For yours truly, the Tony Hawk video game series is one of the most fun series of games to ever grace the medium. It’s one of the best examples of easy-to-learn and hard-to-master gameplay. It has one of the best movement systems in a video game full stop. Whether you play a single 2-minute round or for hours on end, (most) of the games offer a satisfying loop that’s hard to put down. So, you can probably guess that when I saw the reveal of Helskate during last summer’s Day of the Devs presentation, a game that is attempting to blend the signature arcade skating gameplay of the Tony Hawk games with the rogue-like action combat of a game like Hades, I would certainly be intrigued by the prospect.
Color me surprised when recently developer Phantom Coast put out a demo of Helskate ahead of the game’s launch into early access on February 15th. This article will be a little different than my usual reviews, the focus of which will be on my impressions of the demo as well as offering some feedback for the developers as they begin their journey which is early access game development. As I mentioned at the top, I am quite the Tony Hawk fan, so some of my feedback might get a little into the weeds but I will try my best to communicate this feedback as clearly as possible.
I want to start off by saying I don’t typically play Early Access games, I have a big enough backlog of finished games as it is. Seeing as this is a demo for a game I am admittedly excited for, I made the exception. At the time of writing, Helskate’s demo has been available for 5 days and I’ve put 4 hours of playtime into it. In that time, the demo has already seen a few updates which is good to see and gives me confidence that feedback from early adopters can be tested and tweaked at a regular pace.
But enough beating around the bush, what did I think of this early demo of Helskate? As the trailer leads me to believe, the concept has a tremendous amount of promise. Combining combo-based skateboarding movement with melee-based combat might initially sound overwhelming, but the two gameplay styles even in this early state are a great match. The presentation both visually and auditorily is right up my alley, the art style looks like it was peeled straight off a skate deck graphic, and the music is hitting the right vibes for a skateboarding game that would have been released 20 years ago, which is a compliment.
Coming into Helskate as a Tony Hawk fan, it’s been difficult reconciling my years of muscle memory and my expectations with the fact that this game is not, in fact, a Tony Hawk game. I want to talk about skating first and foremost as that’s a big portion of the gameplay loop and the area I have the most gripes with at this time. The skating is on the right path and parts of it are fun, but it needs a few additions and lots of refinement over the coming year.
This game clearly uses the skateboarding framework of a Tony Hawk game to form its foundation and is building the combat and rogue-like gameplay mechanics from there. As I was playing, I was noticing elements of the Tony Hawk games that were absent from Helskate and found myself longing for their inclusion. I don’t think Helskate needs to copy over every element and mechanic from the Tony Hawk games, nor should it. But I want to get into some nitty gritty mechanics that I feel would bolster the overall fun factor of the skating in Helskate going forward.
I’ll start off by saying I think the skeleton of the skating system even in this early form feels good, from the speed of the skating to the height of the jumps. The thing that stood out to me as being odd in concept, and feeling odd in execution is the lack of any sort of falling off the skateboard. You are able to hop off the board and walk around, but when clearly failing to land a trick or falling off a rail, you land back on the board as normal, the only penalty being the combo resetting. Part of the fun of a skateboarding game is the inherent risk vs reward nature of performing tricks. In the heat of the action, figuring out whether you can sneak in one more trick or ending up flat on your ass is a fun and engaging dance for a player to participate in. Perhaps trying to balance staying on your board while fending off attacking enemies is a difficult problem to overcome, but at the same time it seems like the ultimate test of skill in a game like this and would be all the more satisfying clearing a room of enemies in a single combo. Not to mention it could introduce new gameplay modifiers for the rogue-like elements of the game, such as an ability that provides faster recovery time from a bail or a “meter reset” item that could save a player from falling off a rail or out of a manual. It would be hard to implement properly, but its absence is certainly odd.
The other gameplay wrinkle that I want to discuss pertains to what I will call a “double input”. Using Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 as an example, after ollie-ing into the air, when you press the right direction input and tap the flip trick button once, you get a kickflip. If you “double input” the flip trick button (tap the button twice), you get a double kickflip. In the game, this not only serves the purpose of increasing the amount of tricks a player is able to perform but also leads to a more fluid experience when linking tricks together. Doing a double kickflip is not only quicker but also safer and worth more points in a combo than doing two individual kickflips.
Currently in Helskate, if you double input flip tricks, it queues the individual tricks into a sequence that must animate and play out in full, or more simply instead of doing a double kickflip, it does 2 regular kickflips. In execution, this feels quite clunky and leads to many unintentional dropped combos. Somewhat amusingly, this is how flip tricks work in the 2012 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD which is an extremely clunky and janky feeling game compared to its earlier releases. It similarly feels clunky here, so I would definitely urge the developers to look into changing how this works in the future.
On the topic of the abstract concept of “game feel”, there were a few other absences I noticed that just made the skating not flow as well as it could. Reverts were introduced into the Tony Hawk series as a way of continuing a combo from the air onto the ground when landing on a ramp. These are not currently in Helskate, you are able to continue your combo by landing in a manual, but it just never feels as satisfying as hearing that scratch of the board and getting that slight feedback in the controller of landing on the ramp and transitioning into a manual. As far as I can tell there are no “Boneless” or “No Comply” tricks which isn’t a significant exclusion, but they were always helpful tricks to get a little extra height or maneuver out of a ramp.
Dropped inputs are another element contributing to the flow state not feeling right. I’m sure these will be ironed out with more time in development, but occasionally while pressing buttons too fast, it would cause a flip trick or a grab not to register during the combo. Similarly, there are certain objects in the environment that look like you should be able to initiate a grind trick on but don’t, and some hitboxes on certain rails seem to be a bit larger and as a result, I would accidentally grind a different rail that was placed near the rail I was attempting to grind. This happened a couple of times, particularly in the level with the glass sky bridge, and it would get a little irritating when trying to go for collectibles in specific locations. Again, many of these wrinkles I’m sure will be smoothed out over time, but I wanted to make mention of them.
The other big note I have comes from the combat half of the gameplay, in its current state, it’s very hard to tell when you are taking damage. There isn’t much of a visual indicator besides a brief slowdown that occurs to indicate you have been hit by an enemy attack. With certain enemies like the slithering centipedes, I can’t even tell how I am taking damage, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of an attack but I lose health when skating near them. Some enemies have colorful icons and boxes that show an area of effect of where an attack is going to land, but I think some attacks could be telegraphed and timed better with more pronounced wind-up and follow-through animations. A lot of enemy attacks also like to track you so having more visual indicators to know when an attack is incoming or when to use the dash move would be helpful. On the topic, while they are certainly popular in games these days, a block or parry move might be a fun inclusion, if only to blast back those damn lasers from the wall-mounted enemies so they get a taste of their own medicine.
I know I came out of the gate with a lot of criticisms and notes, but I want to take some time here to talk about things I like and find incredibly promising about Helskate. At the top of the article I mentioned I put 4 hours into the demo, and I still feel the drive to go back and play more. Turns out that combining the addictive run style design of a rogue-like with the already addictive skateboarding of a Tony Hawk game creates a game that you don’t want to put down. While I have gripes with the skating, it still feels fun to skate around and pull off tricks even in this early state. So as the game is further refined, I only see it getting more fun and more addictive over time.
The combat feels pretty good in its current state. In the demo, the only real weapon you have at your disposal is a sword, which has a simple 3-hit combo and a special spin attack that needs to recharge after use. The combat is fairly simple so far, but I think it needs to be so you aren’t splitting your attention between pulling off elaborate skate tricks and Devil May Cry-style combos. The sound effects are punchy, there’s decent feedback when you are hitting enemies, and a nice slowdown effect triggers when you clear a wave of enemies. Obviously, the introduction of more weapon types and abilities will only make the combat more interesting.
Related to the combat, I want to touch on the gameplay modifiers you can acquire during your run. Rogue-likes can live or die by their modifiers and so far I like what I am seeing. There are some basic combat ones like firing a missile when you do a certain trick or imbuing your sword with fire damage after doing a manual. But one of the most interesting ones I found was by doing a flip trick, a floating rail was cast out in front of me that would track enemies, and essentially what this means is I had a rail that I could grind that took me right into an enemy for a flurry of sword attacks. These are the kind of modifiers I would like to see more, things that marry the traversal and the combat in interesting ways. The combat ones are fine too, I think there needs to be a wider grace period to be able to utilize a specific bonus trait. As it stands now, if you stop your combo to go in for an attack, it seems as though the second your combo ends, you lose your trait. But I do like how performing one of these modified tricks multiple times in a combo stacks the ability up, rewarding players who can keep their combos going even more. I want to see what other creative modifiers the team can come up with.
Bouncing off of that, there are some interesting platforming mechanics at play in Helskate. You have a dash move that is helpful in getting around the environment as well as aiding in dodging incoming attacks. Those that are familiar with the quick turn in Tony Hawk should know that using the dash move backward produces a similarly fast direction change if needed. Jumping and airdashing too far off the rails to continue a combo is fun and seems like there are plenty of opportunities for interesting-level design and secrets to come out of its inclusion. Wall planting is in this game and when you have two walls that are close together, you can chain wall plants back to back in order to gain height similar to a traditional wall jump in a platforming game. There are some spots currently that can lead you out of bounds by doing this, but many of these areas will be ironed out over time one would hope. I would also suggest the team consider how they can introduce more instances of combat abilities aiding in platforming. There are these vault rooms that offer a little skating challenge to overcome focusing on a type of trick like grinds or wall rides. Maybe one of these rooms would require the player to chain dashes in between enemies over a bottomless pit? I know I said the game shouldn’t have Devil May Cry-style combos, but perhaps including a launcher attack to get enemies into the air for an attack combo that links into a skating combo might be a fun addition as well.
All in all, I was excited about Helskate going into this demo, and I’m still excited after putting a couple of hours in. There are other small things I’d like to see changed like adding a sound effect each time a trick is performed and tweaks to the balance meters that make them a little trickier to maintain the longer you are doing a manual or grind, but the developers at Phantom Coast are giving themselves a healthy amount of time to address feedback. And as I said above, the basics of the gameplay feel pretty good already. I’m looking forward to seeing how this game progresses over the coming months. If you are interested in giving the Helskate demo a try, you can download it for free on Steam, and if you want to get in on the ground floor, you can buy into early access on February 15th.
