding demon who makes a bargain with the devil so it can go on a journey through several levels of the underworld in order to eat the moon. As expected, there is a catch: The demon will be given a body made of glass.
Abandon all hope, ye who kickflip here.
That sense of vulnerability was part of the point, said Sam Eng, the game’s creator and sole developer, as he pointed toward the Brooklyn Academy of Music plaza where he broke both bones in his forearm in 2023. He had been doing a simple trick, he said, an ollie down a set of four stairs that he had cleared many times before.
But this time, he landed a little too far back on the board, which slipped out from under him. Eng said it was a clean but “gnarly” break, comparing it to body horror.
Eng’s initial pitch for Skate Story when speaking to potential publishers had been Tony Hawk’s Journey Dark Souls, an amalgam of three very different games.
He wanted the feel of Dark Souls — in which failure and perseverance are central themes — blended with the accessibility of the Tony Hawk franchise, along with the free-form grace of Journey, in which the player sails through a mystical and expansive desert from one mysterious wonder to the next. The unbridled freedom in Journey was something he particularly wanted to duplicate.
“That’s actually one thing that I found really different, that I never experienced in a skateboarding game,” said Eng, who has been skating for about 10 years. “I really like the journey aspect more, and that’s how I get around New York, right? Just skate everywhere.”
The task for the demon in Skate Story, which was published by Devolver Digital and released for the PC, PlayStation 5 and Switch 2 this week, is the same in each level of the underworld: Find the moon, defeat it with the force of skateboard tricks and devour it.
The demon swerves and leaps under a black sky from which an almost threatening moon shines. Dangerous red shards that look like tall grass will quickly send the player tumbling to shatter against the ground, the game’s camera spinning into first person. Giant busts of anonymous Greek philosophers dispense advice. A glass rabbit sometimes appears to guide you. The world is strange and forbidding and beautiful. It is a city and it is not.
The story is told in chaotic bursts of surreal poetry accompanied by music from the experimental indie band Blood Cultures. The haunting, catchy blend of synths and vocals matches the game’s overall vibe.
“How beautiful, a divine quest so unattainable,” a stone philosopher says once you finish his challenges in the tutorial. “Go on, try and eat the moon.”
For all of Skate Story’s wild references to myths and demons with appetites for celestial bodies, what stands out is the grounded nature of the skateboarding itself.
There are about 70 tricks in the game, said Eng, who animated them himself, using skateboard videos for visual reference when necessary. The tricks — kickflips, heelflips, frontside flips, pop shuvits and more — are generally performed at speeds and heights achievable in real life. Many of them would be possible even for skateboarders who have been practicing for only a few years. (Thankfully, the game lets players skip the hours of toil required to learn even the foundational ollie.)
Players will not be catching dozens of feet of air in Skate Story, flying over highway overpasses and then sliding on a handrail forever. Eng loves the Tony Hawk games, which are full of over-the-top stunts, but said they do not speak to his skateboarding experience.
In his view, skateboarding is about choosing to do something that was “hard for you but you did it anyway and you got over it.” It provides a sense of perseverance through a difficult task, which can mean different things for different people. When skateboarders are gathered together, Eng said, someone might be trying elaborate, impressive stunts while another person might be trying “to ollie up a curb for two hours” before finally pulling it off.
“That, I think, is something that I’m really trying to celebrate,” Eng said.
Eng said he found major inspiration in a skateboard video, “One Stop,” that stars Miles Silvas. Skateboard videos are typically short clips edited together, but this is one unbroken take — a lone skateboarder cruising through Los Angeles at night, landing trick after trick.
Justin Porter is Times editor working on the Newsletters desk.
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