Urban Trial Freestyle is a 2013 racing game developed and published by Tate Interactive. It came out for the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, iOS and PC, and it arrived with a marketing line about reaching pole position on the PlayStation Store Chart.
That claim is the publisher’s. It is also the only sales-adjacent number attached to the game, so it does most of the promotional work.
Trailer, via IGN.
Backflips, 360s and Wallrides
The game is a freestyle trials bike racer. You use the urban landscape to pull backflips, 360s, wallrides and ollies. Time Attack rewards speed. Stunt mode rewards style. The publisher frames the choice between the two as the point.
Bike customization feeds that choice. You tune your machine to boost performance, and the game presents speed and style as competing paths, with your own riding style as the outcome. The mode list is short and the customization is the only lever the player gets.
Ghost Mode lets you challenge the best riders. The publisher describes the variety and elaborate design of the different backdrops as something that will keep you coming back for hours, chasing a perfect run and knocking the top riders off the leaderboard.
Julien Dupont
The game was, in the publisher’s words, greatly influenced by the support of Julien Dupont, the “godfather of urban trial freestyle.” Dupont is known around the world for his unique street style and technique, mashing down barriers and setting new records.
That is the extent of what the source establishes. Dupont’s name carries weight in the discipline. The game credits his support. The publisher does not say what he did on the project, how much of the design he touched, or whether he rode motion capture.
Genres and Themes
The game is listed as a platform game, a racing game, a simulator, a sport game and an arcade game. Its themes are action and kids. Its perspective is third person. Its mode is single player.
Those labels come from a storefront-style listing, not from a design document, and they overlap. Racing, sport and arcade describe the same core loop from three angles. Platform and simulator pull in different directions. The listing is a catalogue entry, not a statement of intent.
Four Platforms, One Mode
Urban Trial Freestyle shipped on Nintendo 3DS, PC, iOS and PlayStation Vita. That is four pieces of hardware for a game with one mode.
The mode is single player. That is what the source says, and it is the whole of what the source says on the subject. There is no listed multiplayer, no split-screen, no head-to-head racing, and no cooperative mode in the material.
The 6.4
The published critical score is 6.4 out of 10, drawn from an IGDB critic aggregate across eight outlets. The source provides the number and the sample size. It does not provide the individual reviews, the spread of scores, or any explanation of what pulled the average down.
That matters for how the number should be read. An aggregate of eight outlets is a small sample. A 6.4 on that sample tells you the game landed somewhere between mixed and positive with the people who reviewed it. It does not tell you why.
What the Material Supports
The source for this article is a product listing plus a Wikipedia entry. That is thin, and the thinness is the story. Here is what the record actually gives you:
- A 2013 release from Tate Interactive, developed and published in-house.
- Four platforms: Nintendo 3DS, PC, iOS, PlayStation Vita.
- A single-player mode.
- A genre list that spans racing, platform, simulator, sport and arcade.
- A 6.4 critic aggregate from eight outlets.
- A marketing claim about a PlayStation Store chart position.
- A named influence, Julien Dupont.
Everything on that list is verifiable. Nothing on it is a review. There is no description of the physics, no account of the track design beyond the word “elaborate,” no detail on how the customization changes handling, and no sales figure attached to the chart claim.
What Is Missing
The gaps are worth naming because they are the difference between a listing and a piece of criticism. The source does not say how the game controls, how long it runs, how many tracks it ships with, or how the four versions differ from one another.
It does not say what Dupont actually contributed. It does not say whether the chart claim refers to launch week, a single territory, or a genre chart rather than the overall store. It does not name a single outlet behind the 6.4.
What the record does support is a clean, narrow description: a single-player freestyle trials game, built in-house by Tate Interactive, sold on four platforms, reviewed to a middling aggregate, and promoted with a chart position and a famous name attached to it.
That is a small game with a small footprint. The 6.4 sits inside that footprint rather than explaining it. The chart claim and the Dupont credit are the two things the publisher chose to lead with, and both are the kind of claim that costs nothing to make and nothing to check.
The part worth watching is not the score. It is the mode list. A freestyle trials game with a ghost mode and no head-to-head racing is a game about beating a time, not a person. That is a design position, and the source states it plainly without ever arguing for it.
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