EPISODE 1900

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01] ANNOUNCER: Skateboarding games have long balanced technical precision with a sense of flow and expression, but Skate Story takes the genre in a radically different direction. It has a distinct vaporwave vibe and blends fluid skate mechanics with exploration, puzzles, and an existential narrative about freedom, pain, and obsession. The game was created by indie developer Sam Eng, who previously released Zarvot for the Nintendo Switch. Skate Story launched to critical acclaim and was widely regarded as one of the best games of 2025. In this episode, Sam joins the show with Joe Nash to talk about developing Skate Story. 

Joe Nash is a developer, educator, and award-winning community builder who has worked at companies including GitHub, Twilio, Unity, and PayPal. Joe got his start in software development by creating mods and running servers for Garry's Mod. And game development remains his favorite way to experience and explore new technologies and concepts.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:14] JN: Sam, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today. 

[0:01:17] SE: Hey, what's up? Thanks for having me on. 

[0:01:19] JN: So, to kick us off, let's talk about your journey into game development. How did you become an indie game developer, and what led you to Skate Story today? 

[0:01:26] SE: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, game development was like I didn't know it was a real thing that people could do. Because you play games as a kid, and you're like, "Oh, I like games." And they just kind of appear from the ether. I didn't think that it was like a real job. But then I saw these people making games online. 

I remember reading Rock Paper Shotgun, and they would have this weekly roundup of like free games. And then these were just indie developers. I would play some of them. And then there's this one developer named Akupara, or goes by Akupara, that just would make all these games and put them on the website. And I remember seeing some of the source code for some of their games. So I would just kind of download them and like tinker with them. And I saw that they were using this - back in the day, they were trying all these different softwares, and I saw one that was called Unity. I downloaded it, Unity 2 or something, Unity 3. And then I was like, "Oh, this is kind of cool. I could probably make like a little silly thing." That's how I kind of got started. 

[0:02:33] JN: That's awesome. So you got started in the context of free games. We mentioned there in the intro some of your commercial ventures. Did you kick about any free games before you got into, I guess, the doing it for money part? 

[0:02:42] SE: Yeah, I made some really, really stupid games for my friends, just kind of like meme games. This was maybe like 2011 or something, just for school friends. I made this one game that was sort of a montage parody game. I don't know if you know, but back in the day, when kids would play Call of Duty or other first-person shooters like Counter-Strike, and then there was like this whole genre of meme video where they would edit these montages of spinning around and doing headshot and stuff. 

It took me probably a month to figure out how to measure the angle of rotating the first-person shooter camera and then shooting the gun. I implemented this really simple gun, like a sniper rifle, and you had to turn your camera quickly, 360 degrees, and then shoot this little cube. 

[0:03:41] JN: That's so funny. 

[0:03:42] SE: If you didn't do that, then the gun wouldn't do any damage. 

[0:03:45] JN: Yeah. It's funny. I think that game would absolutely pop off nowadays. I don't know if you've seen, but the Xbox 360 has made a comeback this last year. Loads of people have been getting their Xbox 360s out and playing Call of Duty. And FaZe Clan became a thing again. The trick shot, the no scope 360 trick shot montage video game would absolutely slap right now, I think. But that's incredible. And also, funnily enough, I think it brings us nicely to Skate Story because that is another game about doing sick tricks. Would you like to tell us about what a Skate Story is? 

[0:04:16] SE: Yeah, it's another game where you could do a 360 but on a skateboard. I just released Skate Story, which is a skateboarding game where he plays this glass demon who is skating through the underworld, who's trying to eat the moon. 

[0:04:32] JN: Perfect. What more pitch does the game need? I actually want to start before we get into the technical bit. I want to start with that because I have this whole - okay, bear with me, listeners and Sam. I have this whole thesis about movies from the 2010s to 20120s that I think relates to the Skate Story, which is there was a period of time where every movie that had fake science really went out of its way to justify its fake science, and it's plots, and etc. And I think Pacific Rim killed that by saying there are giant robots, there are giant aliens that are fighting, it's rad, let's go. 

I felt very similarly about starting up Skate Story and being like, "You're a demon. You need to eat the moon. You're made of glass. You have to skateboard to the moon. It's rad. Let's continue." I guess I kind of wanted to ask you - it's such an interesting premise, but it is just offered wholesale to the player. No justification, just like cool, this is the thing. How do we go? How do you approach - because it also strikes me as actually quite intricate and developed. There are lots of things there that you go like, "Oh, that's a really neat idea." How do you approach writing for a game like this? Did the writing and the concept come first, or was it very much did it come around to justify the gameplay mechanics, if you get what I mean? 

[0:05:38] SE: Well, I would say the name of the game actually came very, very early on. I was like, "Oh, okay. I want to make a game about skateboarding. I want it to be a vapor wave skateboarding game." And then I want it to be like a linear story game. And then I remember thinking of a couple of different titles. And then I was like, "I really want the word skate in it because I want people to know it's a skateboarding game." And then I really want people to know that's not a sandbox game. It's a linear story game. I was like, "Oh well, I guess it's going to be called Skate Story because I want every player to know that it's a linear adventure game." 

And then I always knew it was a vaporwave game. And then I always had the idea shortly afterward when I made the game that it would be a game about skating down into the underworld. So, all of that came about from that initial premise of you're skating down into the underworld. What does that entail? And then the majority of the writing was based off of that, and then would have to be changed, as you probably would think, the gameplay. So, I'd be like, "Okay. Well, I really want there to be a giant goal, something for you to reach that you could see really easily." The moon came about really quickly because it's like, "Okay. Well, I want you to be able to go towards something that you can see very easily in terms of gameplay standpoint." And what easier to see than a giant orb in the sky, right? I was like, "All right, got the moon there." 

And things just kind of kept growing from there in terms of why are you trying to go to the moon? Well, obviously, to eat it because it looks so delicious. How do you get to the moon with the skateboard? All these things. And then putting that into the actual story at the beginning of the game. You see the moon, and as the demon, you're so tired and hungry, so you're like, "Oh, wow. I want to eat the moon." And then you get offered a contract. And the narrator is essentially like, "Well, the only way to reach the moon is skateboard." 

[0:07:44] JN: Perfect. Yeah. Well, you being made of glass, I think is just such a cool detail as to like it really adds a physical experience you falling off your board, but also like you immediat - the minute it said how you're made of glass, I was like, "Oh, so falling off my board is going to be like it, right?" And it's just such a neat twist. 

Speaking about being a skating game, obviously, you're a skater yourself. And I have so many questions about how you designed the skateboarding experience. But I guess I wanted to start with asking you what was important for you to capture about the physical experience of skateboarding in the game. 

[0:08:16] SE: I think I started very similar to some other indies, where I'm a little too obsessed with the intricacies. And I was like, "I'm going to make this the most realistic simulator game ever. And I want to get every single little detail in this game. So, when I first was thinking about it, I remember just holding a controller and being like, "Oh, maybe I'll do like this two stick control where each stick is like a foot, and then you have to flick the thing to do the specific things." And then I started to maybe implement that. But then I realized this is a story game. This is just a narrative adventure, essentially. 

It's a walking simulator. But instead of walking, you just kind of skate around. I really have to simplify the control scheme. And then I was like, "I need to make it so anyone can just pick it up without looking at the tutorial and more or less figure it out." They probably won't be able to figure everything out, but more or less figure it out. 

So, it took a lot of iteration to get the control scheme down. I would say that was generally the biggest design challenge throughout the game. And I would say most people like it, and most people are able to just play it. Some people who are really into skateboarding games have told me that it's way too simple, which I kind of take as a compliment, honestly. 

[0:09:47] JN: Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, I have further comparisons of skateboarding games later on, but I think it's also a really interesting comparison to make in terms of simplicity because I always feel like not many skateboarding games have the - I guess it's more of a snowboarding game thing. The fast pace downhill, almost hurdle thing, right? The simple control scheme, I think, really lends itself to that. 

But, although you say it's simple, I think there is - well, for me at least, the timing element. For listeners who haven't played it, you get like a shape with a perfectly timed zone that you need to hit to get maximum height on the trick. And that shape gets more complicated the more complicated the trick. And that really means when you're doing the fast-paced segments, you need to really decide when you're going to start executing the trick so it lines up at the right time. And I've so far found that very challenging. I don't know. Maybe I'm not very good at skateboarding games, but I always miss them. I think that's really interesting. 

[0:10:37] SE: Well, that timing indicator is completely optional now. Yes, you do need it to essentially do a bigger jump and to get a higher score, but it's completely optional. When I first made the game, it was not completely optional. I thought it was - I mean, forgive me for tooting my own horn, but I thought it was a genius implementation of what it actually feels like to skateboard. Because when you're actually skateboarding - and I haven't seen this shown in any game that I've played where the speed of the character affects the difficulty of a move. 

Because usually in games, it's like, "Well, you just want to go faster." Right? The only thing that speed really affects is maybe racing games, it's harder to turn. But I've never seen like, "Oh, it's harder to shoot, or it's harder to jump, or do anything." But in skateboarding in real life, that's literally how it is. When you first learn how to do a trick, you're like, "I guess I'll stand still because that's the easiest way to do it." And then, "Okay, I maybe know how to do an ollie, and now I'm going to start moving slowly." And you're like, "Holy shit. This is completely hard now." And then you kind of learn that and you're like, "I guess I'll go at a decent pace." And you're like, "Holy shit. This is super hard." 

So, it's really different to learn how to do a kick flip when you're just rolling kind of slowly, versus when you're going at 20 miles per hour down a hill, it's actually really, really difficult to do the kick flip. And I really wanted to capture that somehow. And when I realized like, "Oh, if I do the Gears of War Active Reload, but then tie the speed of the indicator to the movement, that actually feels - I mean, obviously it's not skateboarding, but it gets the idea of cross of that thing. 

[0:12:27] JN: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that idea of speed is something that you have some really other amazing parts of the controls, which we'll have to talk about. I guess one of the things that first struck me, and this is because I'm constantly going into walls, was you have the character controller, and I guess when you can do certain actions was really interesting. 

As far as I can tell, you can't interrupt a kick with a board slide, right? The kick has to finish before the slide will start happening. I guess there's just so many fast downhill segments. How did you think about really capturing that idea of speed and momentum and danger in how you designed that movement and the controls that were available? 

[0:13:08] SE: Yeah. For the kicking versus doing other actions, that was mostly based on where the feet are. I implement it where it's like, well, in real life you have to really position your feet. And that's a big part of the game of like your feet being in the right position, and you use the triggers to essentially just choose the trick. And then visually, the feet kind of move around the board to show you, "Okay, your feet are set up in this position, and you can do the trick." 

You can't ollie if you only have one foot on the board, essentially. I kind of took cues from soft games where it's very animation-heavy of like, "Okay, you have to be in the idle state to be able to do this trick." Both feet have to be on the board before you can do an ollie or something, or power slide. So, you have to wait until your push animation at least progresses enough so that when you press the ollie button, the skater can put the foot back on the board. 

There aren't many animation interrupts. You can kind of interrupt, but it'll take maybe like 0.1 seconds for the skater to be like, "Okay, I'm interrupting this animation. I'm going to move my foot back." 

[0:14:26] JN: Right. Transition and then interrupt, right? Yeah. 

[0:14:29] SE: Exactly. Yeah. But the design of that was kind of inspired from soft games or games that are like that animation-driven sort of thing. 

[0:14:38] JN: Yeah. It's interesting because you started saying that you went way too over on the simulation aspect. And I guess the feet needing to be in physically accurate places at the right time is like a slightly way that's retained. 

[0:14:48] SE: Yeah. 

[0:14:49] JN: And then, yeah, came with that, I guess, that feeling of speed. And this also I think ties into how your trick system works, which I want to get into a bit. But you do lots of really - well, I think anyway, there's so much going on when you're going fast. But you do lots of interesting things with the camera in terms of really exploiting it being in certain places to give the idea of speed. How is that implemented? Is that literally just the higher the speed, the camera gets slower? How does your camera work? 

[0:15:11] SE: Yeah, the camera has a lot of parameters. I think this is maybe the third version of the camera that I made. At its core, there's like an overarching camera system. But then just the camera for the player probably is this giant monster with multiple parameters of spring arms, and looking at where the player's going, velocity. 

The idea of it was essentially to emulate a skate video or like your friend following you and trying to record you, but also having it be like a third-person camera that you can control. That was one of the things I really, really wanted was full user control over the camera, which is not very common in racing games. Games where you go fast is not very common in skateboarding games either, because usually - I mean, in EA skate, the second stick is used for tricks, right? So you can't control the camera at all, essentially. 

The camera has a lot of parameters for like which way the skater is going. At what velocity? If the skater is kind of going downhill, or uphill, or about to do a trick, or turning left, or turning right. And also, most of the time, the camera, the main goal is to make it look cool while giving you as much of a view of what's going on, which is incredibly difficult because it's like - I mean, it's a 2D screen. And making it look cool by essentially having the skateboard front and center while showing the skater, while showing where the skater is going, is having a lot of things to keep in mind. And then also, at the same time, allowing you to rotate the camera. 

The speed mechanic has to do with a lot of these different things. There's kind of like key frames in a way of like, "Okay, when you're going slow, this is about where the camera wants to be." This is about where the camera is moving towards to keep the skater framed, and about the distance I want to keep. And then at speed, it changes kind of slightly, but there's a bunch of parameters associated with that, with how much screen shake there is and how much microphone wind noise there is. There's essentially a sound clip of wind hitting a microphone that plays when you're going fast. And then the volume and pitch of that is associated with how fast the camera is moving, not the player. It's like actually detects like simulating, "Okay, how fast is the camera going?" And then playing the noise based on that. There's a bunch of little parameters like that that associate with the speed. 

[0:18:07] JN: Right. And I guess the trick system, I would guess, must then be a similar story. Because I noticed that if you're not going fast enough or you're not coming off a high enough bit, you can't even attempt to turn the board in an ollie, for example. How did you decide on - I guess it comes back to what you're saying earlier about difficulties of tricks at speed, but how did you decide what movements would be possible under what conditions, and how is that set up? 

[0:18:31] SE: It's mostly based on just real life, but then trying to make it as essentially approachable and accessible as possible. Because, obviously, I know that people are not going into this game looking for the most realistic simulator. And I've gotten a lot of feedback from people and play tests early on, just like, "Wow, this is just so hard and so frustrating." I'm like, "Yeah, but that's skateboarding." And they'd be, "Yeah, but this is a video game." And I'd be like, "Okay, fine." 

And I want them to play it and like have a good time. And it's more about the journey and the story than it is about the intricacies. I want to show the intricacies, if you're interested. But it's more about just having a good time. So, I was like, "Okay. Well, going from the simulator thing and then making it as approachable as possible, like within reason." 

For example, you can kind of pop the ollie whenever you want and then the foot will essentially go to the ollie position very quickly. There might be a little bit of delay, but it tries to give you a little leeway while attempting at best as possible to still keep the look of the game. And the simulator, it looks very realistic, if that makes sense, while being as friendly as possible. 

[0:19:59] JN: Yeah, that idea of representing how hard skateboarding is, but still being fun, I think, brings me on to deaths. Do you call them deaths wiping out? How do you describe when people smash in the game? 

[0:20:09] SE: Yeah, I guess you kind of die. Yeah, you don't really die, because demons can't die. They're already not alive. 

[0:20:19] Explode in a spectacular fashion. Yeah, it's a really interesting system because it doesn't often feel bad. I often find myself laughing in response to a terrible wipe out. And especially on the linear segments, the fast segments, it often feels like, "Oh, cool. I have another opportunity to run that line again, but better." Do you have any particular inspiration for the death system? How did you come to design that system? 

[0:20:43] SE: I think that just comes for free with a skateboarding game. I think almost every skateboarding game, crashing or bailing out is just fun for some reason. I think mine is slightly different. Just because in a game like EA Skate, the rag dolls are incredibly, incredibly hilarious. So, it's always fun to just see the ragdoll. And they made a whole mode about it called Hall Of Meat in EA Skate, where the whole goal is just to like hurt yourself. And then there's like a little skeleton of, "Where did you hurt yourself? Where'd you take the most damage?" And people love that mode. 

So, I think that just kind of comes free with skateboarding for some reason. Mine is not as funny. So, I'm surprised you laughed, but that's good. I think the new part or the innovation, which some people hate, I've been told, but there's an option to turn it off, is essentially the camera goes rolling. The camera is sort of the physical body. And that came from watching skate videos in which I saw - there's this one video where the skater kind of fell, and it kicks the cameraman directly, the camera, and the camera just fucking rolls. I was like, "Wow, that looks so cool." 

And then, actually, if you go skateboarding - I remember once I was just trying to do a very tiny trick, but then you land, and then your board just kind of sticks on the ground because maybe the ground is kind of rough. And then I just kind of fell in slow motion, but I was going fast enough that, because the board stuck, I sort of rolled on the ground. And then I was going slow enough, and I was just looking the whole time, like watching the whole time. And I was like, "Well, my literal vision, this is what it's like to fall." It's not watching a funny ragdoll. It's like my vision just rolls around. And then now I'm looking at the sky, and I was like, "Oh, wait. That's literally what it feels like." 

Of course, when you are the guy filming, you don't actually fall with the skateboarder. But when I implemented it the first time, I was like, "Oh, I want the camera to roll. This is what it feels like to fall, having the camera roll around of the first-person vision." It kind of shifts, I guess, in game of like third-person to first-person feeling-wise. 

[0:23:16] JN: Interesting. Yeah, it feels like I definitely grew up playing mostly Tony Hawk Pro Skater titles. It was like I missed out of EA Skates. My next question may end up having an easy answer in other skateboarding games as well, but I haven't experienced many skateboarding games that have boss battle systems. I'm aware they're out there and have been controversial, I guess. But this one has been very well received. I've definitely enjoyed it. I think it's a really interesting system. What led to your design, the boss battles? How did you think about those? 

[0:23:40] SE: I don't think there has been a skateboarding game with traditional boss battles. In Tony Hawk, there were competition levels which sort of served as these boss battles sort of. But you kind of had to squint and be like, "Yeah, that's a boss battle." Because it's like different from the other ones. 

And then in EA Skate, you kind of have like a slightly harder challenge, or you have to play a game of skate, which is kind of like horse and like other sports against a pivotal character or something. That's kind of like a boss battle. But I wanted like a traditional boss battle of, "Yeah, this is from soft game." Or this is a video game where the boss has a health bar, and you have to take it down. Yes, I wanted that. And I have not seen that. However, I have seen maybe kind of similar things. I saw a sort of boss battle in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. 

[0:24:39] JN: What title? 

[0:24:41] SE: Yeah. Which is sort of a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Amazing, amazing game. And you have to essentially tag parts of the boss. And then you kind of kick enemies. The minions kind of come at you, and you kick them and stuff. And then you do tricks and then you tag parts of the robot. You tag the robot's face which kind of deals damage to it. 

I remember also seeing that and being like, "Okay, that's super cool." And then I realized that doing tricks in those bosses don't really matter. I understood why they did that, and it made sense for that game. But I kind of took it upon myself where I was like, "Okay, I really want my boss battles to not have any other [inaudible 0:25:29], right? I want it to just be the same. Doing tricks should somehow damage the boss, the main thing you've been doing throughout. And I want the combos and the tricks to matter. 

And that took the entirety of development to figure out how to do that. I had boss battles pretty early on because I always knew I wanted boss battles. The very first level was just like a path level of going through these gates to reach the moon. And the second level I made was you're now chasing the moon and doing kick flips to damage the moon. That was the boss battle. And it worked. But then I was like, "How do I take this further?" I don't understand how to make this make sense. 

And they went through so many different iterations of just like - I remember I had these boss battles where like, "Yeah, you just do tricks, and it damages the moon." The first one was like this chase level, and that worked. But then the second one was like this arena, like the skate park. And then I remember the feedback was just from the publisher that was just like, "Well, you can just sit in a corner and like do kickflips and eventually take the boss down," which kind of sucks. And I was like, "Okay, yeah, it kind of sucks." 

I was like, "Okay, what if you have to go faster? What do you have to do combos and stuff?" And I would make some progress of how to make this a little better, a little better. And I think it literally took five years throughout to fully design the boss fights to where they are now. And then the last year before release was polishing everything with this new system, which I don't know if you've played the guy up to the second or third boss yet, but that's sort of really where it shows like these moon projections. And then I call it the cosmic light systems, where essentially these projections are like the weak spots of the boss, where you essentially string together a line of combos. And then you end your combo in the light of the moon, this projection to deal damage to the boss. 

[0:27:40] JN: Yeah, I think that's the last boss I did. The red moon, where you've got the initial chase into the arena onto the projections. And you get whisked through the hallways again back to the arena. And it was amazing. Really, each stage, I was like, "Oh, this is delightful. This is such a good way to do the boss." And then it progressed to the next stage. I was like, "Oh my god, this is an even cooler take on it." I think hearing the journey of the arena and how the projection system came to be, I think that's really cool. 

And it adds, I think, as you said, the from soft element. Because after each combo execute and you knock the bar, obviously the moon flies away and you have to try and catch up the projection again. And then you have the differing timing of its attacks on you as you're getting to the projection. And that felt very from softy, like having to learn, "Okay, what is the boss doing in between the attacks?" That was a really cool element. Yeah, not surprising to hear it took 5 years of developing that. 

[0:28:27] SE: It's a very simple system, but it took me a long time to design it. Because when you don't know the answer, you just don't. And there's so many different iterations of that boss fight of there's one where - I mean, the very first one of the arena, one where you could just do tricks forever. And the arena actually was a completely different arena. And another one where it's like, "Oh, you have to be close to the moon and do tricks." And then the closer you are to its gravitational field, the more damage it does. And that also kind of worked. But then it was like, "Yeah, but there's no reason to do tricks outside the moon." Right? So then I was like, "Okay. Well, then maybe there's like a radius, and then you can only do tricks there." Anyway, it just kind of kept going and going and going. 

And then the pivotal point to getting all of this working was realizing, "You know, in real life when you do a combo -" in Tony Hawk, right? You've played Tony Hawk. To compare real life to Tony Hawk. In Tony Hawk, you do a combo, and then when your wheels touch the ground, when all four wheels touch the ground, your combo is over, which makes a lot of sense in a video game because it's like, "Yeah, it's over." You ended the string of tricks, and you're good to go. 

In real life, that's not how it works. When you see your friend do a kickflip, and then he starts with a kickflip, rides down a hill a little, ollies on to a curb, does a manual, and then like ollies out of the manual, he's still riding. He pushes a little, and then he's like, "All right, I'm going to jump over this cone." And he does a trick over a cone. His four wheels touch the ground many times doing that line, but it's still a combo. Why is that? Well, it's because they told you, like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to end it with like this really cool trick over there. I'm going to ollie off these stairs." 

So, if you watch a skate video, it's the same thing, where you could tell that they know what the last trick is of the combo. They're like, "I'm going to 360 flip the staircase, and that's the last trick." Realizing that of like, "Oh, combos don't actually end when your wheels touch the ground. It actually ends when the skater says it ends. And then thus began months' long iterations of like how do you end it? 

And then I eventually came up with the system that it is now in the game, which is the stomp system, which stomping is sort of like a skateboarding phrase of like, "Oh -" kind of like a slang. It's like, "Oh, wow. He really stomped that trick." Or when people kind of teach you how to land a trick, they're just like, "Okay, you like flip the board and then you stomp it," which is like it flips and then it's the right way up with the grip tape facing up towards your feet, and then the wheels facing down. Just stomp it. End the trick so it stops flipping." It's kind of like a skateboarding slang. And I was like, "Okay, that's the ending. You stomp the trick." 

In the game essentially, you could do a bunch of tricks, and there's a bit of a timer. You have maybe a couple seconds in between each trick to kind of push. And then when you want the combo to end, you just stomp the trick in midair. You just press square in midair, and it ends the combo and kind of expels the momentum that you've accrued during the combo as damage. That took a long time to design. 

[0:32:16] JN: Yeah, it's a fantastic system. I think not only is it realistic in real life, I think it's very necessary for this genre of skateboarding game, especially in the boss battles, where I need to do a trick. But also, I need to navigate around this fire that's appeared in front of me, right? It gives you flexibility to engage with the other forms of gameplay rather than just the tricks, which is really cool. 

[0:32:35] SE: Yes. 

[0:32:36] JN: I guess one of the things we've kind of touched on with this and the different forms of the bosses is, also, you have the really interesting pacing in the game between these like linear racing sections and more sandboxy bits and then the narrative storytelling bits. And I don't think I'm even halfway in yet. I've only seen some of that so far. But how did you decide to have those different forms of gameplay? And how did you decide on that pacing and spacing them out? 

[0:32:58] SE: Yeah, I would say those different forms of gameplay were I always knew that it needed them because I knew it wasn't going to be a sandbox game, but I wanted some open areas. And I personally love areas in games where you're like, "Okay, this is like the chill hub zone, and I can just kind of fuck around and I can wait essentially." It's kind of like the downtime. And then it's like, "Okay. Then I'll do a challenge and then continue the story." And then the half levels were always like the chunk of the gameplay of like, "Okay, this is the linear driving force." And for whatever, that's people's favorite sections of the game of just, "Yeah, this is the music. It's going. And I have a very clear goal just to reach the end." And that is the game. 

The hub areas are more to satiate that my own internal like, "Okay. Well, I kind of just want little places to fuck around. Kind of talk to characters and do stuff." And the pacing came from that. Yes, I could have it go-go-go all the time, but I didn't really want that for myself. And I think the game itself, the story was, "Well, you're kind of this eternal demon." 

And especially with skateboarding, it's not really just go-go-go-go-go. Skateboarding, a lot of it is also just chilling and just being like - I think a lot of people have this feeling of skateboarding is hanging out with your friends, and endless summers, and just chilling by the flower bank, and trying a trick, and drinking tea, drinking iced tea. That eternal feeling. And I wanted to capture some of that. 

Obviously, the game still takes place in this kind of underworld, but it's kind of like a cheery underworld. And having these open areas where, yeah, you could just kind of chill, and you know what to do, but it's like these sections that give that flavor of skateboarding that I still wanted of like exploration and in between of the really driving forces of, "Okay, now I got to fucking get to this place. And now I got to take down this moon." 

So, I think the pacing aspect was difficult, I will say. I did get a few complaints about some people not liking the pacing and feeling like, "Oh man, the hub levels drag on a little bit," which that's fair if somebody just wants to play the rushes and just keep going, going, going. But I really wanted that as part of it, of sometimes you get to the location that you're skateboarding, and you're just kind of chilling. And I think that's just part of it. 

[0:35:52] JN: Yeah, and I think you're totally right. When you were talking about this downtime, just for me, just sitting on top of the half pipe eating sausage rolls was like most the skateboarding day, right? Yeah, it definitely conjures that vibe. And also, I think there's definitely an element of it that makes - I do wonder if the rushes, if that was all the game, and it was constant. When I'm in the hub zone, I'm like, "Cool. I'm going to work out how this particular trick that I couldn't nail worked. When I get to the next rush, I'm going to like really hit this." And it makes it feel very special in a way that I feel, if it was constant, it would probably get stale a lot faster. Whereas now it's like a treat. It's like I'm on to the rush. Let's go. It's nice. I really enjoy it. 

[0:36:27] SE: Exactly. Like a contrast. 

[0:36:30] JN: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. 100%. To go right back to the beginning, one thing you mentioned is that this is a vaporwave game. Obviously, we need to talk about the sound and visuals. You have so many various effects, and I guess plenty of shaders and this kind of thing in there, including the classic CRT with the scan lines and the fisheye when you're on the pause screen and stuff. Why this visual style, I guess to start? 

[0:36:51] SE: I kind of call it a modern take on retro visuals. That's sort of my own internal design guideline of like, "Okay, I want it to look like an old skate tape played on a CRT." I mean, it's so in style nowadays because the '90s are growing up. We're like, "Let's just bring it back." I really wanted that, obviously, as everyone else does. But I wanted to take it into a modern era. I wanted to take it into 4K, if that makes sense. How do I take aspects of that and make it really modernized? 

A lot of different shaders, a lot of different effects that don't make it low resolution, but somehow get the vibe across. I think I really wanted it to still look incredibly polished and incredibly modern in terms of just like the fidelity, a high-fidelity retro sort of vibe, I guess. Because I didn't want it to look blurry, and I didn't want it to look like I just put a CRT filter on because - I don't know. I think as a nerd, as an engineer, you might understand that I'm just like, "Oh, I want to use all the modern technologies." I wanted to support HDR. I wanted to like use all these cool effects, and particle systems, and post effects, and tone mapping, and cool shaders. I don't want it to look like a PS1 game. Not this game at least. I wanted this game to look like some sort of realistic version of a PS1 game. 

[0:38:35] JN: Yeah, that's really interesting, I feel like it. Because we've had lots of different - as you said, the '90s is very in in video games right now. We've had lots of different approaches to that. The boomer shooters, for example, where part of it is like they achieve that effect partially through basically reusing those techniques. And they do have the constraints, and they do have the lower body models. Yeah, and it's really cool, and it really achieves it. But you're talking about the complete opposite, where it's like I'm not doing things as they did then. And I have to really technically go out of my way to make it look like I did. But at the same time, it's like - did you see that absolutely absurd post about the person who implemented a working camera visually in Blender? It's like that. 

[0:39:16] SE: Oh no. That's crazy. 

[0:39:17] JN: You would love it. Yeah. They basically reinvented the physics of cameras entirely in Blender. That's what it reminds me of what you're talking about. Yeah. 

[0:39:25] SE: Yeah, I love that. 

[0:39:26] JN: Speaking of shaders, I know writing shaders and stuff is an art of itself. Is there any of the effects in the game that are particularly gnarly implementations or that you're particularly proud of? 

[0:39:38] SE: I have been asked this question multiple times because everyone loves the visual style, which is great because I'm very proud of it. It's so many different things that are going on, obviously. I'll say a new one. I usually talk about the texture of the infernal flames as I call them, which is this wire, this barbed wire kind of thing. But I'll talk about the world space noise since it's the slightly more technical listener base, right? Where the game is actually still incredibly low poly because I wanted it to run really well on a lot of machines. And it does. The game runs essentially very well on the Steam Deck and on most computers. 

[0:40:23] JN: Yeah. Switch as well. 

[0:40:26] SE: Yes, it runs well on the Switch. Switch 2. It never came out for the Switch 1, but it does actually reach a lot. It reached a lock 30 on the Switch 1. So, it's actually not too bad. With some effects off, obviously. But one of the things is the game is very low poly, and the draw calls and all that are very well optimized. And it's using GPU instancing and everything, that's because a lot of the meshes are kind of the same. There's a lot of cubes and a lot of kind of repeated things, a lot of straight edges. 

And so what I wanted was like, "Well, I wanted this dreamlike look, and I wanted this sort of clay-like sculpted look that kind of gives it this warbled feeling." And as you play the game, you probably realize like, "Oh, yeah, it kind of looks a little warbled." It's kind of like a little kind of textural everywhere. Everything kind of moves a little. And it's based on - it's this one shader that I made that's like this post-effect shader. I think it's right before all the tone mapping and all the things. It is a warble shader, which essentially is a 3D texture tiled over the world. And on the depth buffer, kind of reprojects where the world space is. 

And then samples the 3D texture. And then uses that 3D texture to offset the screen space UV. It kind of shifts the image only in screen space based on the 3D texture, and it's pinned in space because it's reprojected. It kind of always warbles the thing at the same place based on where the camera is. It's not really random. It's kind of just like, "Okay, based on where you are looking, this thing will warble in this direction." 

For example, if I just put a normal cube in the scene, it'll kind of have the edges slightly warbled. It's not 100% straight. It'll still look straight. It'll still look like a cube, but kind of gives it a little more texture of like, "Wow, everything here is a little warbled, little dreamlike." If you get close enough, it just becomes straight. And if it's on the center of the screen, it also becomes a little more straight, just so players can see the geometry for what it is. You're like, "Okay. Well, this is a straight edge, so I can grind on it." It's just for gameplay sake." But the farther away an object is, and then also if it's close to the edge of the screen, it kind of gets a little more of that warble. That probably took me a couple of days to wrap my head around how to implement that. That was kind of fun to do. 

[0:43:25] JN: Yeah. Just as you were describing that, it reminds me a little bit of hearing people - I'm not being a musician. It reminds me a little bit of hearing people talk about composing music, where I'm just like I don't even understand how you decided those pieces should go in those places. Right? Yeah, that's really, really cool. 

Hearing you talk about that also reminded me of a question I was going to ask earlier, but completely forgot. Obviously, the game is written in Unity. We mentioned that. And it's very physically driven game, and you have lots of - we spoke about the character controllers and all these parts and stuff come in. Were there any challenges you had with implementing those systems in Unity? Did you have to fight the physics engine at all, or was it relatively in the Unity happy path? 

[0:44:03] SE: Yeah. I mean, the whole thing was a massive, massive challenge. Doesn't use Unity physics. All the skateboard physics is completely from scratch. 

[0:44:14] JN: Amazing. 

[0:44:14] SE: It interacts with the Unity physics in terms of it kind of pushes around some stuff. And then I cast against the Unity physics scene. But all of the movement is completely custom. And I essentially just detect where the Unity scene is of the colliders. And then I move the player based on that. But it doesn't use physics, if that makes sense. There's no physical body in terms of the player. 

[0:44:46] JN: Yeah, absolutely. Incredible. Wow, that is really interesting. 

[0:44:50] SE: Yeah. And that was a gigantic pain in the ass to implement, and it's still not perfect. There's still a bunch of issues which people have found, obviously. 

[0:45:01] JN: Weird interactions and stuff. 

[0:45:02] SE: Yeah, weird interactions. The wall riding is kind of broken in the game. That is probably the number one thing where you'll accidentally kind of ride along a wall and then just die or like clip through the space. It happens pretty infrequently. It's not a big deal, but that's something that I still need to see if I can fix. But it's so gnarly how to - I don't even know how I made this. Honestly, sometimes I remember so many sketches in my little notebook of different edge cases of like how am I going to interact in this way. And how is this going to do this? And it was a pain in the ass to implement. And it's still not even there. It's like not even 100% there yet. 

[0:45:52] JN: But then I guess if you'd get similar freak interaction glitches with a well-developed and existing physics engine as well, right? It's part of the course of any kind of physics. 

[0:46:02] SE: That's true. Good point. 

[0:46:03] JN: Yeah. Speaking of your notebooks and your sketches and things that you no longer remember how you did. Obviously, you've been developing this game for 5 years now, which is a long length of time, especially for an indie. Having now delivered it and it's out, and it's done, how are you thinking about what you're doing next? How are you feeling? 

[0:46:03] SE: Yeah, it's going to unfortunately still take some time to work on this game just because I could not finish it in time. There's a bunch of things that I still got to fix. There's a few bugs, and then there are a few extra things. There's some assets and items that never made it in that are in the game, but I never placed them properly. And then there's the whole new game plus thing, which is not completely implemented. 

There's going to be some like additional contents that I got to fix and add. And then that'll probably take a couple more months. And then after that, I have some ideas for perhaps some other projects that I'll noodle around. I don't know exactly how or what I will work on, to be honest, because I'm still all - 

[0:47:15] JN: Recovering. 

[0:47:15] SE: - finish this thing. Yeah, I'm still recovering. I'm still trying to not be tired, but I'm happy I got this game out. And that's really the hardest part is just getting the thing out and releasing and having users, players, go through it and being like, "Wow, here are all these issues that you got to fix now." I'm like, "Okay." 

[0:47:41] JN: You should be very happy with that. I'm very proud of that. We have a lot of really fantastic games with this podcast, and some of those games come from games we're playing. Other ones just kind of came out of the blue. And my producer raised this one. I, honestly, hadn't heard of Skate Story. And I played it, it was, "This is my game of the year. And it's January 4th. I'm in. This is amazing. This is fantastic." It's been a great pleasure. 

But speaking of things beyond Skate Story, one of the things I learned while I was doing research on this episode is that you were a founding member of what sounds like an incredible co-working space, which I'd love to briefly talk about. GUMBO in New York. Can you tell us about the space? 

[0:48:14] SE: Oh, yeah. It is a game developer co-working space/collective. It's a nonprofit collective where it's just a bunch of game developers. And we got started in DUMBO Brooklyn. There's only one place, essentially, where we were coming to this green desk, which is essentially like a WeWork. And we were like, "Wow, it's so much better to work away from home." We just rented a tiny little office together. And since it's in this neighborhood in Brooklyn called DUMBO, I kind of came up the name after years. We were just calling it the office. I was like, "Oh, we're in Dumbo, but we're making games." 

Dumbo stands for down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass. Well, we can call it GUMBO, which is games under the Manhattan Bridge. And then the name kind of stuck because it's kind of cute, I guess. It's kind of funny. And it's all these different game developers that come from different walks of life and different places making all these different games. Kind of like a big pot of gumbo, which is a delicious food item. 

But more and more people would join. And we had like one tiny little office in the screen desk. And then our friends got the little office next door. And then more friends got another office next door. And these minuscule tiny cubicles just with people in them. And then the pandemic hit, and everyone was like, "Maybe we shouldn't be in these tiny cubicles with people with them." And also, everyone was just - were all isolating. People got rid of their offices. But some of us, especially those of us who just lived alone, we were just like, "Well, we're just going to start coming back in." Isolation's over. And then all the office rents were down. Then we found, actually, a new big space altogether just like down the street. A different office building. 

[0:50:15] JN: It looked like a wild building as well. 

[0:50:18] SE: Yeah, it used to be like a factory. It's super beautiful. So Brooklyn. Brick walls. Just super gorgeous. And we moved in there during the pandemic. Convinced everyone, like, "Hey, can you put up 6 months to a year just so we can try it out for like a year?" And we got maybe 20 people, and we're like, "All right, we can do this." And then it just kept on growing because nothing like it exists in the world. 

[0:50:48] JN: Yeah, that was my immediate thought upon seeing it. I was like we have a lot of indie devs on, and it's always great to explore how you know they do the business of indie development. And seeing GUMBO, I was like that's such a cool model. It's so nice to see there being a space for game devs like this. Yeah, it was really, really exciting. 

[0:51:04] SE: Yeah. I think the pivotal part was like we got started kind of small. And honestly, super scrappy because - the space now looks beautiful, but at Green Desk. And I really wanted to mention that because when it started, it was just these terrible little cubicles in a co-working space called Green Desk. It's just like, "Okay. Well, we have this terrible space." This was like a two-person office, and we fit five people into it. You can imagine how stuffed it was. And maybe that wouldn't fly nowadays post-COVID. 

But we had so much fun because it was like, "Hey, you guys are game devs." And we're all paying like 200 bucks a month for this thing. And then during the pandemic, we all know each other. And there's maybe 15 of us in our own little cubicles sharing with our roommates. Let's all get one big space. Not to say that there aren't challenges that happen with a big space that don't happen in a small space, especially now it's an open plan, which come with its own issues. 

[0:52:11] JN: Game sound design is an interesting thing. 

[0:52:14] SE: Exactly. I would say there's a trade-off, but it is super impressive to see one big beautiful space versus a bunch of tiny little hidey-holes. 

[0:52:27] JN: I'm glad you emphasized that, starting in someone else's space as small scrappy cubicles. Because a community has to start somewhere. You're not going to organically come out of nowhere and be like, "And now we're renting a floor of a historic building." Right? That's not feasible. I think, yeah, it's a great part of the story to emphasize in terms of helping people realize that they can achieve it. They just have to start. Which does bring me to the question I want to ask you as we get towards wrapping up. I know we're close to time. There's probably someone out there who hasn't skateboarded before and is playing Skate Story for the first time and is now maybe feeling inspired. As a skater yourself, what advice would you give people who are inspired by Skate Story to go and eat their own moon to pick up skateboarding? 

[0:53:06] SE: To be quite honest, that was probably the main source of metric of success for this game. When I first started the game, I was like, "If I could make this game and inspire people to just pick up a skateboard after playing it, that is the metric of success." I just want people to be inspired to try it out. Because I think for me, I also picked up skateboarding when I was an adult, and it was really difficult and really hard. Because I gave up on it when I was a kid because it's too hard. And I was like, "Oh, I really want to do this now." 

And I think with Skate Story, a big part of its message is essentially, "How do you keep going? How do you persevere?" It's like this eternal question that's just asked and answered by games all the time of like, "How do you persevere?" And this is just another entry in that long canon of like, "How do you persevere? How do you do this thing? How do you do this hard thing, this silly thing, eating the moon?" So silly. Why do you even want to do that? Skateboarding. Why do you even want to do that? What is the point? You're made of glass. Stop. Right? Why do you even want to do that? And the game seeks to answer that. 

That was sort of the impetus of when I was making it, I'm like, "Man, if people play this game and they want to skate afterward, that's the success." That's art, right? That's what I wanted the art to say, inspire people to go for what it is. And I also expanded it to be like, "Well, maybe it's not skateboarding, maybe it's something else of just like I want to do this thing. I want to pick up this hobby, essentially." That's sort of my favorite thing whenever I meet people is I just really want to find out what they love doing, and then trying to get them to do that thing. I think I just love it when people are just like into stuff, just like to do it. That's like my favorite thing is to have people do that. 

[0:55:12] JN: You know, actually, a moment I had playing, picking the game up. When I got to the ollie monolith, and the description of the Ollie came out, I was like, "This is someone who skates." Just the writing of that, I was like, "No, this is a game by a skater." It was very much, "Here's my special interest. Here's how special the ollie is as a thing, as a milestone." Yeah. Very cool. 

[0:55:33] SE: The whole game was an excuse to talk about my special interest, honestly. 

[0:55:37] JN: Which all games should be. All games should be. 

[0:55:39] SE: It should be. Yeah, I agree. 

[0:55:42] JN: Perfect. Well, Sam, thank you for coming on and talking to us about your special interest today. This has been an absolute pleasure. And I look forward to finishing the game. Thank you for joining us. 

[0:55:50] SE: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, man. This was super fun.

[END]