By now, there are several popular skating games that have seemingly cornered the cultural market. First and foremost being the famous Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, with EA’s Skate trailing close behind. Even with the abundance of skating games out there, there aren’t many that play into what real skaters love about the sport. Instead of making it about the skating itself, past developers have sought to focus on replayability and content abundance for success. The Ramp is a skating game that doesn’t stress about the objective and just lets players enjoy the flow. In this way, it’s the developer’s hope that The Ramp strikes a chord with current and past skaters.
In a recent interview with Game Rant, Paul Schnepf discussed how he wanted to recreate a certain feeling that he has while skating, and that came down to making the game feel right. As a skateboarder himself, Schnepf is used to wiping out, dusting himself off, then going for it again with the new knowledge. That is what The Ramp is about, because learning the controls and how to work with the physics is all about crashing until the player can finally pull off that trick. When it finally happens, it’s an organic feeling of accomplishment outside of any progression or unlockable system.
Realistic and Painful Physics in The Ramp
It wouldn’t be much of a skating game if there wasn’t a fair share of wipeouts. Luckily, The Ramp allows the player to try to break and bend the character model at every turn, with the slightest misstep leading to tragedy off the edge of the vertical. There are no guard rails in The Ramp, and any mistake the player makes will inevitably end up in having to restart the run from the beginning. This is due to the physics that Schnepf painstakingly implemented into The Ramp to recreate that same sense of accomplishment in the player.
While not a physicist, Schnepf did his best when researching the force of gravity and momentum when he was developing The Ramp, even going as far as to reference multiple academic research documents. Through this, the single developer hopes to properly give the player the same enjoyment that he feels when skating on a vertical ramp.
“I actually had to look into physics a bit, because I knew intuitively how it should feel and how you skateboard a vert ramp in real life… I really had to take a closer look and figure out what lets you gain speed.”
Learning to Gain Speed in The Ramp
The Ramp’s control scheme relies heavily on pressing down weight in order to gain speed. If the player doesn’t press or let off the weight, representing their legs on the character model, then the board won’t be able to gain any momentum and will eventually come to a standstill. It’s not the most difficult to pick up, but until the player learns how to properly get the air they need it can take some trial and error to get it right. However, as discussed before, finally getting that trick when everything clicks is a great organic feeling that The Ramp provides.
“I think it’s something new for most people, especially if you haven’t skated in real life.”
The number of skating games is sure to grow, with Tony Hawk Pro Skater and EA’s Skate at least rumored to be currently working on new iterations. It’s Schnepf’s hope that these games can focus more on the feeling of flow on a skateboard using proper controls instead of flashiness and replayability. Until then, he created The Ramp to recreate that feeling for himself and players who can’t access a proper vertical ramp across the world. While not a full-fledged game and more of a “digital toy,” perhaps The Ramp could help spin some of the skating game companies in the right direction.
The Ramp releases on August 3, 2021, for PC via Steam.
