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Skate Story with Sam Eng
00:57:48
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,
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- [00:01]
Narrator
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 Vaporway 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.
- [01:14]
Joe Nash
Sam, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today.
- [01:17]
Sam Eng
Hey, what's up? Thanks for having me on.
- [01:20]
Joe Nash
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?
- [01:27]
Sam Eng
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. So I didn't think that it was like a real job. But then I saw these people making games online. I remember reading like Rock, Paper, Shotgun and they would have this weekly roundup of like free games and then these were just like indie developers. So I would play some of them. And then there's this one developer named Ankropari or goes by Ankrepare that just would make all these games and put them on the website. And I remember seeing like 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 like back in the day they were trying all these like different softwares and I saw one that was like called Unity. So I downloaded it like Unity two or something, Unity three. And then I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. Like I could probably make like a little silly thing. That's how I kind of got started.
- [02:32]
Joe Nash
That's awesome. So you got started in the context of free games? Obviously. 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?
- [02:43]
Sam Eng
Yeah, I made some like really, really stupid games for my friends. Just like kind of like meme games. Yeah, this was maybe like 2011 or something just for like school friends. I made like this one game that was sort of like a montage parody game. I don't know if you know, but like, you know, back in the day when kids would play Call of Duty or like other first person shooters like Counter Strike, and then there was like this whole genre of meme video where they would edit these like montages of like spinning around and doing headshots and stuff. So it took me probably a month to like figure out how to measure the angle of rotating the first person shooter camera and then shooting the gun. So I like implemented this really simple gun, like a sniper rifle. And you had to like turn your camera quickly 360 degrees and then shoot like this little cube.
- [03:41]
Joe Nash
That's so funny.
- [03:42]
Sam Eng
If you didn't do that, then the gun wouldn't do any damage. Yeah, so it's funny.
- [03:47]
Joe Nash
I think that would, I think that game would absolutely pop off nowadays with like, I don't know if you've seen, but like the Xbox 360 has made a comeback this last year. Loads of people have been doing like getting their Xbox 360s out and playing Call of Duty and like Faze Clan became a thing again. So like the Trickshot, the no scope 360 trickshot montage video game would absolutely slap right now, I think. But that's incredible. And also funnily enough, I think brings us nicely the Skate Story, because that is another game about doing sick tricks. Would you like to tell us what Skate Story is?
- [04:16]
Sam Eng
Yeah, it's another game where you could do a 360 but on a skateboard. So 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.
- [04:32]
Joe Nash
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. I'm Sam. I have this whole thesis about like movies from the like 2010s to 2020s that I think relates to the Skate Story, which is like there was a period of time where every movie that had like fake science really went out of its way to justify its fake science and its like plots and et cetera. And I think Pacific Rim killed that by saying there are giant robots, there are giant aliens, they're fighting. It's rad. Let's go I felt very similarly about starting up Skate Store 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. So I guess I kind of wanted to ask you, like, it's such an interesting premise, but it is just offered wholesale to, like, the player. No justification. Just, like, cool. This is the thing. How do we go? How do you approach? Because this also strikes me as, like, actually quite intricate and developed. There's 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 this concept come first, or was it very much? Did it come around to justify the gameplay mechanics, if you get what I mean?
- [05:38]
Sam Eng
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 Vaporwave skateboarding game. And then I want it to be, like a linear story game. And then I remember thinking of, like, 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. Like, it's a linear story game. So I was like, oh, well, I guess it's going to be called Skate Story because I. 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, with the gameplay. So it'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. So 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? So 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. Of course, 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 you're so. 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.
- [07:43]
Joe Nash
Perfect. Yeah. The glass as well, like 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 immediate. Like the minute it said, hey, 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. So speaking about being a skating game, obviously you're a skater yourself and this. I have so many questions about how you design the skateboarding experience, but I guess I wanted to start with asking you, like, what was important for you to capture about the physical experience of skateboarding in the game.
- [08:16]
Sam Eng
I think I started very similar to some other indies where I'm like 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 like 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 like flick the thing to do the specific things. And then I started to maybe implement that, but then I realized, like, 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. So 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 out, you know, 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, you know, I kind of take the compliment honestly.
- [09:46]
Joe Nash
Yeah, it's an interesting one because, 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 like the, I guess it's more of a snowboarding game thing. Like, you know, like the fast paced, downhill, almost like hurdle thing.
- [10:03]
Sam Eng
Right.
- [10:04]
Joe Nash
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. So for listeners who haven't played it, you get like a shape with like a perfectly timed zone, right, 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 in order so it lines up at the right time. And I, I've so far found that very challenging. I don't know, maybe I'm not very good at skateboarding games, but I always mistime them. I think that's really interesting.
- [10:37]
Sam Eng
Well, that timing indicator is completely optional now. So 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 like 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? Like, the only thing that speed really affects is like 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. Like when you first learn how to like 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 Kickflip when you're just rolling kind of slowly versus when you're going at 20 miles per hour, like down a hill, it's actually really, really difficult to do the kickflip. 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 like. I mean, obviously it's not skateboarding, but it gets the idea of cross of that thing.
- [12:27]
Joe Nash
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that idea of speed is something that you carry around some really other amazing parts of the controls, which I love to talk about. So I guess one of the things that first struck me, and this is because I'm constantly going into walls, was you have so, like, the character controller, and I guess when you can do certain actions was really interesting. So 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. How did you. I guess there's just so many fast downhill segments. Like, 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?
- [13:08]
Sam Eng
Yeah. So for the kicking versus doing other actions, that was mostly based on where the feet are. So 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, right? 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. So I kind of took cues from games, like, fromsoft games, where it's very, like, animation heavy of like, okay, you have to be in, like, the idle state to be able to do this trick. So both feet have to be on the board before you can do, like, 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. So. So there aren't many animation interrupts, Right? 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.
- [14:25]
Joe Nash
Right. More of an animation transition than an interrupt, right?
- [14:28]
Sam Eng
Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, but the design of that was kind of inspired by fromsoft games or games that are like that animation driven sort of thing.
- [14:38]
Joe Nash
Yeah, it's interesting because you say, you start saying that you went like 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. Yeah. And then, yeah, keeping 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 like give the idea of speed. How is that implemented? Is that literally just the higher the speed the camera gets? Lower. Like, how does your camera work?
- [15:10]
Sam Eng
Yeah, the camera has a lot of parameters. This is I think, maybe the third version of the camera that I made. So 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 like spring arms and looking at where the player's going velocity. So 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. So that was one of the things I really, really wanted was like full user control over the camera, which is not very common in racing games. Like 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 a lot of tricks. So you can't control the camera at all essentially. So 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 like about to do a trick or turning left or turning right. And then 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 a. 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 to is like having a lot of things to keep in mind. And then also at the same time allowing you to rotate the camera. So for the speed mechanic has to do with like a lot of these different things. There's kind of like keyframes in a way of, like, okay, when you're going slow, this is about where the camera wants to be. Of, like, this is about where the camera is moving towards to, like, 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, like, how much screen shake there is and how much microphone wind noise there is. So there's essentially a sound clip of, like, wind hitting a microphone that plays when you're going fast. And then the volume and pitch of that is associated with, like, how fast the camera is moving, not the player. So. Right. It's like, actually detects, like, simulating, okay, how fast is the camera going and then playing the noise based on that. So there's a bunch of little parameters like that that associate with the speed.
- [18:07]
Joe Nash
Right. And I guess the trick system, I guess, must then be a similar story because I noticed that there's. 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, like. I guess it comes back to what you're saying earlier about difficulties of tricks at speed, but how did you decide, like, what movements would be possible under what conditions and how is that set up?
- [18:31]
Sam Eng
It's mostly based on just real life.
- [18:34]
Joe Nash
Right.
- [18:34]
Sam Eng
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 are 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 like, 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. So I want to show the intricacies, if you're interested. But it's more about just, like, 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. So, like, 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. Like, there might be a little bit of delay, but it tries to give you a little leeway while attempting as best as possible to still keep the look of the game and the simulator. Like, it looks very realistic, if that makes sense, while being as friendly as possible.
- [19:59]
Joe Nash
Yeah. The 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?
- [20:09]
Sam Eng
Yeah, I guess you kind of die. I think that's. Yeah, you don't really die because demons can't die. Right. They're already not alive.
- [20:18]
Joe Nash
But yeah, explode in spectacular fashion. Yeah. It's a really interesting system because it doesn't often feel bad. Like I often find myself laughing in response to like a terrible wipeout.
- [20:29]
Sam Eng
Yeah.
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Joe Nash
And it's especially on the linear segments, like the fast segments. It often feels like, oh, cool, I have another opportunity to like run that line again, but better,
- [20:40]
Narrator
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- [22:20]
Joe Nash
Do you have any particular inspiration for the dev system? How did you come to design that system?
- [22:24]
Sam Eng
So I think that just comes for free with a skateboarding game. I think almost every skateboarding game like 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 ragdolls are incredibly, incredibly hilarious. So it's always fun to just see the guy ragdoll. And they made a whole mode about it called hall of Meat and Eskate where the whole goal is just to hurt yourself. And then there's like a little skeleton of where did you hurt yourself? Where did you take the most damage? And people love that mode. So I think that just kind of comes from free. With skateboarding, for some reason mine is not as funny. So I'm kind of 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. Yeah, like the camera is sort of the physical body. And that came from watching skate videos in which I saw there's just one video where the skater kind of fell and it kicks the cameraman like directly in the camera and the camera just fucking rolls. I was like, wow, that looks so cool. And then actually if you go skateboarding. So 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, like this is what it's like to fall. It's not watching a funny rag doll. 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 I was like 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. So it kind of shifts, I guess in game of like third person to first person. Feeling wise.
- [24:57]
Joe Nash
Interesting. Yeah. It feels like I definitely grew up playing mostly Tony Hawk pro skater titles. It feels like I missed out with 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 Seems to be 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 this?
- [25:21]
Sam Eng
I don't think there has been a skateboarding game with traditional boss battles. Now, in Tony Hawk, there were, like, competition levels which sort of served as, like, these boss battles, sort of. But, like, you kind of have 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 in, like, other sports against, like, a pivotal character or something. That's kind of like a boss battle. But I wanted, like, a traditional boss battle of, like. Yeah, like, this is a Fromsoft game, or this is a video game where the boss has a health bar. You have to take it down. So, 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.
- [26:21]
Joe Nash
What title?
- [26:21]
Sam Eng
Where? Yeah. Which is sort of a spiritual successor to Jesset Radio Bomber Cyberfunk. Amazing, amazing game. And you have to essentially tag parts of the boss and then you kind of kick enemies. Like, 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. So 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. So I understood why they did that and it made sense for that game. But I was like. I kind of took it upon myself where I was like, okay, I really want my boss battles to not have any other paraphernalia. Right. Like, 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. So 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 kickflips 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. So 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 like, from the publisher. That was just like, well, you can just sit in a corner and, like, do kickflips and, like, eventually take the boss down, which kind of sucks. And I was like, okay. Yeah, it kind of sucks. So I was like, okay, what if you have to go faster? What do you have to, like, do combos and stuff? And it just didn't. Like, I would make some progress of, like, how to make this a little better, a little better. And it took, 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 not to, like, the second or third boss yet.
- [28:54]
Joe Nash
Yes.
- [28:54]
Sam Eng
So that's sort of really where it shows, like, these moon projections. And then I call it the Cosmic Light system, where essentially these projections are like the weak spots of the boss, where you essentially string together a line of combos and. And then you end your combo in the light of the moon. Like this projection to deal damage to the boss.
- [29:21]
Joe Nash
Yeah, that's exactly. 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. It was amazing. It really, like, 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.
- [29:39]
Sam Eng
On it.
- [29:39]
Joe Nash
It was very, 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, like, the fromsoft element, because after each, like, 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 fromsofty, like having to learn, okay, what is the boss doing in between the attacks. That was really cool element. But, yeah, not surprising to hear it took five years of Developing that.
- [30:08]
Sam Eng
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, like, 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 then 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, like, 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? Right. So then I was like, okay, well, then maybe there's like a radius, and then you can only do tricks there. Any. 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. So in Tony Hawk, right, You've played Tony Hawk, where. So to compare real life to Tony Hawk and 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. Like, you when you see your friend, like, do a kickflip, and then he starts with a kickflip, rides down a hill, a little ollie's onto, like, 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, 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, like, Ollie off these stairs. So if you watch escape videos, 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. So 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, like, 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 a sort of like a skateboarding phrase of like. Oh. Kind of like slang. It's like, oh, wow, he really stomped that trick. Or, you know, 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 wheel's facing down. Just stomp it, like, end the trick so it stops flipping. So it's kind of like a skateboarding slang. I was like, okay, that's the ending. You stomp the trick. So in the game, essentially, you could do a bunch of tricks and there's a bit of a timer, so you have like, maybe a couple seconds in between each trick to kind of push. And then when you want the combo to end, end, you just stomp the trick in midair. So 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. So that took a long time to design.
- [33:57]
Joe Nash
Yeah, it's a fantastic system. I think it's. Not only is it really real life, I think it's very necessary for this, like, genre of skateboarding games, especially in the boss battles where, like, you know, I need to do a trick, but also I need to navigate around this fire that's appeared in front of me. Right. Like, it makes it feel. It gives you flexibility to do the engage with the other forms of gameplay rather than just the tricks, which is really cool.
- [34:16]
Sam Eng
Yes.
- [34:17]
Joe Nash
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 a really interesting pacing in the game between these, like, linear racing sections, the more sandboxy bits and then the narrative storytelling bits. And I'm only, you know, I don't. I don't think I'm even halfway in yet. So 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, like, decide on that pacing and spacing them out?
- [34:40]
Sam Eng
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 can just. You're like, okay, this is like the chill hub zone. And I can just kind of around and I can wait. Essentially, it's kind of like the downtime, and then it's like, okay, then I'll like, do a challenge and then continue the story. And then the path levels were always like, the chunk of the gameplay of, like, okay, this is the linear driving force. And for whenever that's like, people's favorite sections of the game of just like, yeah, this is the music. It's going. And I have a very clear goal just to, like, 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, go, go all the time. But I didn't really want that for myself. And I think the game itself, like, the story was, well, you're kind of this eternal demon. And especially with skateboarding, it's like, 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, just, like, chilling by the flower bank and trying a trick and drinking tea, like, drinking iced tea. And then that eternal feeling. And I wanted to capture some of that. Obviously, the game still takes place 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 gotta fucking get to this place, and now I gotta 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, like, play the rushes and just keep going, going, going. But I really wanted that as part of it. Of, like, sometimes you're. You get to the location that you're skateboarding and you're just kind of chilling.
- [37:30]
Joe Nash
Yeah.
- [37:31]
Sam Eng
And I think that's just part of it.
- [37:33]
Joe Nash
Yeah. And I think you're totally right. Like, when you were talking about this downtime, I just, like, for me, just Sitting on top of the half pipe eating sausage rolls was like, most of the skateboarding day. Right? Like, that's just. Yeah, it definitely, definitely conjures that vibes. And also I think there's definitely an element of. Of it that makes. I do wonder if the rushes, if that was all the game and it was constant. Like, they feel. 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. So when I get to the next rush, I'm going to really hit this. And it makes it feel very special in a way that I feel like if it was constant, it would probably get stale, like, a lot faster. Whereas now it's like a treat. It's like, oh, I'm onto the rush. Let's go. Like, I really enjoyed it.
- [38:08]
Sam Eng
Exactly. Like a contrast.
- [38:11]
Joe Nash
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 100%. So to go right back to the beginning, one thing she mentioned is that this is the Vaporwave game. So obviously we need to talk about the sound of visuals. You have so many various effects, and I guess there are plenty of the shaders and this kind of thing in there, including, like, you know, the classic CRT with the scan lines and the fisheye when you're on the pause screen and stuff. Why this visual style?
- [38:31]
Sam Eng
I guess to start, I kind of call it a modern take on retro visuals.
- [38:38]
Joe Nash
Okay, yeah.
- [38:40]
Sam Eng
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, so we're like, let's just bring it back. I really wanted that, obviously, as. As everyone else does, but I wanted to take it into, like, a modern era. I wanted to take it into 4K, if that makes sense. Yeah. So how do I take aspects of that and make it really modernized? So a lot of different shaders, a lot of different, like, 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 is 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, like, engineer, you might understand that I'm just like, oh, I want to, like, use all the modern technologies. I want to use Like, I want it to support hdr, right. I want it to, like, use all these cool effects and particle systems and post effects and tone mapping and, you know, 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. Realistic version of a PS1 game.
- [40:16]
Joe Nash
Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like it's because we've had lots of different, as you said, like, the 90s is like, you know, very in Nvidia right now. We've had lots of different approaches to that, like the Boomer shooters, for example, where, like, part of it is like, they achieve that effect partially through, like, you know, basically reusing those techniques. And they do have the constraints and they do have the lower body models. And you're like, yeah, and it's really cool and it really achieves it. But, like, 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.
- [40:58]
Sam Eng
You would love it.
- [40:59]
Joe Nash
Yeah, they basically, like, reinvented the physics of cameras entirely in Blender. That's what reminds me of when you. What you're talking about.
- [41:06]
Sam Eng
Yeah, I love that.
- [41:07]
Joe Nash
So, speaking of shaders, I know, like, writing shaders and stuff is an art of itself. Is there any of the effects in the game that like, you know, are a particularly gnarly implementation or that you're particularly proud of?
- [41:19]
Sam Eng
I have been asked this question multiple times because everyone loves 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 fire kind of thing. But I'll talk about the world space noise, since this is the slightly more technical listener base. Right. Where there's. 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 like, computers. Yeah, well, 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 locked 30 on the switch one. 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. But that's because a lot of the meshes are kind of the same. So 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 like, dreamlike look and I wanted like this sort of clay, like, sculpted look that kind of gives it this warbled feeling. And, you know, 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 Warbler shader, which essentially is a 3D texture, like 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. So 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. So it kind of always warbles the thing at the same place based on where the camera is. So 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. So, for example, if I just put like a normal cube in the scene, it'll kind of have the edges slightly warbled. So 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, 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, like, you know, players can see the geometry for what it is. So 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. So that probably took me a couple of Days to wrap my head around how to implement that. That was kind of fun to do.
- [45:07]
Joe Nash
Yeah, just as you were describing that. I was just like, 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. It was. 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. So obviously the game was written in Unity.
- [45:28]
Sam Eng
We mentioned that.
- [45:29]
Joe Nash
And it's very physically driven game and you have lots of, you know, we spoke about the character controllers and all these parts of Velocity 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?
- [45:44]
Sam Eng
Yeah, I mean the whole thing was a massive, massive challenge. So it doesn't use Unity physics. So it's completely. All the skateboard physics is completely from scratch.
- [45:55]
Joe Nash
Amazing.
- [45:55]
Sam Eng
It implement 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 views physics, if that makes sense. Like, yeah, there's no. There's no physical body in terms of player.
- [46:29]
Joe Nash
Wow, that is really interesting. Yeah.
- [46:31]
Sam Eng
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 weird interactions and stuff. Yeah, like weird interactions. The wall writing is kind of broken in the game, so that is probably the number one thing where you'll accidentally kind of ride along a wall and then like just die or like clip through the space. It happens pretty infrequently, so 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, like how to. I don't even know how I made this. Like, honestly, I'm. Sometimes I'm just like, I remember so many sketches in my little notebook of different edge cases of how am I going to interact in this way and how I was going to do this. And it was a pain in the ass to implement. And it's still not even there. It's not even 100% there yet.
- [47:33]
Joe Nash
But Then I guess if you'd get similar freak interaction glitches with a well developed and open, you know, existing physics as well. Right. It's par for the course of any kind of physics. 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 five years now, which is a long, long 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?
- [48:04]
Sam Eng
Yeah, it's going to unfortunately still take some time to work on this game just because I could not finish it in time. So there's a bunch of things that I'm like I still gotta fix. There's a few bugs and then there are a few like extra things. There's some assets and like 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. So there's going to be some like additional content that I got to fix and add and then that'll probably take a couple more months and then after that I will. I have like some ideas for perhaps some other projects.
- [48:48]
Joe Nash
Cool.
- [48:49]
Sam Eng
That I'll noodle around. I don't know exactly how or what I will work on, to be honest, because I'm still recovering. 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. It's just like getting the thing out and releasing and having users like players go through it and being like, wow, here are all these issues that you got to fix now.
- [49:21]
Joe Nash
I'm like, okay, you should be very happy. It's that I'm very proud of it. You know, we have a lot of really fantastic games on this podcast and some of those games come from games were playing. Other ones just kind of came out the blue and my producer raised this one. I hadn't honestly hadn't heard a skate story and I played, it was like this is my game of the year and it's January 4th. Like I'm in. This is amazing. This is fantastic. So it's been a great pleasure. But speaking of things beyond skate story, one of the things I learned while I was doing research 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 utilization about the space oh, yeah.
- [49:56]
Sam Eng
So it is a game developer co working space slash collective. So it's a nonprofit collective where it's just a bunch of game developers. And we got started in Dumbo, Brooklyn. There's only once, like twice 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 like a tiny little office together. And since it's in this neighborhood in Brooklyn called Dumbo, I kind of came up with the name after years. We were just calling at the office. I was like, oh, we're in Dumbo, but we're making games. So Dumbo stands for down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass. Like, well, we can call it Gumbo, which is Games under the Manhattan Bridge. And the name kind of stuck because it's kind of cute, I guess it's kind of funny. And it's all. All these like different game developers that come from like different walks of life and different places making all these different games. So kind of like a big pot of gumbo, which is delicious food item. But more and more people would join. And we had like one tiny little office in this green 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, like 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. We were all isolating. So people got rid of their offices. But some of us, you know, especially those of us who just lived alone, we were just like, well, we're just going to start coming back in, you know, isolation's over. And then all the office rents were down. So then we found actually a new big space altogether, just like down the street, like a different office building.
- [51:57]
Joe Nash
It looked like a wild building as well.
- [51:59]
Sam Eng
Yeah, it used to be like a factory. It's super beautiful. So Brooklyn, you know, brick walls, just like super gorgeous. And we moved in there during the pandemic, convinced everyone, like, hey, can you like, put up six months to a year just so we can try it out for like a year. And we got like 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.
- [52:29]
Joe Nash
Yeah, that was my immediate thought on seeing it. I was like, that is, we have a lot of indie devs on and it's always great to explain to Explore how, you know, they do the business of indie development. And like seeing gumbo, that's such a cool model. That's. It's so nice to see there being a space for game devs like this. Yeah, it was really, really exciting.
- [52:46]
Sam Eng
I think the pivotal part was like we got started kind of small and like honestly super scrappy because like the space now looks beautiful but like at Greendesk. And I really wanted to mention that because it's. When it started it was just these terrible little cubicles like in a co working space called Green Desk. So 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. So you can imagine how stuffed it was. And maybe that wouldn't fly nowadays, like 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 were like, you know, we all know each other and there's maybe like 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 with now it's an open plan which come with its own issues.
- [53:52]
Joe Nash
Game sound design is an interesting.
- [53:55]
Sam Eng
Exactly. So I would say there's a trade off, but it is super impressive to see like one big beautiful space versus a bunch of tiny little hidey holes.
- [54:08]
Joe Nash
I'm glad you emphasized that, you know, starting in someone else's space as small, scrappy cubicles, you know, because like community has to start somewhere. You can't, you're not going to organically come out of nowhere and be like, and now we're renting a floor of a historic building.
- [54:20]
Sam Eng
Right.
- [54:20]
Joe Nash
That's exactly feasible. So I think. Yeah, that's a. It's a great part of the story to emphasize in terms of helping people realize that they can achieve it. They have to start.
- [54:29]
Sam Eng
Yeah.
- [54:29]
Joe Nash
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 skateboard?
- [54:47]
Sam Eng
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, you know, 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 and 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. Like, why do you even want to do that? Skateboarding? Why do you even want to do that? Like, what is the point? You're made of glass.
- [55:56]
Joe Nash
Stop.
- [55:56]
Sam Eng
Right? Like, why do you even want to do that? And the game seeks to answer that. That was sort of the impetus of what I was making there. I'm like, man, if people play this game and they want to skate afterward, that's the success. That's art, right? Like, that's what I wanted, the art to say, inspire people to go for what it is and that. 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, like, this hobby, essentially, is 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.
- [56:47]
Joe Nash
Yeah.
- [56:48]
Sam Eng
Just like, to do it. That's like, my favorite thing is to have people do that.
- [56:53]
Joe Nash
You know that 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 odd is as a thing, as a milestone. Yeah, very cool.
- [57:14]
Sam Eng
The whole game was an excuse to talk about my special interest, which all games should be.
- [57:20]
Joe Nash
All games should be.
- [57:21]
Sam Eng
It should be. Yeah, I agree.
- [57:23]
Joe Nash
Perfect. Well, Sam, thank you for coming on and talking to us about your special interest us today. This has been absolute pleasure and I look forward to finishing the game. Thank you for joining us. Yes.
- [57:31]
Sam Eng
Thank you so much for having me, man, this was super fun.