![]() Simon and John wanted people to have a good time making the game, too – something that comes across in the cheerful aesthetic. People aren’t trying to be the best at it, they’re just doing it because they’re having a really good time.” “We’ve reached the age now where we all know our career is not gonna be in skating. “OlliOlli 1 and 2 were made from the perspective of skating when we were younger, when everyone thought they might go pro,” he says. ![]() The character design lead used to be a pro, and a team member once joined a meeting from A&E having had an unfortunate collision with a car while skating. Unsurprisingly, plenty of the people at Roll7 are involved with the sport in real life. If Tony Hawk’s represented the skate culture at that time (very male, very competitive), OlliOlli World represents it now: more diverse, more colourful and altogether more welcoming. When you think of skateboarding and video games, you may think of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the delightfully gratifying PlayStation classics that blew up around the turn of the millennium – around the time that John and Simon were skating in their late teens and 20s. ‘Let’s try to have fun while we’re making it’ … Roll7’s Simon Bennett (left) and John Ribbins at Hop King skate park in London. There’s always been queer people in skateboarding but you’d never have seen that representation even seven years ago … Making this game, I was thinking of a lot of the people I skate with now that it would be cool to make a game they feel represented by.” “My experience of getting back into skating in my 30s has been with way different groups of people,” says John. It seems to me that something has changed, certainly within the studio but perhaps also with skateboarding culture and what (and whom) it represents. The levels in OlliOlli were once based on the fairly dismal view from John and Simon’s office in Deptford this game is set in a colourful skateboarding paradise called Radlandia. It’s a hugely appealing game – and where Roll7’s previous OlliOlli skating games from 2014-15 were technical, demanding and just a touch sterile, this one couldn’t be more out there. The art, a mix between the kind of mural you might find in a London skate park and the strange but cutesy cartoonish vibe of something like Adventure Time, contrasts with an extremely chill soundtrack that soothes your nerves as you try to pull off awesome chains of tricks.Ĭharacterful tribute to skateboarding … OlliOlli World’s avatar creator. I’d spent a few days playing Roll7’s latest game, OlliOlli World – an exuberant and characterful tribute to skateboarding, with wild levels full of rails and walls to grind and weird characters such as sentient trees and buff seagulls pottering around in the background. ![]() They had about 10 people working with them back then now they’re directors of a studio of 80. (I do not join in – sadly the immense skills that I have built up over 20 years of playing skating games do not in any way translate into real life.) In 2014, their studio Roll7 released a fondly remembered and notoriously tricky skateboarding game called OlliOlli – an experience that prompted them, both lapsed skaters who were obsessive about it in their teens, to get back out on the streets in real life. OlliOlli World is out now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.I n a skate park under the arches near London Bridge, a couple of game developers called John Ribbins and Simon Bennett are messing around in a half-pipe. More so than any of its competition, OlliOlli World is the best skateboarding game for non-skateboarders to experience. Its cartoony art style and welcoming gameplay draw in a general audience, but the deep mechanics and massive skill ceiling keep the skateboarding enthusiasts pleased. OlliOlli World is a truly fun and addictive experience. ![]() Linking together flips, grinds, and wall rides into a combo that spans the length of a whole stage is immensely satisfying- a feeling that OlliOlli World's way of teaching makes accessible to anyone. These goals get very high by the end, requiring crazy combos to even attempt them. Aside from these varied challenges, each level has three score goals. These range from doing a specific trick a certain number of times to grinding and hitting three seagulls along the way. Each of the game's many levels contain numerous objectives. Mastering all the types of tricks is only where OlliOlli World's fun begins.
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