KASSO GAIDEN: Escape from the Skaterverse recently released as a free-to-play game on iOS and Android. Part endless runner, part rhythm game, it has you dodge obstacles and pick up items to the beat of its original soundtrack as you go through increasingly difficult levels. But the most unique thing about it is its origins: It’s based on a Japanese game show.
KASSO is a TV series created by Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, Inc. (TBS) that premiered in 2024 with a skateboarding obstacle course tournament in Midoriyama, Japan. While most competitive events focus on players facing off against players, KASSO is more about all players facing off against the course itself.
KASSO courses are designed to be extremely difficult and test a variety of skills, including speed, rail grinding, gap jumps, balancing on angled platforms, and more. New events have new courses, each designed to be a one-of-a-kind challenge shared by all of the competitors. All for one ultimate goal: total course completion and a ¥1,000,000 grand prize.
Highlights from the first KASSO tournament went viral and gave rise to multiple follow-up tournaments that have gradually increased in size. The series went international for the first time earlier this year, with KASSO FEST in Long Beach, California in March. That course included extended rails over the ocean, an example of the kind of challenge that’s carried over into KASSO GAIDEN: Escape from the Skaterverse.
Developed by NOW PRODUCTION and TBS GAMES, KASSO GAIDEN is split into seven stages that each have four levels you progressively unlock. You’ll have to deal with obstacles in each level, ranging from grinding rails to jumping over lava. Controls are simple: you swipe left or right to move those directions, swipe up to jump, and swipe down to duck. When you jump, you can swipe up a second time to get more air, or swipe down to immediately come back to earth.
You start each level with three hearts, and if you run into obstacles like fences or walls, you lose a heart. Lose all three, and your run ends. Or if you fall off a building or into lava or water, your run immediately ends. Like the real-life competition, courses are designed to be difficult and require some trial and error to figure out how to best complete them, especially the later levels.
You move forward automatically, and items and coins are scattered across levels that can be picked up to match the beat of the music. So as you retry levels, you’ll also get a better sense of the rhythm and when to make your moves. Each level has three missions within it that you get bonuses for completing, and finishing a level earns you tokens.
Those tokens can be spent on unlocking new skateboards and playable characters. You can also equip four tricks at a time, and they include various ollies, kickflips, grabs, and lots more. All of these unlockables are purely cosmetic, they don’t increase your speed and there are no stats to worry about.
The goal of the game is to master each level and look cool while doing it. The final level of each stage is simply titled Endless, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It has no end, and it challenges you to last as long as you can without being knocked out. There are unique items in Endless stages that boost your score but bring trade-offs with them, so you have to decide if they’re worth it.
Endless stages are also where world leaderboards come into play. There are rankings for each stage, as well as overall rankings that combine your scores across all stages. Last as long as possible while picking up items to run that score up and see how you compare to the best in the world.
KASSO GAIDEN: Escape from the Skaterverse is available to download for free now on iOS and Android. If you want to see some of the real-life KASSO in action, you can check out their YouTube page.
