I kickflipped so hard I destroyed a moon in the demonic Skate Story, which is already my favorite skater of 2025

Using manuals to chain kickflips and pop shuvits to move the stoic heart of a gigantic statue of a philosopher. Landing tricks so intense you can shatter and eat one of the underworld's many moons. Ollieing over demonic eyes to open gates forward. Skate Story is a skating game like you've never played before, combining the close-up camera of Skate with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's wildest scenarios – and a dash of Sayonara Hearts to groove through traversal gauntlets.

Skate Story is, as it says in-game, "a classic deal with the Devil situation". As a demon resident of the underworld looking for something more to your existence, you come across a skateboard and are offered a contract with some terms for using it to make your escape. You must eat all of the moons. And now you will be made of glass. Reasonable stuff. It adds an extra element of danger to fumbling a jump or trick – the chances of shattering into pieces, trapped in damnation as nothing more than shards.

Clearing the Underworld gap

Despite the conditions of your bargain, your glassy state doesn't make you feel too fragile or cumbersome in play. It'd be easy to imagine this premise giving over to a kind of brutal challenge of difficulty closer to Baby Steps. But, though you may shatter, movement on the board is slick and breezy; checkpointing generous. The board does not bring danger, but a chance at escape.

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The sense of found freedom really comes across as I whizz through Skate Story's levels, the low camera angle really emphasizing the sense of speed. The bulk of my time playing has seen me shredding through traversal stages, making my way from gate to gate as some seriously chill beats pound away, accompanied by excellent sound design that really sells the physicality of the wood on which I ride.

This gives each stage multiple legs between each entrance and exit which also serve as checkpoints. Naturally, obstacles must be avoided to make it un-smashed to each gate, movement having that distinctive banking-feel that skateboarding should have. You can do a little drift to take tight corners, and, of course, hold and release to pop an ollie to clear gaps and do tricks in the air. The timing and trick type can modulate your airtime, but generally speaking you're not going to wipe out. Skate Story is, ultimately, about the empowerment of skateboarding in the face of authority – expression through movement.

A little like real life, except rarely does illicit skateboarding take place under the many demonic eyes of the underworld. Certain bits of stages even require you to clear those eyes with jumps and tricks to open the gate ahead. Between these sequences of levels, you can run around little hub areas to chat with demons and learn new tricks.

The writing is laugh out loud funny – irreverent, with odd turns of phrase, the idea of a skateboarding demon is both never taken seriously and played completely straight all at once. "How can skateboarding shake the cosmos, if it can't even shake me?" challenges a Philosopher before you go ham with a combo to prove myself worthy of leaving the eternal lyceum.

Boss battles play out like skate park trick challenges, having me chain together a sequence of tricks – connected with manuals, naturally – before pressing a button to essentially bank my score and deal damage with a finisher trick. It's a neat way to add a new twist to the risk-reward of how high you'll take a combo. So far, these trick sections have been quite rudimentary, though I'm approaching them with decades of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater experience, and even so they've been a lot of fun to pull off.

I can't wait to grab my board and skate even deeper through the circles of Hell. Each dreamy, vaporwave-like area has been stunning to behold so far, and the immaculate vibes make the underworld a surprisingly chill place to hang – as long I say one step ahead of the demons that want to squash my fun. Skate Story is coming to PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2 on December 8, 2025

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