OlliOlli World celebrates the silly, the cute, the charming, and, sometimes, the mundane. Imagine the narrative of Riders Republic, just without the cringe and a wealth more awareness. Characters like Dad or Chiffon or Gnarly Mike cheer the player on and make jokes that fit this “ice cream pop” aesthetic. 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. Even the story, a feature absent from the previous games, asks so little of the player yet exudes an undeniably kind persona. 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. Nothing in OlliOlli World is constructed in a way that would ward off players. The world reeks with a jovial atmosphere where critters and foliage and scenery is likely to beam a smile out when players roll by. 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. Inherently, all three are near mirror images of each other, at least mechanically. OlliOlli World will not disappoint fans of the first two games.

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. 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. Rather than attempting to reconquer the 3D skating world, OlliOlli definitely expressed the sport in two dimensions. 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. When a system works, there is no reason to diverge from the path. 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.Ĭoncepts for OlliOlli World can be seen in the first product that was released eight years ago. Unlike it’s predecessor OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood, OlliOlli World does more than spice up the graphics and throw in mechanical flourishes. OlliOlli World is finely hewn video game. 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. That groundswell of increasingly inventive independent games pointed me away further away from the mainstream than I ever would have suspected. 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. 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.

OlliOlli was one of the first games I fell absolutely in love with at my first E3 in 2013.

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