Skate City – Hands On (Switch)

The renaissance of skateboarding video games is in full swing. Spearheaded by indies like OlliOlli and Skater XL, bolstered by 2020’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 and EA’s upcoming sequel to the Skate series, this sub genre of extreme sports games is nearing the same level of popularity that it experienced in the late 90s. Skate City, a 2D side scrolling affair from Toronto indie developer Snowman is the latest to roll into the skate park. We dove in for the first few hours to see what it’s all about.

Skate City is all about simplicity and accessibility in its controls to get players into the action as quickly as possible. A brief tutorial in the game’s Endless Skate mode introduces you to the stick based trick inputs that will have fans on EA’s Skate series feeling right at home. Flip tricks are easily executed with a flick of the left stick in any one of eight directions and their nollie-based variants mirrored on the right stick. Grinds are automatically started when a trick is executed near a ledge, curb, or rail and different grinds are initiated with a tap of the shoulder buttons before you start the grind. Spins can also be done mid air by pressing L or R. Almost every single aspect of the control scheme successfully makes the pick-up-and-play nature of Skate City as intuitive as possible. The only gripe was the spins couldn’t be continued mid-air by holding L or R and instead have to be tapped once for a 180, twice for a 360 and so on.

The aforementioned Endless Skate mode allows players to cruise through one of the games three locales – Los Angeles, Oslo, or Barcelona – for as long as they like. These ongoing skate sessions can be used to master tricks, learn new combos, or knock off entries on each cities unique list Goals. These Goals, of which there are thirty for each city, all include pulling off tricks with increasing difficulty and take serious dedication to complete. Furthermore, each city boasts a set of Challenges. These defined tasks take place outside of Endless Skate mode and include pulling off called-out tricks at the appropriate time, beating another skater in a race or running away from a police officer while hitting a predetermined score. While later Challenges are designed to test your skills and take multiple attempts to complete, we found that Skate City’s early Challenges perfectly acted as an advanced tutorial and were a great way to learn and memorize new tricks, spins, and grinds.

All of the game’s Challenges have a three tiered star system giving players a wide range of achievements for which to strive. Completing Goals in Endless Skate or Challenge levels awards currency that players can use to unlock new cities (L.A. is open by default with Oslo and Barcelona needing to be unlocked) or customize their skater. The player creation suite is surprisingly robust with several different options of shirts, pants, shoes, hats, trucks, wheels, and boards available for players to purchase.

Skate City‘s visual style is minimalist and muted. It’s 3D characters and environments seen entirely from a side scrolling perspective did obscure certain aspects of the environments. It can be difficult at times to tell if a section of the levels can be grinded on and there were a couple of times that our skater tripped on a ledge we couldn’t actually see at first. Nevertheless, there a several visual details that help enhance the experience of skating through an urban environment. Flocks of birds that flutter away as you get close and pedestrians moving about their business in both the fore and background help locales feel alive and bustling. Moreover Skate City‘s jazz-hop and skate culture inspired soundtrack perfectly compliments the experience and will have your head bobbing through every run.

Perfectly suited for the Nintendo Switch, our first few hours with the game have shown that Skate City offers a fantastic pick-up-and-play experience. Simple controls coupled with a lucrative set of challenges and rewards are expertly complimented by minimalist visuals and a cool soundtrack. We’re sure Skate City is one we’ll keep popping into for months to come.

Skate City launched on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Steam and Xbox One on May 6th, 2021.