Skate City: New York is as dreamy as a week off in ManhattanParklife.Image credit: Snowman/Agens Games Feature by Christian Donlan Contributing Editor Published on Jan. 16, 2025 Not to brag but I have a beanbag now. I bought it last week. What a treat to sink down into with a mobile game, and what an extra treat when that game is Skate City. Skate City is a lovely, deeply dreamy skating game built for touchscreens. Over on Apple Arcade it's just had a new instalment, Skate City: New York. Reader, I am hooked.Skate City: New YorkPublisher: SnowmanDeveloper: Agens GamesPlatform: Played on iOSAvailability: Out now on Apple Arcade.If I had to describe Skate City quickly, I'd say that it's the skating game that really cares about fonts. Its fonts are stylish, classical, sans serif. You know when you take a second look at the cover of Born to Run and go, ooh, didn't expect that? Skate City's font game is a lot more spacious, but it has that same quiet elegance that rewards the second look.The first game took this sense of quiet urban grace to its heart, with soft beats, lots of bloom, and a selection of cities where you'd be more than willing to open an Affogato business that ran its own small-scale Zine printing house. Skate City: New York, as the name suggests, focuses on one city, but it's a great city, and across Manhattan, the park and Brooklyn, it has range as well as airy beauty.There are tweaks, but I'm not sure I've spotted them all yet. You can wall-run now, and levels have multiple routes - one moment I dropped down into the subway, and there was a platform there with a train and everything; that was nice. More importantly, though, the core of the series remains intact. You swipe and tap the screen to pull off various tricks, building outwards from the upwards thumb strike that gives you an ollie. It's a lovely system with lots of room for chaining things together, and it clips well with the kind of pseudo-2D stages Skate City delivers. It's the sports game as indie lateral tracking shot.Here's the trailer for Skate City: New York.Watch on YouTubeWhat I mainly love about the New York instalment is New York. New York's a city where you can walk all day and see new stuff every few feet, while still feeling deeply rooted in a single deeply specific place. Skate City has that too. I'll move from glossy marble squares and businesses that look like Apple might be involved, to an epic road crossing, a bit of park, a bit of corporate sculpture, and then down to the docks.It's gorgeous. There's a pastel brightness to the bloom here that makes me feel like I've just stepped out of the subway on the first day of a New York holiday, and there's that chatty calm you get in Washington Square Park just after lunch. I have never skated in my life, but I love skating games and I love this city. This was a no-brainer, then, but I'm still astonished by how much of my life it's already eaten.