Skate Story Review

First revealed 3 years ago, Skate Story has experienced multiple delays on the road to finally cementing a December 8, 2025, release date. From developer Sam Eng, Skate Story has certainly impressed, primarily attributed to its stylish, abstract, and psychedelic presentation. The game looked fantastic thanks to its unique art style, and it also played equally well.

Somehow, the game has a story, but it’s about as philosophical and convoluted as you’d expect from someone smoking the good stuff, as the game features a glass demon (the skater) on a mission to eat the moon and free himself from the devil. That’s about as plain as I can get to explaining what the story is all about, but underneath it is a highly technical skating game that Tony Hawk and Skate fans would enjoy, all wrapped up in an excellent soundtrack by Blood Cultures.

Eat The Moon

Story aside, Skate Story is absolutely what you think it is – a skating game. What immediately jumps out at you, though, is its slick presentation. The game looks rad as hell, and it’s unlike anything that you’ve ever seen before, especially considering that it is a skating game. From the glass demon character who is literally made out of glass shards (which feels like a personal attack at my age) to the backgrounds, it looks like a mix of some lo-fi, retro, and some Tron all rolled into one.

The camera angle itself can take some getting used to, as it places the view almost at knee level, emphasizing speed and style. Controlling your character may feel a bit heavy, requiring a drift (holding X on an Xbox controller) to steer you through tight turns. After a few hours, it still felt tougher to get into compared to the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but patience from players will be rewarded because Skate Story’s technical depth is something that the game absolutely nails down.

Skate Story gives you control with an easy-to-understand tutorial that first teaches players how to walk, get on and off the skateboard, and push to gather speed. It’s as simple as it can get, and the following few tricks, like the ollie, kickflip, and pop-shuvit, are then provided. Interestingly, most of the tricks in Skate Story hinge on mastering the Ollie (tap or hold B) while tapping or holding one of the four L/R buttons. LB+Ollie lets you pop-shuvit, LT+Ollie is the heelflip, RT+Ollie is the kickflip, and more. More complicated maneuvers, like the Varial Flip or the Double Kickflip, will require double-tapping the shoulder buttons or holding a combination of them.

These tricks also involve timing-based mechanics. Players can tap B to pop an Ollie, but when they hold B, a marker will appear that shows a release window that, when timed well, will give players more air time. It certainly takes practice, but it is incredibly satisfying to hit that flow state while chaining tricks one after another. Some tricks will even become “stale” after use, resulting in fewer points and requiring a new trick, solving the issue of simply doing one trick over and over.

As you can imagine, this is way different from the Tony Hawk titles, which relied on directions rather than button combinations to pull off tricks. Skate Story felt a bit more forgiving, especially during landings, but that’s not to say that more impressive sequences will rely on dexterity and speed, because it absolutely will. Chaining these tricks will result in combos and multipliers, which reward players with “Soul” to use in purchasing cosmetic upgrades.

Levels are mostly corridor-style, where players must weave through straight lines, ramps, obstacles, and challenges to reach the end and proceed. The earlier levels will require players to pass through gates, but once they unlock the Ollie, the game mixes elevation and steps, even requiring the player to jump over specific obstacles to proceed. When pushing at high speeds, it can get pretty intense, and obstacles will bite off a chunk of your HP, having you start over and demanding mastery over the course.

Another interesting twist Skate Story provides players is that they’ll face bosses with health bars. Instead of attacking them with abilities, players will string together tricks and use a mechanic called Slam (pressing X while mid-air from an Ollie) to damage the boss. The higher the combo and multiplier, the more damage dealt. It’s surprisingly fun and novel, integrating this type of gameplay into what is usually a purely skating experience from other titles. Like I said, Skate Story is undoubtedly something you’ve never seen before.

PC/ROG Xbox Ally Performance Test

We played Skate Story on the following devices:

• PC – Ryzen 5 5600x, 16 GB DDR4 3600 RAM, NVIDIA 4070 Super, 1TB NVMe SSD
• ROG Xbox Ally

And here are the Skate Story PC System Requirements:

The PC gaming experience of Skate Story is almost flawless. The game isn’t too graphically demanding, and our rig handled it rather handily, with all the bells and whistles turned on. Frames reached upwards of 120fps, making this a joy to play on capable rigs, especially with a controller.

Playing Skate Story on an ROG Xbox Ally was a different story. We had to tweak some settings first to achieve the desired smoothness, such as lowering the texture resolution and Anisotropic filtering. Still, overall, it played as well as you could expect, hovering around 40-50fps but not quite hitting 60, when played on its 20W turbo mode. The device’s fans can definitely be heard, hitting 30W at times, but it is still very much playable on the go, even with the small screen.

Verdict: Buy it!

Skate Story is a vibes-heavy title, leading with its ultra-slick presentation and unique visuals to deliver a one-of-a-kind experience. That said, the game does not lack in the technical department, as the dexterity and speed needed to pull off some tricks can be challenging, especially when keeping in mind the obstacles and levels you’ll have to weave through.

*Skate Story was reviewed on a PC/ROG Xbox Ally with a review code provided by the publisher.