Skater XL has been designed with the smoothest, most responsive gameplay ever felt in a skateboarding game. Experience unparalleled board control and responsiveness while you skate legendary real-world skate spots. With an emphasis on physics-based board control and freedom of expression, the team has worked closely with the skateboarding community to capture the feel and experience of skateboarding to make it accessible for anyone with a passion for skateboarding culture and/or game genre. 

Incorporating extensive motion-capture, Easy Day built a custom animation system that composes real-time animations on the fly (versus canned animations), which are under the user’s control moment-to-moment, ensuring that no two tricks or sequences look alike. This gives the player freedom to be as creative as they like in putting together tricks and lines. A process known as photogrammetry was used to capture the new character model and a variety of gear, clothing and accessories for character customization.

Feel connected to your board like never before.

Easy Day Studios revealed the next step in the skateboarding evolution with the launch of a Multiplayer Free Skate beta for Skater XL.

Available as an open beta on Steam today, up to ten players can jump into a free skate session together to hangout, explore different lines together, and even create group party line replays.

As the next step in expanding Skater XL’s planned social ecosystem, the multiplayer functionality will be coming to PlayStation and Xbox soon.

From the beginning of our development, we have always envisioned Skater XL to be very different from the linear content and challenges of skating games of the past, seeing Skater XL more as a sandbox style platform for creative expression and social interaction. Our support and facilitation of player created mod content was one step in this direction, with the next logical step being the creation of a multiplayer system.

Free Skate Multiplayer is our first step in opening up social modes in the game and features:

• Skate with up to 10 people online - Join a random room or start your own private one and invite your friends to join using a passcode
• Replays - Replay and save your group party lines, with the same replay editor functionality available in single player mode

This is being released first as a beta on PC to ‘stress test’ the system and servers at scale with a large variety of users, see what unexpected unknowns we uncover, gather data and player feedback and further develop some of features with a large user base before rolling the basic Free Skate mode out cross-platform.

There is a new item called “WebLinks” in the main menu with links to surveys and feedback forms we will be putting out over the next few weeks as certain things are tested, stay tuned for updated links here.

Please be aware that features in the Beta branch may change, be added/removed, and there are no guarantees that any particular feature will make it into the final release.

After a lot of work designing and refining the base for the multiplayer system in internal testing the gameplay is feeling very smooth, lag free and a whole lot of fun. The ability to just kick back and skate with the homies is a much needed escape from the tumultuous times we might find ourselves in, and the ability to connect with other people and skate is more important than ever.

We hope you enjoy Free Skate with other players as much as we have in testing and look forward to your feedback and to the further evolution of multiplayer in Skater XL.

Known Issues:

• Custom maps installed by copying files into the SkaterXL/Maps folder - when first opening the game these will each go through a one-time processing so the map can be identified by other computers running multiplayer. If this process is not yes complete you might have trouble connecting with friends in a specific custom map. If you have issues please give it some time and try again.
• Custom gear - on other players in multiplayer only items of gear which you have installed locally via the Mod Browser will show. Otherwise default items of gear will be assigned.
• Sometimes other characters from a multiplayer session show in the gear showroom.

Mod Disclaimer:

While we make efforts to preserve existing mods with each update, we are not able to control exactly how updates to the official game code will interact with every one of them. If you are experiencing issues with the new update, please first try removing your mods and adding them back in one by one to see if the issue can be isolated.

To open the beta, follow these steps:

Right click ‘Skater XL’ and open Properties

Select the ‘beta - Open Beta’ branch.

Steam should start downloading this version of the game. Once it has finished, you will be able to try the update. The game name in your library should now show “Skater XL [beta]”.

If you’d like to switch back to the regular commercial release branch of the game in future simply come back to this screen and select “NONE - opt out of all betas” in the drop down.

Key Features:

• FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Skater XL is unique in that it doesn’t have any tricks programmed into it, only control of the movement through the thumbsticks. Each thumbstick is connected to the corresponding foot of the skater and as the player moves the stick, the board instantly responds. Much like a musical instrument, the player has complete freedom, whether it be pushing to nail a line or skating free from.
• PLAY AS REAL-LIFE PRO SKATERS: The game is launching with highly renowned pros TIAGO LEMOS, BRANDON WESTGATE, EVAN SMITH, and TOM ASTA. Each skater will have their own gear that fits their style.
• REAL LIFE ICONIC SKATING LOCATIONS: In Skater XL, players can shred legendary real-world skate spots that are home to some of the most iconic skaters and tricks in the world.
• CUSTOMIZABLE CHARACTERS: The possibilities are endless for players to personalize their Skater XL experience. Players can customize their entire look, including their skater’s gear with different tees, hoodies, hats and shoes.
• COME PLAY IN THE SANDBOX: Each area is yours to explore. With the freedom of an open-environment, players will be able to push themselves, perfecting the subtle nuances of a highly technical trick or free form skate.
• THRIVING COMMUNITY: Dive into a passionate community with more than 50,000 members in Discord who create online zines, video parts, fakeskate brands, and hundreds of mods. Players can become part of a bigger ecosystem and join the digital skateboarding subculture where they can share their creativity

Skater XL is available for PS4, Xbox One and PC (Steam) for $39.99, coming soon to Nintendo Switch.