You are a demon made of glass and pain. You sign a contract with the devil. In exchange for the ability to skate, you must track down and eat the moon. If you do so, you'll be freed from Hell. Of course, nothing is quite as simple as it seems, and there are many moons in the sky and many challenges to reach them. Along the way, you'll be helped by friendly rabbits and unfriendly philosophers. You'll help garbage bags so they'll give you metro passes, and you must prove you're licensed to sleep. In short, Skate Story is a very weird game.

Skate Story's plot feels like playing a music video because the game is more about vibes than plot. You're going to eat those moons, you're going to encounter a lot of surreal weirdos, and by the end, you might piece together what the game is about. That isn't to say that this is a negative. It's a weird and surreal experience, and it remains rather engaging throughout. It doesn't matter if you're doing laundry for the devil or chasing down a decapitated skull that stole scissors from a bee; you're going to encounter something odd around every corner.

The bulk of the game is divided into various skating segments, most of which take place in the realms of Hell. Some of these are straightforward skating segments where you're encouraged to get to the end of some relatively straightforward skate obstacles. Others are located in wide open areas where you're free to explore and even take on optional side-quests that can earn fun cosmetic rewards. Most of the side-quests are optional, but they can be a fun way to prove your mastery of the controls. Since you're made of pain and glass, you'll shatter if you take too tough of a tumble, but this usually results in you respawning somewhere nearby.

The basic skating controls should be pretty familiar to anyone who has played a skateboarding game. You have a simple ollie move that you can modify by using the shoulder buttons to perform basic tricks. You can grind on rails and the edges of platforms. As the game progresses, you'll gradually unlock more tricks, each of which is taught to you slowly over time, and in doing so, you'll begin to get more advanced tricks and techniques. These techniques are not only used for longer tricks but may also have a specific mechanic in place, like doing a revert to cut through specific flowers in the environment. Many tricks also have a "sweet spot" that's represented by a small bar at the bottom of the screen. If you execute a trick when the bar's indicator is within a specific zone, you'll earn extra points.

While the skate tricks start off pretty simply, they rapidly grow more complex. As the game progresses, you'll advance from just trying to reach a high score to reaching a high score while attacks rain down on you. Eventually, you'll perform combos of specific moves and then need to include extra tricks like Nollies into your play style. While many are relatively simple, especially if you're a trained Tony Hawk fan, they might be a tad challenging.

That even includes the boss fights. Yes, Skate Story has boss fights. Generally, these are presented as situations where you have to "defeat" an enemy by completing objectives that drain their health bar. Most commonly, this involves executing a long combo chain of tricks, at the end of which you need to perform a "stomp" that ends the combo but locks in your score. The higher the score, the more damage you deal, but the greater the chance of missing the mark where you need to stomp or accidentally wipe out and lose the trick. Since a number of these fights are timed, it's essential.

That said, Skate Story is as much an experience as it is a skating game. The skating gameplay is fun and engaging enough to carry the game through its roughly seven-hour playtime, but I wouldn't mistake it for Tony Hawk Pro Skater. A lot of the skating is relatively simplistic and a way to get from one point to another, and only certain areas demand you to prove your manual and ollie bona fides. I don't think this is necessarily a problem with the game, but it's worth keeping in mind that the skating elements are a fun part of the overall whole but not something you'll intensely engage with unless you want to. Even the achievements for getting a high score are trivially easy to hit with some simple combos.

If I had one real complaint about the game, it is that the eccentric backgrounds can be a little difficult to read, which matters a lot when you're doing skate tricks at rapid speed. It can be hard to judge when you're coming up to a ledge to ollie over or a rail to grind on, and more than once, I wiped out because I headed toward what looked like a ramp, only for it to be steps instead. This isn't bad most of the time, but when you're going at a high speed and trying to maintain a combo, it can lead to some awkward crashes.

Outside of the main story, you can customize your skateboard with new paint jobs, wheels, and even specialized stickers. These can be purchased from shops using the souls you get for completing side-quests. Rather notably and unusually, your skating will eventually grind down your board, requiring you to visit a shop to repaint and renew it. This isn't a durability meter; it means you'll be less stylish until you do, but it's a neat way to make the basic act of skating feel more taxing.

Visually, Skate Story looks amazing. The surreal backgrounds and environments never get boring because there's constantly something new and exciting to see. The glass look of your skater is oddly striking and cuts a distinct and memorable silhouette through the dark surroundings, and I was constantly impressed by how much effort went into the art design. The soundtrack is the real stand out. With a mix of songs by the indie band Blood Culture, it's constantly pulling out some new and exciting tone, particularly during the boss fights. As I said before, it's often more like playing a music video than a game, and I have to imagine for fans of the band that it'll be worth it to see that. Even as someone who wasn't familiar with the band, I enjoyed the vibes.

Skate Story is a strange game. It's bizarre, obscure, and frequently ridiculous, so the tone and atmosphere might be too off-putting for some. If it works for you, I suspect it is really going to work for you. The gameplay is perfectly serviceable, and while it never quite reaches the heights of excellence, it more than shines for its purposes. Skate Story is a game that shines when taken as a whole, particularly the way the graphics and music work together. If you're even remotely curious about the concept, it's worth giving it a shot.

Score: 8.0/10