Skate Story Review: Top Skateboard Sim of the Decade

A Unique Blend of Skateboarding and Surrealism

Underworld demons and existential nightmares collide in an absurdist skateboarding sim, where you play as a skater demon made of glass. This unique game, Skate Story, offers a fresh take on the genre by merging the physicality of skateboarding with the abstract and dreamlike elements of a surreal narrative.

The Rise of Skateboarding Games in 2025

2025 has been a surprisingly notable year for skateboarding games. After 15 years in the wilderness, EA’s Skate finally returned, albeit in free-to-play form, while Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 proved to be another fan-pleasing remake of the genre’s peak in the early 2000s. If those represent attempts to recapture breezy pleasures from yesteryear, Skate Story takes the skateboarding sim in a deeper, more psychedelic direction.

For those with a loose eye on the indie scene, Skate Story was originally announced in 2022 but several delays pushed it back by two years. It now arrives in December, an awkward month, where gems often go unnoticed and arrive too late for Game Of The Year discussions.

If there’s any justice, Skate Story will transcend its fate as an unsung highlight of 2025. More than just being mechanically satisfying, this is a surreal meditation on pursuing a dream and nourishing the soul in a world hellbent on grinding it down. On another superficial level, it’s a nightmare Alice In Wonderland versed in the language of kickflips and ollies.

The Premise: A Crystalline Demon's Quest

To describe the premise is to dive head first into the rabbit hole. You play as a crystalline demon, who is handed a skateboard by the Devil, albeit under a contractual deal: if you can skate to the moon and swallow it, you’ll be set free and return to the living.

What unfolds is a relatively linear quest through nine layers of the underworld, where you’ll encounter tortured anthropomorphic animals and skeletons who guide you towards each of the seven moons on the menu. Yes, this is still a skateboarding game, but one which is equally propelled by its narrative and abstract, dreamlike visuals.

Gameplay Mechanics: Two Speeds, One Experience

Gameplay-wise, Skate Story has two different speeds. There are curated corridor sequences which play like a platformer, where you jump, trick, grind, and speed your way through portals in the pursuit of (in the opening, at least) a mysterious white rabbit. If you crash too harshly into an edge, or rattle through scattered beds of red spikes, the glass protagonist will shatter into smithereens, forcing you to restart the current stage.

This is interspersed with open sections you can roam at your own pace – largely set in city exteriors within the underworld. In the first area, set within a lyceum where floating philosopher heads are paralysed in endless ponderment, you can chat with the troubled locals, visit a gift shop to customise your board, or take part in minor side activities – like catching air over steaming manholes – to earn ‘soul points’ to spend in the shop.

Exploring the World and Earning Rewards

As you progress and learn new tricks, later open areas offer more distractions to accrue soul points. Spinning tricks and reverts will cut down illuminated plants, while designated moon pits serve as mini score challenges within a confined area.

There isn’t much incentive to complete all these extras, and they’re never broadcast in checklist form to satisfy completionists, but they do act as a smart, gentle nudge to lose yourself in the skating. In the words of the game itself, you’re pushed to ‘explore, contemplate, reflect’.

Mechanical Satisfaction and Trick Mastery

While it isn’t the most complex skating sim out there, Skate Story packs enough mechanical juice where its movement is consistently rewarding. You can pull off simple ollies with the tap of a button, while kickflips and heelflips demand an additional hit of the triggers. More advanced tricks, like pop shove-its and hardflips, require longer button strings before you launch an ollie, while reverts and powerslides are tied to the analogue sticks.

There are no grab tricks, and few opportunities for oscillating on halfpipes, but Skate Story revels in the art of maintaining forward momentum and slamming down combo strings with its smaller pool of options.

Boss Battles and Combo Challenges

These are best showcased in its equivalent of boss battles at the end of each chapter, where you chip away at towering moons against the clock by performing a variety of tricks in succession, before banking your combo as an ‘attack’ with a button press at the end – usually within a highlighted area which is constantly moving around the field.