SKATE STORY

Hades is a halfpipe

The first time we met Sam Eng, at June’s Summer Game Fest, he arrived clutching the skateboard he rode across LA to get there. There’s no question, then, that the Skate Story developer is the real deal. He enountered the hobby in his youth via Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, then gave up after realising “I wasn’t going to be jumping over taxis”. He picked it back up around the time he turned 20, however: “I still skate around every day. I use it as my main mode of transportation. Now it’s become a lifelong pursuit.”

Note the way he talks about the skateboard: not so much as a vehicle for tricks as simply a vehicle. “I have so much fun just running my daily errands,” he says. Even a grocery-store run involves “micro-decisions” about how best to navigate the space, what to avoid, “how to get somewhere stylishly”. That is essential to the kind of skating game he’s making. While some of its peers – including the venerable series that opened Eng’s eyes to this world – have you looping around an arena, learning their lines and finding ways to milk them for points, Skate Story is more in line with Roll7’s OlliOlli games, where you’re pulling tricks en route to a destination. What Eng is really interested in, he says, is “the feeling of travel”.

Appropriately enough, Eng was in transit last time we met. Now, six months on – despite a video-call backdrop that shows the Eiffel Tower over his shoulder – we find the developer back home in New York. “Both cities have huge skate cultures, but there’s something about New York. I mean, I’m from here, but it’s just one of the most perfect cities for actually living and commuting by skateboard.