One of the best qualities of indie games is that they tend to combine elements or playstyles that haven’t been seen before, and sometimes simply don’t seem like they belong together in the first place. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of both roguelike and cozy takes on various genres, but that’s almost getting to be old hat at this point. One of the system’s most neglected genres, sports games, automatically lends itself to a general lack of competition. But then, if you’re the daring developer behind Skate Story, you also throw in artistically stylish visuals, and a pretty insane story that involves your character who is a demon, being turned into glass and tasked with eating the Moon by the Devil. If that sounds a bit crazy, you’d be right, but it’s also pretty engaging!

Since it’s really hard to adequately describe this experience succinctly in words, it’s easiest just to explore some of its facets. At its core, this is a skating game, and while there are some similarities to the likes of Tony Hawk and others in how you’ll perform various tricks, explore, and discover secrets, the execution here feels very different. For the most part the game will alternate between putting you in larger areas where you’ll explore, essentially gaining currency through a variety of means through quests or doing tricks in specific spots, more action-oriented sequences that are focused on speed, some tricks, and simply staying on course, and then what amount to boss fights. In all cases your control of your board, maintaining variety in the tricks you’ll perform (repetition leads to them getting stale and giving you less rewards), and simply trying not to plow into something and shatter into hundreds of shards remains central to the experience. Back all of this action up with a plain fitting and brash soundtrack, as well as crazy visuals that help give texture to this Underworld you’re exploring, and it’s all quite memorable.

Even with all of that on the table though, it isn’t hard to see some cracks in the facade that may make it less than ideal for the wrong people. The first is that you’ll really need to be able to stick with the action and keep up, at least mastering your core techniques and enough tricks to reliably continue to make your way through it all. Another issue is that the direction you’ll receive, and understanding what you need to do to proceed, won’t always be very clear, so you’ll need to get used to riding around and talking to Underworld denizens to work out what may be your next steps. In general, there’s always an answer for what to do, but a clearer sense of overall direction would have been nice. Another issue is that within the context of this experience, trying to collect currency to unlock cosmetics seems like a distraction that pulls away from the story. I guess tricking out your board could be worthwhile to some, but given the stakes it feels a bit out of place here. Lastly, despite being a Switch 2 exclusive and generally looking pretty cool, there are cases where the hardware struggles to keep up, leading to some stutters, which aren’t always great, but in this case are at least not game breakers in general.

All that said, there’s no question that this is both a unique game and a one-of-a-kind overall experience. Typically titles I review have clearly been made to be one or the other, and in particular titles geared towards providing an interesting experience, but being a chore to play, don’t tend to be appreciated. It takes a real sense of vision and a focus on quality in all aspects of play to manage to walk the tightrope and do both well, but despite whatever shortcomings it has, Skate Story manages to pull it off.