You're a skateboarding demon made of glass on a mission to swallow the moon

"You're a demon made of glass and pain." I feel like that's a pretty good pitch for a game on its own, but it only gets more intriguing when the demon picks up a skateboard and starts shredding through the underworld.

And why? Well, the Devil said if you skateboard to the moon and swallow it whole, your soul will be set free. That's the story in Skate Story.

I know it sounds like a rather familiar concept—an aspiring moon-swallower does a bunch of cool skateboard tricks in hell while made of pain and glass—but once you see it in action in the trailer above, you'll be pretty blown away by how it all looks. Skate Story is a gorgeous looking game, like a painting of a skateboarding glass demon come to life. Fantastic soundtrack, too.

"Ollie, kickflip, and grind your way through the ash and smoke of The Emptylands as you take on a seemingly impossible quest," reads the game's page on Steam. "Skate fast to destroy vicious demons, help a forgetful frog, and save other tortured souls on your journey from fragile beginner to a hardened skater."

This isn't the first time we've been wowed by Skate Story: Wes marveled over the combination of visuals and physicality when he first got a look at a gameplay trailer in 2020, and Natalie talked to Skate Story creator Sam Eng last year about the game and the resurgence of skateboarding games in general.

"Skate Story is basically my fanart of skateboarding," Eng said. "There are so many distinct feelings I get when skating that I want to express, that I find difficult to explain. At its most basic, I love that feeling of flow. Feeling the gradient of textures between grit and glide. The feeling of smooth carving on a fresh, empty sidewalk. The roar of blasting over a metal subway grate. The subtle differences between the 31 flavors of asphalt are a whole-body experience."

There are over 70 tricks to master in Skate Story, and along the way you'll gain access to new decks, trucks, wheels, and other skating gear as you shred to music by Blood Cultures and John Flo. It isn't due out until 2023, but until then you should do like I'm doing and watch the trailer 10 or 15 more times. Just, um, try not to fall off your board. You'll shatter. That's the downside to being a glass demon, I imagine.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.