Review | The Ramp - IT'S NOT A TOY... MOM!

I miss the good ole’ days of Tony Hawk-likes;
Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy, Aggressive Inline and BMX XXX…

Skateboarding has been a large part of the medium of video games’ history, with the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Skate, and The Simpsons Skateboarding, lasting long in the zeitgeist of gamers and developers (...okay maybe not that last one). There was a period post-Skate 3 where it appeared as if the magic was lost - either the games stopped being made or were just plain bad. It was a dark time, THPS5 was thought to have killed the franchise and Skate became nothing more than a meme that flooded every one of EA’s social media posts. However, there has been a resurgence of sorts in recent times. The Ramp - made solely by Paul Schnepf under the pseudonym Hyperparadise - joins games like Session and Skater XL in lighting the torch of a new generation of skating games but with one key difference: a focus on vert skating instead of street style, with an accompanying isometric style that sets The Ramp apart from its contemporaries.

This gif from the press kit is so mesmerising I literally spent a solid minute and a half just watching it in silence.

It is not a particularly large or complex game, with only a handful of tricks and just as many ‘maps’ to play in, but The Ramp is an excellent example of choosing one thing and doing that one thing really well.  There are no challenges, no highscores, no end goal to be on the front page of Thrasher, and no cameos from Jason Lee to distract you. The only thing that will drive you to play more is a desire to have fun - and have fun you will!  It is less of a traditional game and more of a digital toy (something Paul, himself, is keen to make clear): meant to be picked up sporadically for moments at a time and fiddled with, but something that you will always return to when your mind wanders towards the sheer satisfaction of airtime.  Even the artstyle of The Ramp follows this minimalist direction, placing a singular and small playground in a sea of stark colour, reiterating that there is nothing more than what is in front of you.  Fantastic use of harsh light and shadows help broaden and add dimension to what would otherwise be flat and boring scenes, giving an even greater scale to the airtime you so often find yourself catching.

Yo, just checking this is totally not safe, right?
…
Because if it is safe, I’m not riding it.

This clever enhancement of space through light, shadows, and colour construct a stylish yet deceivingly contained space where I often found myself laughing at my misjudgments of exactly how far left or right I could go. ‘This is gonna be such a great trick’ I thought as I floated through the air only to drop comedically beyond the landing point and splat onto the bright blue floor. Furthermore, the isometric nature makes the constant up and down of a half-pipe a smooth experience, as opposed to the disorientation and dizziness that a behind-the-shoulder camera can bring in a lot of skating games. My only grievance with the fixed camera design is that it creates a visibility issue on stages where there is a skateable area on the side closest to the camera. This is a non-issue on the half-pipe and mega ramp stages, but in parts of the bowl stages, it can become quite a challenge to pump and turn, often frustratingly leading to a spoiled run.

Wait… How long have these lounge chairs been here?

This can all be forgiven though when I remember the pure thrill of hitting my first half-pipe 900, speeding around the edges of the bowl, or barrelling down the mega ramp for the first time (and then the second, and the third, and the hundredth). It is simply just a game where you envelop yourself in its flow. The Ramp is one of those experiences where you just can’t help but keep going because you restart so quickly that why shouldn’t you? Additionally, I have added it to my wonderful (and unfortunately small) list of games to play whilst listening to music and podcasts - something that I feel is a genuinely underrated feature in how enjoyable a game can be! The Ramp does have a limited but punchy lofi soundtrack of its own which suitably matches the rhythmic slaps of a skateboard landing, but I found real fun in curating my own soundtrack to accompany my regular sessions. It is a supremely relaxing game, where you can just kick back and not think of anything beyond what my next trick is going to be.

I was going to say something attitudinal to keep with the skater theme… but this just really looks great for a GBA game.

You shouldn’t go into The Ramp expecting it to be a modern version of also isometric (and famously better than you’d expect) Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for the GBA. This is a game you play every so often for no longer than ten minutes at a time, but it shouldn’t need to be anything more than that. Frankly, in a time when so many games are getting longer and bigger, it is refreshing to play a game that actively winds you down from all of that, relishing in its ability to demand my attention for only as long as I desire. Despite its non-existent length and short list of features, it is a game that I can see myself playing for a lot longer than games with hundreds of mechanics that demand my attention for hundreds of hours - just perhaps over the course of a couple of years instead of a couple of weeks.