Skate Story: A Glass-Shattering Descent into the Absurd
A skateboarding sim unlike any other, Skate Story transcends the genre with its dazzling psychedelic presentation, smart design, and a surprisingly comedic lightness of touch.
Devolver Digital’s Skate Story, arriving December 8th, 2025, isn’t attempting to recapture the breezy pleasures of skateboarding’s golden age. While titles like EA’s Skate and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 offer nostalgic thrills, Skate Story boldly carves its own path, delivering a surreal and deeply affecting experience that lingers long after the credits roll. Originally announced in 2022, the game overcame several delays to arrive as a potential unsung highlight of the year.
More than just mechanically satisfying, Skate Story is a meditation on pursuing a dream and nourishing the soul in a world determined to grind it down. As one analyst noted, the game operates on multiple levels, functioning as both a challenging skateboarding title and a dreamlike narrative exploration. The premise itself is a descent into the bizarre: players assume the role of a crystalline demon tasked by the Devil with a seemingly impossible quest – skate to the moon and swallow it to earn freedom and return to the living.
The journey unfolds across nine layers of the underworld, populated by tortured anthropomorphic animals and skeletal guides who point the way to seven celestial moons. Despite its abstract setting and narrative, Skate Story remains fundamentally a skateboarding game, propelled equally by its compelling story and striking visuals.
Gameplay alternates between two distinct paces. Curated corridor sequences play like a platformer, demanding precise jumps, tricks, grinds, and speed as players chase a mysterious white rabbit through portals. A single misstep – crashing into an edge or rattling through red spikes – results in the glass protagonist shattering, forcing a stage restart. These sections demand precision and quick reflexes.
These intense sequences are interspersed with open areas within the underworld’s city exteriors, allowing for exploration at the player’s own pace. In the opening area, a lyceum filled with paralyzed, floating philosopher heads, players can interact with troubled locals, customize their board in a gift shop, and complete minor side activities – such as catching air over steaming manholes – to earn “soul points” for shop purchases. Later areas offer more distractions and opportunities to accrue soul points, with spinning tricks and reverts illuminating plants and designated moon pits serving as mini score challenges.
While not explicitly incentivized through checklists, these optional activities gently encourage players to lose themselves in the skating experience. As the game itself suggests, the core directive is to “explore, contemplate, reflect.” The skateboarding mechanics, while not the most complex in the genre, are consistently rewarding. Simple ollies are executed with a single button press, while kickflips and heelflips require additional trigger inputs. More advanced tricks, like pop shove-its and hardflips, demand longer button combinations, and reverts and powerslides are tied to the analogue sticks.
Notably absent are grab tricks and extensive halfpipe opportunities, but Skate Story excels in maintaining forward momentum and chaining together combos. These skills are put to the test in chapter-ending “boss battles,” where players chip away at towering moons against the clock by performing successive tricks and banking their combos as attacks within a constantly moving target area.
The most gratifying challenges involve snapping hanging chains by executing tricks in a specific sequence without shattering, demanding mastery of the game’s wider arsenal. While it’s possible to complete Skate Story with a limited trick set, these challenges reward skillful play. The seven-hour adventure offers a moderate level of challenge, prioritizing atmosphere and creative expression over relentless difficulty.
When operating at its peak, Skate Story is a spectacle of rushing starscapes, jumps over fire, shimmering particle effects, and a thunderous sound design. This is all elevated by the electropop soundscape from Blood Cultures, transforming moon battle crescendos into euphoric bursts of energy. Despite its abstract premise of eating moons and devilish contracts, the game avoids pretension, landing its sincere message while embracing its inherent silliness. Players encounter a creepy frog running a bagel shop, a frazzled pigeon struggling with writer’s block, and are even tasked with cleaning the Devil’s laundry, subject to the whims of the clothing itself.
Beneath the skateboarding and stylized dystopian visuals, this comedic warmth and irreverent cheekiness form the game’s true soul. A pointed joke regarding the use of generative AI on a purchasable skateboard highlights the game’s awareness of contemporary issues, adding a layer of depth to its exploration of passion and purpose.
This descent through the underworld’s layers culminates in a climax that is aesthetically mesmerizing, mechanically subversive, and emotionally resonant – even as it spirals into abstract monsters and chaotic distortion. While the emotional impact may vary depending on the player, the closing half of the game is an impressive display of ambition.
Skate Story isn’t without its shortcomings. The lack of replay value is a significant drawback, with no option to revisit areas or hone skills after completing the story. While this may align with the game’s themes, it’s a disappointment for players eager to linger in its captivating world. However, as a one-and-done experience, few games resonate with as much style, wit, and originality. Even those with no interest in skateboarding will find Skate Story to be an accessible, sharp, and nourishing tonic for the jaded and lost – a reminder of what games can achieve when they aim for the moon and stick the landing.
Skate Story Review Summary
In Short: A skateboarding sim which transcends the genre through its dazzling psychedelic presentation, smart design, and comedic lightness of touch.
Pros: Skateboarding is mechanically accessible yet complex if you want it to be. Spectacular boss sequences. Genuinely funny characters, in a high concept narrative which also succeeds when it’s sincere. Excellent audio design.
Cons: Practically no replay value after the first playthrough, outside of trophy hunting. No additional modes beyond the story.
Score: 9/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £17.99
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Sam Eng
Release Date: 8th December 2025
Age Rating: 12
Skate Story nails nearly all its tricks.
