Culminating 8 years of Roll7's work on the series, OlliOlli World is, like its brethren, undeniably mechanically rich, rewarding players of all skill levels. But it's the joyful world and playful nature of the game that make it a triumphant skating experience akin to Tony Hawk's best.
OlliOlli was one of the first games I fell absolutely in love with at my first E3 in 2013. For the first time I had the opportunity to play games in their early-ish stages and, hopefully, speak with developers to form a picture of their aspirations. Roll7’s oddly brilliant idea of a 2D skateboarding game where tricks were dictated by flicks of the PlayStation Vita’s thumbsticks became fully-formed in 2014 when the game finally launched.
That groundswell of increasingly inventive independent games pointed me away further away from the mainstream than I ever would have suspected. And I began to seek out original concepts more frequently, hoping to whet my appetite and expand my knowledge of what games were capable of.
OlliOlli World is finely hewn video game. Unlike it’s predecessor OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood, OlliOlli World does more than spice up the graphics and throw in mechanical flourishes. OlliOlli World acts as the zenith of Roll7’s vision of an addictive skateboarding game, or gleeful arcade-like time sink, whatever genre you wish to toss it in.
Concepts for OlliOlli World can be seen in the first product that was released eight years ago. When a system works, there is no reason to diverge from the path. The wheel is the wheel. And OlliOlli, as a series, has lucidly used four wheels to exert dominance in a niche first carved out, then exploded, by the likes of Tony Hawk.
Rather than attempting to reconquer the 3D skating world, OlliOlli definitely expressed the sport in two dimensions. Like a platformer, players would move left to right along a course, stringing together tricks to obtain impossibly high scores, hopefully managing to complete a course as one massively long, combo-littered trick. Realistic graphics were replaced by stylish pixels and licensed music destined for the late nights of MTV were substituted with a chill soundtrack that would make The Lofi Girl lazily sway at her desk.
OlliOlli World will not disappoint fans of the first two games. Inherently, all three are near mirror images of each other, at least mechanically. But what is likely going to give OlliOlli World the broadest appeal possible is its poisonously charming aesthetic, blatantly and lovingly inspired by Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time. The world reeks with a jovial atmosphere where critters and foliage and scenery is likely to beam a smile out when players roll by.
Nothing in OlliOlli World is constructed in a way that would ward off players. The gameplay and aesthetic swirl with invitation, tempting the player to just soak up the surroundings and enjoy themselves–after all, the hard stuff can be worried about later. Even the story, a feature absent from the previous games, asks so little of the player yet exudes an undeniably kind persona.
Radlandia is a place where skate “godz” have crafted the world and the player character is potentially destined to reach Gnarvana by becoming the next Skate Wizard. Characters like Dad or Chiffon or Gnarly Mike cheer the player on and make jokes that fit this “ice cream pop” aesthetic. Imagine the narrative of Riders Republic, just without the cringe and a wealth more awareness. OlliOlli World celebrates the silly, the cute, the charming, and, sometimes, the mundane. Throughout the journey across the realms of Radlandia, across the deserts and forests and beach-side boardwalks, there exists an honesty and a passion for the world. And that’s one of the crucial elements the last game was missing.
OlliOlli World emphasizes the World. Eventually, players will be able to engage in ranked challenges with the community or skate across randomly generated tracks based on difficulty, length, and environment. But from the onset, Roll7 wants players to feel welcome, like Radlandia is a home away from home. A generous character creator is loaded with hundreds of cosmetic choices to create the player’s ideal avatar. During loading screens, other player-created characters and their profile name are shown, giving everyone who has the game a taste of what other players have come up with. Even the weirdest NPCs that barely pass as humanoid feel natural in Radlandia. The game just looks that good.
The shift to true 3D environments allows Roll7 to layer additional complexity onto the OlliOlli formula. OlliOlli World sees players circling back around levels, grinding rails that were once in the foreground or background. A jump off a half pipe may lead to players landing on another half pipe leading a different direction. Wall running, racing against a bear in the river, jumping across moving platforms, watching the environment expand and contract, increase the scope of OlliOlli World and make later levels blossom into not only feasts for the eyes but potentially grueling tests of skill and precision.
Players select levels from a world map now rather than a menu. There are specific challenges and thresholds the player can meet to unlock new cosmetic options. Hitting high scores is one thing but what about intentionally avoiding breaking objects or collecting themed items on tricky, distant paths?
Roll7 does its best to layer the challenge across the entire game. Players will continue to encounter tutorials late into the game. It’s a move that may frustrate veterans but are actually meant to not muddy the message and the moveset of OlliOlli World.
Look, I love this series and I’m a fan of challenging games that are “easy to learn, hard to master.” But suffice it to say, I don’t have the time to forge my skills in the crucible of failure. OlliOlli has always been a challenge for me but one that I’ve been fairly patient with as long as I’ve had the time. When booting up OlliOlli World I remembered the basics of flicking the left stick in weird directions to execute a trick. But I forgot how to perform manuals to continue the combo chain and how to grind rails.
While those are advanced moves meant to be explored later with the appropriate tutorials, I knew they existed and I wanted to perform skillfully right out of the gate. Stupid. I instantly became envious and confused how the highest scores of the first handful of levels could be hundreds of thousands of points better than my meager score. Of course, I completely forgot the difficult but simple mechanics of the game.
Tutorializing is crucial in games like this because a player needs to feel competent while they grow in skill. OlliOlli World takes its time in throwing holds and manuals and things requiring button pushes in addition to stick movement. And it’s smart. Otherwise, players may become too focused on immediate perfection rather than letting their taste for the game’s mechanics grow.
OlliOlli World never feels too easy. Often, it feels more approachable than anything. Many levels will cause you to crash by merely not maintaining enough speed, preventing players from clearing dangerous and long jumps. But it isn’t until players move deeper into the later stages or seek out the challenging paths that the complexity of OlliOlli comes to a head.
Keep in mind that OlliOlli World will reward investment. Players can watch the replays of other skilled players and their high score runs. There are systems in place to learn from mistakes, accept failure, rely on checkpoints, and continuously fail a track until you master where every jump or grind rail is. This is why I feel like OlliOlli as a series has always been more than just a skateboarding game. It’s an often rewarding and brutal platformer like Super Meat Boy, Dustforce, or Celeste. Players can see the light at the end of the tunnel but it will take some time to fully master the inner workings to get there. Or at least get there in style.
OlliOlli World is an absurdly intricate game. Yet it is lovingly approachable. Roll7 has been working with this series for almost a decade and their efforts have bore exceptional fruit. In the path to achieve Gnarvana, players will encounter an exuberant world populated with a wild cast of characters. The series’ move to 3D has paid off. But more importantly, the complex mechanics of its tricks and combos have been polished to a luxurious sheen, rewarding players of all skill levels and degrees of dedication. I can think of few things I would change about OlliOlli World aside from more and more levels and hundreds more cosmetic options. As it stands, though, the game is bursting at the seams with finesse, eclipsing what was already a near-perfect harmony.
