Skate Story has finally locked in its most surprising platform: PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers on PS5 will be able to drop into its glassy underworld as a day-one Game Catalog title on 8 December 2025. Devolver Digital and solo developer Sam Eng confirmed that the stylish skateboarding odyssey will launch simultaneously on PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch 2, but Sony’s subscription twist means PlayStation players who pay for the Extra or Premium tiers will not need to buy the game separately. 
For a service that has been steadily trying to match Xbox Game Pass on day-one releases, this last-minute addition instantly makes the December slate look far more interesting.
At its core, Skate Story is not just another trick-chasing skate sim. You play as a demon born in the depths of the underworld, a tall, crystalline figure literally made of glass and pain. The Devil hands you a board and an impossible job: skate from hell to the Moon, swallow that cold rock whole and earn your freedom. What follows is a surreal road trip on four wheels, where every push sends shards of light through a neon void and every fall threatens to shatter you into a million pieces. It is part action game, part existential fable about perseverance, fear and the strange beauty of failing, getting up and trying to land the line again.
Instead of chasing realism, Eng leans into pure vibe. The world looks like someone turned a bag of crystal offcuts and smoke into a living diorama, and then asked you to learn backside tailslides on it. Fans have already joked that it feels like watching Swarovski crystals learn to shred, and that is not far off: rails glow, skies ripple like oil, and your glass body catches the light as you spin through the air. Underneath the dreamy visuals, though, there is a demanding, physics-driven skate system where speed is terrifying, bails are violent and the sense of flow when you finally link a line makes every broken attempt worth it.
If you grew up with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the pitch almost sounds like a late-night meme: Tony Hawk on weed, filtered through an art-house lens. But early hands-on impressions paint a more precise picture. Skate Story feels closer to a meditative descent into hell, where the board is both weapon and confession booth. The controls are tight and responsive, asking you to pay attention to weight transfer and timing, yet the audio-visual design is so hypnotic that you can easily slip into that rare skate-game trance where minutes become hours. You are carving through rings of light, grinding on the bones of forgotten giants and quietly learning how to be less fragile in the process.
The journey to release has been long. Announced back in 2022, Skate Story has been quietly building a cult following as Devolver dropped striking trailers at showcases and festivals. It appeared at the Tribeca Festival in 2024, where judges highlighted its narrative ambition and the way its skating feels intimately tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. Reporters who played early builds came away impressed with how quickly the board feels reliable in your hands, even as the world around you melts into abstract shapes. For a one-person passion project, it already looks absurdly polished, and that polish is exactly what makes its arrival on a big subscription platform such a headline moment.
That platform angle is where the announcement really lands. For months, some players have been calling PlayStation Plus Extra the best value gaming subscription, pointing at a deep back catalogue and a handful of strong day-one titles. Others roll their eyes at the sudden enthusiasm, noting that the same voices who once insisted people should buy games to support developers now happily celebrate day-one drops on their preferred service. Skate Story gets dropped right into that ongoing argument. On one hand, a day-one deal likely means Devolver and Eng have secured a safety net that makes such an experimental project less financially terrifying. On the other, its presence in the Game Catalog raises the bar for what subscribers expect every month from Sony.
Beyond the discourse, the practical details are simple. On 8 December, PS5 owners with Extra or Premium will be able to download Skate Story from the Game Catalog at no additional cost, while PC and Nintendo Switch 2 players will pick it up the old-fashioned way. Sony has not yet detailed the rest of the December 2025 lineup for either the Game Catalog or the Essential monthly games, and as usual some titles will quietly cycle out of the service at the same time. For now, though, this glass demon’s road trip to the Moon stands out as one of the most intriguing winter releases, a rare mix of technical skating, striking style and raw emotion that just happens to slide straight into your subscription.