What would happen if Tony Hawk Pro Skater got together with Crayola and Nintendo's Splatoon team and decided to make a kids' game for Nintendo Switch? Crayola Scoot, apparently. Crayola Scoot was announced just before E3 as a collaboration between Outright Games and Crayola, and if crayons and scooters don't sound especially mind-blowing to you, I can confirm that you're not missing a whole lot.
I was able to watch a live demo of Crayola Scoot at E3 2018, and as impressive as the demonstrator doing tricks was, there just didn't seem to be much to the game. It's a laidback skating game with some gimmicky color mechanics and limited replayability. Here's everything I was able to learn from the demo.
What is Crayola Scoot?
Crayola Scoot is a skating game, but with scooters, and without an awful lot of complicated tricks. You can grind on rails, perform flips and spins, and do a few other variations on tricks, but from what I could see that's basically it. Also, your scooter can leave a trail of colored paint behind it ala Splatoon (it even uses similar lingo, referring to "splatting" your friends in multiplayer), a function necessary for some of the game's challenges and completely extraneous for others. Your color is limited and will restore slowly over time, but you can gain it back faster by riding over your own color. Apart from some occasional stage hazards that sprayed your color around, I didn't see much use for it outside certain game challenges requiring you to color the floor, and there's no obvious penalty for riding over your opponent's color.
The bulk of the game involves traveling to three different skate parks and completing challenges and games there, while occasionally competing with your scooting rivals to increase your scooting notoriety. You can also customize your character and scooter with unlockable clothing and swag you'll get as you progress.
Scooting along
The hub world of Crayola Scoot is a small skate park where you can practice your tricks, visit the shop to customize your character, or travel out to other parks. There's not much to do in the hub beyond using it as a hub and a practice area, even though the demonstrator showed off some nifty hidden areas that seemed like they should house rewards for effectively scooting there. However, it seems to be the only place you can freely scoot.
The other three worlds host a series of challenge games for you to complete. These games include collecting more crayons than your opponents, covering more of the ground in your color paint than your opponents within a time limit (Turf War, anyone?), or scoring the highest amount of points by doing tricks in a given period of time. Only one world is available at the beginning, but you'll quickly unlock the other two and can tackle them in any order from there. However, there are only a handful of types of challenges, so you'll effectively be competing in the same games again and again.
At certain intervals, you'll also be challenged by a rival scooter to a game of SCOOT (it's HORSE, guys) where you must continually one-up their tricks until one of you fails and gets a letter. If you win the match, you'll increase your rank among your fellow scooters and unlock more gear for your character.
Is that it?
From what I can tell, yeah, that's about it. There is a multiplayer mode that allows you to play with friends either in teams or solo, but there are only six events and, again, there doesn't seem to be any free skate. All in all, Crayola Scoot seems like a fairly limited experience best enjoyed by younger players who aren't quite able to get into the complexities of skating games but still want to dabble.
I still want to Scoot, so when can I do it?
Crayola Scoot launches on Nintendo Switch on October 23, 2018, and will cost $39.99.
Colorful questions?
Want to learn more about Crayola Scoot? Ask me anything about the game in the comments!
