Jet Set Sekiro Turns a Soulslike Into a Skate Sim

Sekiro already had one of the best movement systems in FromSoftware's catalogue. The grappling hook, the verticality, the way Wolf flows through combat with a speed the other Souls games never attempted. Modder Ionian-MikiriyAKATotallyNotShinobi looked at all of that and decided what was really missing was a skateboard.

Jet Set Sekiro is a custom mod level set in Fountainhead Palace that retrofits Sekiro's animations into a full skateboarding system, pulling its movement and energy directly from Jet Set Radio. You roll around collecting spray paint canisters and tagging designated spots on the map before a timer runs out. It is, against all odds, exactly as good as it sounds.

More Than a Gimmick

What makes this more than a novelty skin is how the mod integrates with Sekiro's existing combat. Enemies are still present on the level, and you can skate through them to attack or pull off tricks nearby for extra damage. Some of them drop spray cans. You can also faceplant if you lose your balance or jump badly, which is a very Sekiro way to remind you that nothing here is free. The objective-based structure, collect cans, tag locations, beat the clock, gives it a structure that actually resembles a proper Jet Set Radio stage rather than just a tech demo.

A video from the YouTube channel Mod Server shows the whole thing in motion, and the vibe lands. The animations, the music, the way it all sits inside Fountainhead Palace's ornate architecture: it hits the sweet spot between two genres that have no business working together this well.

This isn't the first time someone has bridged the gap between FromSoftware and skateboarding. There was a Firelink Shrine map made for Tony Hawk's Underground 2 that paired with a Solaire player model, which is its own kind of beautiful. The difference here is the direction of travel: instead of bringing a FromSoft location into a skate game, Ionian-Mikiriy brought the skating into FromSoft. That's a harder problem to solve, and the execution holds up.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice sits at a 90/100 on OpenCritic with a 96% critic recommendation rate, so the base the mod is building on is about as solid as it gets. Whether the creator expands Jet Set Sekiro to include more of the game's levels or adds boss characters as playable skaters remains to be seen, but the foundation is already there.