A fat little raccoon dog wipes out attempting a double backflip on a bicycle, and both the player and the narrator say "OOF" at exactly the same time. That's Tanuki: Pon's Summer in a nutshell, and it might be the most charming thing to come out of Steam Next Fest this year.
The demo from developer Denkiworks dropped during Steam Next Fest, and the pitch is almost offensively simple: you're a tanuki, you ride a bike, you deliver packages around a Japanese summer town to raise money and restore the local shrine before the Matsuri Festival. That's it. That's the game. Except it's also kind of not, because buried inside this cozy courier loop is a trick system that would feel right at home next to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4.
What the trick system actually feels like
Here's the thing: the comparison to Tony Hawk isn't just vibes. Pon's Summer lets you backflip, double backflip, pull Superman moves, rail-grind, and rail-hop on your bike. The mechanics are genuinely in-depth for what presents itself as a cozy slice-of-life game. The key difference from THPS is that Pon's Summer is far more forgiving. Land at a weird angle with opposing momentum? The game autocorrects and sends you rolling forward like nothing happened. The trick system exists to make cycling between delivery jobs feel alive, not to punish you for experimenting.
That approachability is a deliberate design choice, and it works. Tricks become something you throw out casually while coasting between destinations rather than something you grind (pun intended) to master. Whether that changes in the full game remains to be seen, but for now the loop feels great.
Beyond the bike: sumo wrestlers and izakaya shifts
The demo teases a surprising amount of content outside the delivery runs. At one point you end up in a sumo match. At another, you're serving beer to customers at a local izakaya. The slice-of-life texture here is thick, from the level of detail on the food to the way Pon wobbles when he walks. His home base is a small, cluttered den lit by a retro TV and a games console, and it reads like someone who genuinely loves Japan designed every corner of it.
The narrator adds a layer of personality too. The dialogue reacts to what you're doing in real time, which is how you end up with the narrator echoing your own "OOF" back at you mid-wipeout. Small touch, big impact.
Why this matters for fans of the THPS revival
With Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 bringing the classic trick-based formula back to a new generation, it's interesting to see indie developers absorbing that DNA into completely different genres. Pon's Summer isn't trying to be a skateboarding game. But the feel of chaining movement and tricks into a satisfying flow state is clearly something players want across more than one genre, and Denkiworks seems to understand that instinctively.
What most players miss in games like this is how much the moment-to-moment movement sells the world. Pon's Summer gets that right even in demo form. The cycling feels smooth, the tricks feel rewarding, and the town feels worth exploring.
The full game doesn't have a confirmed release date yet, but the demo is live on Steam right now. If you want to dig deeper into the THPS side of things while you wait, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 strategy guides are a good place to burn some time.
