Skating games offer a canvas of unbridled creativity. It’s a genre where players can string together moves and score high points by showing off their talents on a virtual skateboard, kickflipping around fictional warehouses or parks.
In Denshattack!, developer Undercoders takes concepts from games such as Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Skate. and marries them to the constraining idea of trains, machines that are the opposite of skating. They are rote and confined to a predetermined route with no freedom in it.
It sounds like a disaster – akin to a marching band playing improvisational jazz – but somehow, the developers combined two diametrically opposed worlds and fused them into an explosively fun game. Denshattack! is what happens when opposites do more than attract: They amplify the best out of each other and work harmoniously.
A Japanese dystopia
So how did Undercoders do it? The team crafted a game with unrelenting waves of imagination, which begins with the setting. Denshattack! is set in a post-apocalyptic Japan, where most of the population lives in domes, and the country is run by a megacorporation called Miraido. Those who live outside eke out a living in different areas run by train gangs.
The protagonist Emi Araki is a train driver who delivers ramen in the Kyushu region, and on one run she impresses a local Denshattack enthusiast who encourages her to show off her talents. That first step begins a journey that takes her across Japan as her impressive talents at train conducting help her dominate the local gangs, who join her movement.
Although train conducting doesn’t seem exciting, Undercoders imbues it with a skateboarding personality. The campaign does an excellent job of teaching players the basics. Emi can make the train ollie and then twist and turn just like a skateboard. In this dystopia, the tracks don’t exactly all connect and sometimes they end, and that’s when those moves come in handy as she forces the train to leap from one track to another like the mineshaft chase in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
How it plays
What Undercoders did was create a Skate on rails with players jumping with the right trigger and slamming down on tracks with the left trigger. Flip tricks are tied to the right analogue stick. The levels are mostly linear, with players going from Point A to Point B, but the team occasionally changes it up with more free-form stages in which players have tasks to perform or must hit a scoring threshold within a time limit. Other sections have Emi racing laps around racetrack levels.
At first, Undercoders offers unexpected flourishes to every level. Emi dislodges a Ferris wheel and rides it down a mountainside, but as she progresses, players learn new skills and physics-defying techniques, expanding what a train can do. She learns to ride the wind and the walls. Her vehicles gain a swinging function that lets her hang from beams and magnet abilities that allow her to travel upside down on ceiling-tied rails. When tracks aren’t available, she can still grind on rails.
The developers masterfully introduce these wrinkles in each world, giving players a chance to master them, while also delighting players with amazing levels, where Emi faces the unexpected. She can ride rails underwater, which changes how it moves. She has to dodge falling buildings or use a factory to make a giant doll. Emi even takes part in a jailbreak, hopping atop blimps and zooming around skyscrapers.
Creativity at its best
Each region has a gang boss, and that’s where Undercoders digs into its bag and offers battles that ooze inventiveness. The team comes up with scenarios in which Emi fights a mech or battles yakuza in the clouds, and the fights defy expectations. When players feel like they’ve seen everything that the developers can do, the team tosses a curveball that throws the gameplay for a loop.
The constraints of the premise give Denshattack! a creative tension. The limits seem to have forced the team to constantly think outside the box for solutions for new gameplay mechanics and level designs. The campaign features nine chapters and 67 stages, but it has plenty of replay value as players master each technique and return to older levels to find secrets and complete side-mission dares they may have missed. They can also unlock new types of trains that have their own perks and cosmetic designs to give their vehicles character.
Like Tony Hawk, the game hooks players and keeps them coming back to beat old scores and complete all the side quests.
Denshattack! is an indie gem that shows how studios don’t need enormous teams and multimillion-dollar budgets to create a great game. Like Emi, sometimes it just takes dedication, creativity and an unexpected idea to conquer the world.
‘Denshattack!’
4 stars out of 4
Platform: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S and Nintendo Switch 2
Rating: Teen – The Mercury News/Tribune News Service
