(Cammie, unsurprisingly, also seems to be a living being.) Chiffon is a literal skate wizard who will revive you along your path to let you restart when you crash Dad is not actually your father but a supportive old timer who will have a skate shop to buy things at in the full game Gnarly Mike enthusiastically gives you missions to complete on each run, and Suze films the best tricks around with a trusty camera named Cammie. That’s in large part thanks to the core cast of characters, who welcomed my new skater to this world in the demo. And though I only played a few opening missions, I’m oddly invested in learning more about this world. It’s a consistently charming and delightful aesthetic that had me replaying levels not just to achieve new high scores but just to slowly skate through so I could admire the scenery. It’s all a bit bizarre, but strangely works when thrown together, especially thanks to the bright, vivid, and bold color palette: a bright green rail will sit atop a blue wooden pathway surrounded by pink and beige buildings and sand. Banana people dot the background of one scene, while a frog rides a bee in another, and among the characters you’ll meet along your skate routes are a fortune-telling fish and an entrepreneurial frog. But it’s also a joyously silly and surreal place, where just about anything makes sense. In what feels like a more surrealist take on Rocket Power’s Ocean Shores, Radlandia is pure skating nirvana, with ramps to ollie off, rails to grind, walls to ride, and plenty of lines to let you connect one trick to the next. (Roll7 Director Tom Hagerty cited another Cartoon Network show, Amazing World of Gumball, as one of several artistic inspirations.) Separated into a few different main hubs, Radlandia is a visually captivating mishmash of beachside towns, forested regions, and more, all built around a clear love and celebration of skateboarding. Set on the fictional island of Radlandia, OlliOlli World is a 2D game within a 3D setting that could easily be a setting in Adventure Time’s land of Oo. Radlandia is one of the more inviting game worlds I’ve visited in some time, and I’m looking forward to booking a return trip soon. OlliOlli World looks to be capturing that dichotomy, and by extension is shaping up to offer a great score-chasing time and a fun, relaxing arcade experience. (I assume there is wind in Radlandia, I forgot to ask the developers about that important bit of lore.) Skateboarding can be all about you, a single skater, in the moment preparing for a run, but it can also be a sport full of community, of celebrating a communal love for catching air and eating asphalt. It’s fun to chase the perfect line, but it’s also fun to just hang out and enjoy the wind blowing by as you curve around a corner. From my hands-on time with some opening levels and an interview with the devs, there’s something quite magical about this new take on the familiar formula - and it’s very much found in the “World” added to OlliOlli’s name.Īnd that was a piece of the skateboarding puzzle that, while not part of every level, felt central to OlliOlli World’s philosophy - skateboarding is fun. It’s why the studio is returning to the franchise with OlliOlli World, which is looking to bring some of that back, but strip away some of what made it a bit more difficult for players to get into or to live up to its high skill level as it progressed. But there was clearly something special there in developer Roll7’s take on a sport that’s seen its fair share of gaming highs (the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater) and lows (also, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series). For those who never played the first two OlliOlli games, they were high-score chasing, trick comboing 2D arcade greats that, while really fun, could also be brutally difficult.
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