I’ll admit that I’m pretty new to arcade-style BMX games, but I always enjoyed messing around in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, even if I wasn’t very good at them. I get a similar feeling from Streetdog BMX – it’s fun to play, even if I’m not the best at it. I have been getting better, though, and I can only assume that, like with anything, I’ll continue to get better the more I play.
Before I launch into the review itself, I want to talk a bit about the development team because it’s clear that they not only know their stuff, but they also have the passion to turn that knowledge into a game that can appeal to a wide range of people. Streetdog BMX was developed and published by the small team at Yeah Us! Games, and it was clearly undertaken as a labour of love. It’s the latest addition to their growing repertoire of BMX games. I haven’t played any of the other games – a lot of them seem to be mobile games – so I can’t comment on gameplay, but Streetdog BMX certainly looks the best in terms of visuals.
Graphics and Customisation
Streetdog BMX doesn’t have the ultra-realistic graphics that the Tony Hawk’s remakes do, but I actually really liked its art style. It’s bright and cartoony but also nice and crisp, and each of the six maps has its own distinct look, which helps keep everything fresh. A game can be absolutely amazing, but it will get dull really fast when maps are repetitive, so that was definitely a plus.
A certain level of customisation is expected from this sort of game. It’s a little limited, but this isn’t an RPG where you’re going to be spending extended periods of time watching your painstakingly designed character in cutscenes.
The basics are there, though. You can customise your skin colour, hairstyle, clothes and accessories. You can customise your bike too, but it’s essentially just changing the colour of different parts of the bike, so nothing that changes the stats of your bike or anything like that.
Getting to Grips with the Basics
Before allowing you free rein of the six fairly expansive maps, you’re locked into the tutorial map. To move on to the next map, you’ll need to complete a series of challenges to earn medals. This is true of progression between all maps, but you can’t move on from the tutorial until you’ve earned all of the available medals.
As much as I wanted to just jump in and explore all the maps, I found the forced restraint useful because if you can’t complete the basic tutorial challenges, there’s no way you’re going to complete the more complicated challenges that appear in later maps. I do kind of wish that, after the tutorial, all of the maps opened up to me, though.
Gameplay
The gameplay loop is pretty simple, but it takes a while to get used to. You can tweak the controls in the settings, but the standard controls rely heavily on the analogue sticks. You pedal using the right trigger, and the bumpers come into play for a few tricks, but you perform most actions by angling the analogue stick in a specific direction.
It definitely takes some getting used to. You jump by holding the right stick down and releasing, then you have to quickly adjust its position to pull off the tricks you want. This is pretty smooth when you get it right, but it takes some practice before it starts to feel natural. I found my main issue was getting enough air to be able to pull off the trick without wiping out, because the physics were realistic, albeit unforgiving.
Challenges
One of the best things about a game like Streetdog BMX is that it offers pretty much endless replayability. You can spend hours navigating the various maps and pulling off no end of trick combinations. For most gamers, though, this isn’t going to be enough. We need something to focus on, which is where Streetdog’s challenges come into play.
Each map has a series of challenges scattered across it. A lot of them are combo-based, where you have to pull off a series of specific tricks within a set time limit or within a set area, but there are others too. One particularly memorable challenge had you collecting the letters that spell out STREET whilst being timed.
You get medals based on your performance – gold, silver and bronze – and earning a certain number of medals allows you to unlock the next map and harder difficulties. There’s plenty to keep you occupied, but the game isn’t particularly beginner-friendly. If you can’t earn enough medals to move on to the next map, you might find yourself stuck on that particular level, which is a shame. Nothing puts me off a game quicker than being stuck in one place for extended periods of time. It’s part of the reason I’ve never been that big on Souls games.
Final Thoughts
Despite it taking a while for me to get the hang of the controls, I quite enjoyed my time with Streetdog BMX. You can really tell a lot of passion and expertise went into the game’s development, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of arcade-style sports games. At just over £20, I think it’s priced pretty well because there’s a lot of replayability and it ran very smoothly, but there’s a demo available on Steam if you want to give it a go before committing to buying it.
Developer: Yeah Us! Games
Publisher: Yeah Us! Games
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, PC
Release Date: 14th January 2026
Gaming Respawn’s copy of Streetdog BMX was provided by the publisher.
