OlliOlli World

OlliOlli World is the Divinity: Original Sin II of skateboarding games. Here, unlike in the timer-driven or open-world driven Tony Hawk titles, you jump, trick, and grind through increasingly elaborate labyrinths to approach skate Nirvana and ascend to OlliOlli godhood. The maps and routes are all designed around predestined paths (outside of the endless randomizer that makes up the now-nonexistent multiplayer portion of the game), so the game ends up feeling less about scoping out a 3D environment for the most optimum line as much as just getting through by any means necessary, fighting your own fight or flight instinct as your momentum grows and the next obstacle appears from just offscreen, tricking in the interim until your thumbs are numb. Every obstacle has an obvious (and sometimes even an additional, less obvious) solution; the game is in committing each map's twists and turns to memory and turning all your resets and checkpoints into a fine weave of artisanal kickflips and nosegrinds, a rush of tweaks and spins. In effect there are basically no moments in OlliOlli World where your adrenaline and dopamine aren't firing. And, like the best of the best, your reward for all this tricking is funny outfits! Even now, as a dead relic of a dead studio, I find its rhythms magical and its movement sublime. You deserved more Roll7. I salute you now even as nothing beside remains.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, enjoying the bright colors of the inner yard of my building, where the sun lit up the yellow and orange leaves in our little garden, I sat there in front of my laptop, thinking — how the hell can I describe this game? Picture game designers forced onto a diet of nothing but ice cream, candy, and sugary soda, with cartoons like Adventure Time running in the background nonstop. Every candy comes in gorgeous packaging — bright, saturated colors, and each M&M is pink, purple, green, blue, or yellow, so vivid it feels like an acid trip. Now put those same designers in a room stacked with skate culture memorabilia: skateboards, posters, helmets, knee pads, Tony Hawk and Skate video games, CDs of alternative rock albums. And somehow, on top of all that, Chillhop is playing on YouTube in the background — oh god, I know — this calm, unexpected addition to all that candy-colored, ice-cream-bright sweetness craze. But this is exactly how I'd describe OlliOlli World, and I loved it from the very first time I watched its trailer. It's part of a well-known (which I didn't know) indie skating-platformer series called OlliOlli, which built a strong but niche following back in the PlayStation Vita days. It was known and praised for its unforgiving, challenging skating and its pixelated 2D graphics. OlliOlli World is the third installment in the series, and a major departure from the earlier games. Roll7 dropped the pixel 2D graphics in favor of a mix of 3D characters and assets set in a 2.5D world. It's also more forgiving and easier on newcomers, which is why I was able to stick with it — though there's still an elegant art and skill to it once you reach a level of mastery where your tricks become a form of self-expression. And what a beautiful skating world, let me tell you. Radlandia! Honestly — god knows, and my wife knows too — this art style, this world, these characters: Roll7 built a world with everything I love, everything I strive for and never get enough of. That sugar-overdose, candy-colored craze from the first paragraph? Radlandia is exactly that — the perfect potion, made of all my favorite ingredients. Honestly, I'd love OlliOlli even if it weren't a skating game — even as a puzzle adventure or a platformer, I'd love it just the same. But it is skating, the sport my inner child always thought was the coolest, the one I missed out on — and I adore this game, and I adore Radlandia.

Fantastic skating game. My favourite aspects of it are easily the visuals and the gameplay. Like in Rollerdrome, Roll7 executes their cel-shaded art style flawlessly with diverse and vibrant use of colour. The gameplay is also very strong with a high amount of depth and room for skill expression. The sheer quantity of tricks and combos that you can perform is outstanding. My only real issue with the game is that, toward the end of the experience, I found it started to drag. I think making the game a bit shorter would’ve helped to prevent this. Also, whilst functional, the story and character elements are nevertheless unremarkable. RIP Roll7 </3