The visuals are nothing fancy, they get the job done. You can definitely tell they are retina, but the backgrounds remain lush as to not distract you. It’s not the most appealing game out there, but it gets the job done.

Extreme Skater (iPhone: $0.99) 

“Extreme skateboarding in your pocket! Shred through hills and forests in a quest to collect all the fallen meteor fragments and harness the full power of the meteor!”

Presentation

What caught my attention more than the graphic design was the level design, with each stage introducing you to new obstacles slowly. Once you’ve gotten the hang of the obstacles, the game will introduce you to new elements.

Controls

Extreme Skater uses your device’s accelerometer to balance out your skater. Your skater will go forward automatically, but you will use gestures and onscreen controls to jump and interact with the levels. For example, you’ll have a button that will grab on to the rope on the level, which can be used either to drop down, or to use it as a swing.

Additionally if you are sliding hanging on to rope, you can leave the button pressed and swipe up to jump up, to perhaps another piece of rope. Like this, Extreme Skater provides a simple way to control the game for beginners, but also allows for advanced players to perform more advances feats, like aerial flips and other tricks you can buy for additional points.

Gameplay

As I mentioned above, the game does a great job at introducing new elements and obstacles slowly. At first you’ll be getting the hang of just controlling the game, later they’ll introduce new tricks and elements, such as grinds and rope. You can hang on to the rope and glide on it as long as you’re holding on, or if it has a swing at the end, can be used to get to the other side of the level.

So how do you get more tricks? You use in game coins. Coins are scattered around the level and can be used to unlock new tricks, as well as cosmetic upgrades (like new boards). Once you buy new tricks, a quick tutorial will show you how to use your newly acquired skill.

Of course, if you’d rather just buy the coins, there’s IAP coin bundles available for purchase. If there is but one complain about the game is that the tilt controls feel weird, it doesn’t feel natural. After you play it for a while, this goes away, but it takes a bit to get used to.

Conclusion

It takes a bit to get used to, but the learning curve for Extreme Skater is pretty mild, and there’s lot of fun for both beginners and advanced players to have. I’d recommend checking out the game.