Software Engineering Daily Skate Story with Sam Eng
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Mar 17, 2026 
Sam Eng, an indie developer behind Skate Story and former Switch dev Zarvot, walks through designing a vaporwave skateboarding world. He talks about crafting controls, camera and animation to capture flow, building custom skateboard physics, level pacing with hubs and rushes, and designing creative boss fights and visual shader effects.
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Camera As Cinematographer And Gameplay Tool
- The camera is a parameter-heavy system blending skate-video framing and player control.
- It adapts to velocity, slope, and turns, and even drives screen shake and wind audio tied to camera speed.
Camera Roll Came From Real Falls And Skate Videos
- Sam implemented a camera-roll on wipeout to mimic the skater's visual experience of falling.
- The effect came from watching skate videos and Sam's own fall where the board stuck and his vision rolled.
Five Years Of Iteration Produced The Boss Design
- Sam iterated boss fights for five years moving from trivial kickflip spam to the current projection-based system.
- The final design uses combo strings that must end in moon-projections to damage bosses, preventing camping.
