Ever since its Kickstarter back in 2019, I’ve been excited for Street Uni X, a PS1-inspired street unicycle game. It finally released a few weeks ago. Is it any good?
So, I don’t know if you knew this, but there is a community of street unicyclers, who can grind handrails and do some really impressive tricks. This is a world I don’t really know about, but I’m really happy to see that they have their own THPS-style game, because I get to play it.
Aesthetic
The first thing you’ll notice about the game is the very faithful PS1 aesthetic. It even has intro screens that simulate the PS1 startup screens. And there are graphic options that make the game look exactly like a PS1 game, with the resolution and texture warping to match. I picked the mode that looks like it’s playing upscaled in an emulator, but I really like that I had the option at least.
When you load into the levels, you see your phone, reminiscent of the THUG series, and you get cameras for each of the challenges like you do in Pro Skater 3. It’s got a level of polish that I really liked.
This is perfect for the game, because it doesn’t just look like THPS1 or 2, it plays like it too. There are flip tricks, grabs, manuals, and special tricks (sort of, we’ll get to that). There are letters to collect, valves to unjam, a school to explore, and even secret areas.
I don’t know what I haven’t found yet, but here’s an example. You’re supposed to carefully ride off the roof to collect the WiFi password, which is this game’s stand-in for a secret tape. But if you air off of the window instead, you’ll fly out to the parking lot, where you’ll see the game’s developer, daffodil, surrounded by code, with warnings that you’re not supposed to be there. It’s meta, and I love it. The style, and the look and feel overall, is perfect.
Controls
The controls are a bit tough to get used to as someone who still plays the original Tony Hawk games all the time. It’s similar, but different enough to mess with you for a while as you get used to it. But it makes sense, because we’re talking about a completely different sport here.
First of all, grinds are mapped to L1 and R1, which represent the different pegs. It doesn’t seem all that important for someone who’s mostly going to be putting in random trick inputs and not really caring which trick is which, but it does matter.
You can’t grind the wrong side of a box, only on a rail. Think of a noseblunt as a noseslide on the wrong side of the ledge, and you’ll get what I mean. You can’t have the peg grinding while the wheel rolls. So there is some calculation you have to do to make sure you’re going to grind the right side. Or you can just stick to rails, which is mostly what I did.
The other quirk to it is that the controls are relative. So when you’re riding fakie, R1 is your character’s right, which is on the left of the screen. At the beginning of the game, I lost a lot of combos going into fakie grinds and not connecting.
Flips and grabs work the way you’d expect, with a direction and a button, but they were a little hit-and-miss. There were a lot of times I was going for a high score, and my combo is full of straight jumps with no trick, because it didn’t register. This happened less the more I played, so I think it’s just got different timing that you’ve got to get used to.
Manuals, or coasts as they’re called in this game, are done with triangle, instead of up and down. This was the hardest thing to get used to, but it also makes sense. There are a lot of different coasts to do in different positions, so they also have an input direction and button.
The part that doesn’t make as much sense to me is that you can only spin using L2 and R2. If you’re planning on doing all kinds of tricks in your combo, you’ll need a finger on each shoulder button at the same time, which is a little awkward to me. I wish you could toggle it to allow you to spin when you hold a direction button. There were a lot of times I did a spin and ended up sideways, and instinctively tried to tap a direction button to straighten out, but it doesn’t work.
There are also two more tricks that are different from skateboarding. First is the wall tap, which is where you bounce off of the wall with your tire, at an angle. It’s the cross between a wallride, which this game sadly doesn’t have, and a wallplant, where you push off and reverse directions. In this game, you tap the wall and it pushes you away at an angle. I used it sometimes, but mostly only when the challenges required it.
The last trick is a footplant, which I never did outside of the tutorial. You hold down and X, then let go when your foot touches the obstacle. There aren’t any challenges that require this, and I probably wouldn’t have known it was in the game if I didn’t learn it in the VR, Metal Gear Solid inspired tutorial.
The controls mostly make sense, but they are the biggest challenge of the game by far. Rewiring your brain to hit triangle for manuals and shoulder buttons for grinds is hard.
But once you get the hang of it, what will you be doing? Let’s look at the gameplay.
Gameplay
The gameplay is what you’d expect. High scores, collecting the letters in TRICK, finding the hidden WiFi icon, and one exclusive one. It could be busting the drinking fountains in the school, moving the garbage truck downtown, or grinding the cargo on the airship.
Collecting letters is a staple in these games, and it was fun to find them all. It felt fresh, like the first time I played the Pro Skater games, or more recently, when I played the PS1 version of Pro Skater 4, which was mostly new to me at that time. Of course, once you know where they are, you know, and the next playthrough will be a lot easier. The levels are pretty small, even compared to the Tony Hawk levels.
The WiFi is usually pretty easy to find. The intro cameras give it away, and you just have to figure out the approach. The toughest one is Downtown, where you have to move the garbage truck, then ride around the construction site, and throw yourself at the power lines to try to grind your way around.
Usually in the Tony Hawk games, there’s something to grind that will line you up correctly for a gap, but in this game, you’re often throwing yourself and hoping. This is one of the easier examples.
But this letter in the airship is very difficult. You just have to hold up to get speed going, then turn sharply and hope. If you miss, you might fall to your doom and waste a lot of your run timer. So what I do is go for that letter first, skipping the one right by the start of the level. I wouldn’t want the game to be too easy, but it does feel like there’s an element of luck to it.
Another example is this letter in the skatepark, on top of the light. There isn’t a way to grind to it that I’ve been able to do, and there’s no vert in the game, so airing up to it isn’t an option. What I had to do is get my way over to the vent, then line myself up and blindly yeet myself at it in the hope that I’d connect. It doesn’t always work.
The level exclusive challenges are usually my favorite. They’re never cryptic or hard to understand, and they shake things up.
There are 5 levels, and then you’re out. Unfortunately, there aren’t any pro videos to unlock. You get to see a taste of what street unicycling is like in the intro, but I don’t know who these pros are. It would have been cool to unlock a clip of each of them.
What do you unlock though?
Unlockables
As you beat levels, you’ll get texts from daffodil, who will let you know how to do a new trick. They’re essentially special tricks, but you don’t need your meter to be full to do them. In fact, the meter just seems to give you a stat boost when it’s full. I didn’t like it very much because it messes up your regular timing, although leaving a trail of fire in your wake is pretty cool.
But it’s nice having the trick system get more complicated as you play through, unlocking more advanced button combinations, like left-right grind for a frame slide. It keeps the game feeling fresh on multiple playthroughs.
You also unlock new characters. The first I got is daffodil, the developer, who gave themself the lowest stats in the game, which is pretty funny. You also unlock a couple anime-inspired characters too, and more that I haven’t gotten to.
You may have noticed that I never mentioned collecting stat points. At first, it felt like it was something missing from the game, but as I started my second, third, and fourth playthrough, I really appreciated it. Every playthrough will feel a bit different because you’re stuck with their starting stats the whole time.
My first playthrough took about an hour and a half. After that, with a good grasp on the controls, and knowledge of where all the collectibles are, it got down to about 20 minutes for future playthroughs.
There’s definitely more to unlock, and I’m going to have fun finding out what that is after my review.
Conclusion
Street Uni-X costs $20 on Steam. Is it worth it? To me, it absolutely is. There’s a demo you can play to see what you think about it, but keep in mind that adjusting to the controls is going to take some time.
Aside from that, I really like this game, and I especially like that it exists. I want it to be successful, and I want it to spawn a new generation of PS1-era games. I want skateboarding, BMX, scooters, you name it. Okay, probably not scooters.
My main critiques of the game are that the controls aren’t customizable (at least for spins), and that the challenges can be a bit repetitive. Getting high scores and collecting letters is fully half of the game. I would have preferred maybe one high score challenge and adding in COMBO letters and another level-exclusive challenge.
But hey, maybe there will be a sequel.