Skate Story

About eight years ago, Sam Eng was neither a skater nor a writer, making him particularly ill-suited to make a game called “Skate Story.” In the time since, he has evidently learned to do both, and his surreal, mythic tale of a skater’s quest to eat the moon comes out this year. After playing the first chapter, I got the chance to speak with Eng about it and learn how it came to be.

Skate Story, more than usual, is a game I find myself wanting to speak to the creator about due to its odd, specific premise. After deciding the moon looks delicious, a demon makes a deal with the devil to consume it and regain his soul. In the process, his skin turns to glass, and he’s granted a skateboard, a powerful tool that’s also one of this world’s biggest sins. The game takes place in Hell, but if you can’t tell based on the earlier description, it’s not a particularly scary or disturbing game.

“I think earlier iterations of the game, in the first year I was working on it – it definitely was way darker,” Eng says. “But I also just didn’t find it fun.” He opted for a more whimsical Hell, complete with a storybook-like narrator that walks the player through the story. It feels like an ancient myth or a fairy tale, with otherwise absurd worldbuilding concepts explained matter-of-factly. There’s no confusion or concern about the logistics or reasoning behind a demon eating the moon; it wants to, so it will try to.