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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAfter eating the first moon, you\u2019re thrust in the second area. Um, it turns out you need warm milk from a bagel shop in order to keep down the red moon. There\u2019s a bunch of expository dialogue, light fetch quests, more NPCs with nothing useful to say. A rabbit is your guide through the underworld, sort of. Rabbits and moons are symbolically linked, right? That\u2019s fine… probably. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll all make sense eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re then treated to an epic multipart battle against the Red Moon, including a chase sequence and very badass music indeed. Okay then! This party is finally getting started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next segments hand you new fetch quests: doing the devil\u2019s laundry and filing a form in order to get a permit. Uh oh. Wait, isn\u2019t this kind of boring? Is this fine?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look, let\u2019s back up a bit. There\u2019s a lot of story in Skate Story. Narration, dialogue, cutscenes, the works. This being a game about skating, I half-expected a bunch of “Whoah dude” stoner nonsense. It’s that, but Skate Story is also trying to be some kind of deep allegorical message. I\u2019m not buying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First of all, the prose is… unusual. Sometimes, the game stumbles upon poetic language by blind luck: \u201cThe [Metro] card was beautiful, gleaming, and valid for one more night.\u201d or \u201cThe Moon reflected the eternal form of the ideal ledge [for grinding].\u201d More often than not, you get sentences like : \u201cThe Soulriver flowed with a heavier murk in the pierced redlight\u201d or \u201cAgainst proper paperwork, in the vitreous of the Blood Seer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The situations are both mundane and bizarre. For example, you need to bring words to a pigeon with writer\u2019s block. So you do that. \u201cDEMON CHEESE HOUSE! HOUSE CHEESE DEMON! CHEESY HOUSE DEMON!\u201d, the pigeon exclaims. Quest fulfilled. I dunno, maybe it\u2019ll make more sense to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every chapter ends with an inexplicable \u201cpoem\u201d recap. At least, I think it\u2019s a poem: \u201cUpon return the wrathful penguin by close of night, to spite the Skater ripped his Violet Deed into thin stripes\u201d. Right, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The skating in Skate Story is fine enough, but it feels like most of my time playing is going through dialogue or story scenes. C\u2019mon, just let me skate. The way I see it, a game like Skate Story has one job : to put you in a state of flow. More specifically, in a trance-like state where the trippy visuals, the sick beats and the need for quick reflexes blend together inside your brain in perfect harmony. This ain\u2019t gonna happen if you keep interrupting me with dialogue or narration every two minutes. Quit harshing my buzz, bro. Skate Story would twice the game if it had half the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m reminded of the criminally underappreciated Tanuki Sunset, where you longboard into the sunset alongside lo-fi hip hop and electro swing, without<\/em> constant interruptions. There\u2019s also something like Furi, which is in a different genre, but that knows how to balance blood-pumping electronic music action with chillout sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right, back to the game. Through a series of snafus, I fell out of bounds and then somehow got reverted back two levels. After making my way back to where I used to be, it turns out I had no way to progress because later quests remained completed. In other words, I had to restart the entire game again. Damn it, that is not<\/em> fine, Skate Story. Very uncool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It turns out the levels aren’t really more fun a second time. Most of them are very short bursts of action between two story scenes. Nothing says “replayability” like having to press “skip cutscene” five times every two minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last chapters are like the ending of a JRPG viewed through an acid trip. It\u2019s pretty convoluted. Among other things, you vomit the moons, then eat them again, then vomit them again, this time to digest them. You get introduced to concepts like Blackest Fire and an infinite Eternal Centipede (wouldn’t that make it an Infinipede? Hm.). The good news is that you\u2019re presented a kaleidoscope of all the tasks in the game in quick succession, like racing, slalom and pulling tricks in combos. It goes without saying that the music rocks. Then something happens after that. Then something else. And then something else. Then an epilogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, the game ends. Skate Story has a free roam function of sorts, but it can’t be used once you beat the game. Well, okay then, never mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t set out to dislike Skate Story. I have a huge soft spot for solo developers. Bless their hearts, hacking away at their masterpieces in solitude for years. Toby Fox, of Undertale fame, mentioned in an interview that developing solo frees the developer and the player from certain expectations. Skate Story is certainly idiosyncratic, no doubt about that. I\u2019m glad that it exists, it\u2019s a little miracle that it does. On the other hand, being a one-man band is a huge burden. All I\u2019m saying, you can\u2019t expect everyone to be a visual designer, a computer programmer and a great storyteller, all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d like to preface this by saying that my skating expertise is sorely lacking. I don’t really know my Ollie from my Nose Grab and I’ve barely played a skating game since Tony Hawk on the original Playstation. That being said, Skate Story is just too tantalizingly weird to be left solely to the skate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1724,"featured_media":53517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Skate-Story_3-1024x576.jpg\")
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