In a world… where all of humanity and the entire animal kingdom has been wiped from the face of the Earth, one man remains.

His name is Skater XL.

Well, technically four men remain but you must choose one at a time as your character to play with, so they don’t really ever exist on the same plane of reality. Yeah, so basically there’s one guy left on the planet, but that guy could be one of four different guys, depending on whether you like your skater dude with long scraggly hair or more clean cut. Oh, and sometimes there is a ghost of Skater XL that appears, skating in front of you like a spirit guide.

Skater XL, the hero of our tale, survives the apocalypse every day by doing one thing, and one thing only. Skating. And he must keep skating, or else he will perish, like every other soul on the planet. For it’s skating that saved our protagonist, and he can’t abandon it now at his greatest time of need.

You see, on that fateful day when the world as we knew it ceased to exist, everyone not skateboarding was control-alt-deleted from the universe, apparently. We’re not one thousand percent sure because the story is a little vague about how everyone fell into the deep, dark abyss of nothingness. But based on the info we’ve been provided, it’s literally the only explanation.

By my calculations, something went seriously wrong at the core of the Earth, rendering the planet’s surface untouchable. Well, he still pushes with one foot, so maybe you get sucked into the ether once two feet hit the ground. Yeah, that works.

Whether it’s some sort of weird lava that decimates everything except skate wheels, or some kind of evil spirit that grew up riding scooters and wants revenge on skaters, we don’t know. But for some reason, the skateboarding community is immune… while they’re riding.

And Skater XL is the last one left on his board, where he’s been skating nonstop for what seems like years. Everyone else fell at some point. He’s long forgotten his own name. The memories of his family and friends are lost to the sands of time. Now the only thing he knows is the board he rides and the clothes on his back, which are size XL, hence what he calls himself.

I know that he only survives by staying on his board because he is so steadfast about remaining on it at all costs as if his life depends on it. Other skateboarding games would surely allow the character we control to hop off his board to climb some stairs to find the primo spot, but not Skater XL. His sneakers shall never touch anything but that grip tape again, or he may meet the same fate as the rest of Earth’s inhabitants.

I’m guessing Skater XL has been on his board since around 2006 because it seems like the entire soundtrack consists of the six or so post-punk songs he could fit on his flip phone at the time. Now, they’re the last remnants of all music, ever. Future generations, should they ever get the chance to exist, will now examine “Well Thought Out Twinkles” by Silversun Pickups like it’s the work of Mozart.

But the prospect of future generations seems bleak since there are no women left in Skater XL’s world, just a ghost of himself he can never catch up to. So, he skates, and skates, and skates some more. His day consists of mastering a long list of tricks that he didn’t have time to hone when the demands of a job and a family and society were weighing him down. But those things are all just history’s tiny pebbles that Skater XL must now avoid on the pavement so as not to hit the ground and surely be destroyed by the same evil forces that decimated twice as many lives as Thanos.

There are no challenges to conquer, no missions to accomplish. Skater XL is simply existing. There are no more goals, no more hopes, no more dreams. Just skate. And listen to Modest Mouse.