OlliOlli World Virtual Event Demo Preview: Hello, Radlandia

Roll7’s OlliOlli World demo is part tutorial, part prologue, and an absolute blast all around. Set before the full game’s road trip through the colorful, silly world of Radlandia, the demo provides a bit of insight into who your crewmates are, what they specialize in, and what they want from you. 

Dad–who is not really anyone’s dad–is a middle-aged dude who’s a bit corny and also serves as your guide through the world. It’s Dad who explains how tricks work, gives details about the courses, and generally encourages you to do your best while you shred. Gnarly Mike is a big, gruff, enthusiastic dude who’s always cheering you on. He provides an extra list of challenges you can try to complete while taking on courses. Suze is the group’s camera woman and is pretty hard to please. She only wants the best shots, so she expects a lot from you in terms of performance and skill. Finally, Chiffon is Radlandia’s current Skate Wizard, a sort of spiritual figure who’s connected to all things skate. She’s looking to retire, but to do so she’ll need a replacement. That’s where you come in. 

The first few levels of the demo are all tutorials, showing you the basics of skating in the game under the pretense of this crew checking you out to see if you could be a worthy successor to Chiffon. You start at the very beginning with skating’s biggest fundamental: the push. From there, you learn how to launch your board into different tricks, and then how to grind. These levels also provide a bit of world-building, as you get to see different parts of each region, along with the people who are currently living there as you skate by. 

Radlandia is a palette of pastels and chill vibes to skate to. While the different biomes (I saw two in this demo) are designed to look and feel different, all of them share a somewhat muted, but still lovely aesthetic, which the Roll7 team built their own rendering engine to create. The denizens of this world are certified Funky Little Friends, ranging from anthropomorphic banana people, to giant bees that carry advertisements like sky-writers. To top off these immaculate vibes, the game’s soundtrack is unobtrusive, but sets a great tone for fun, low-stakes, but exciting skateboarding. 

That’s the aim with this third iteration in the OlliOlli series. While the previous two entries focused on the fact that skateboarding is a difficult sport to master, or even learn, OlliOlli World is all about embracing the fact that skateboarding is fun. 

“When we got our team together and started out making OlliOlii World, our goal was to build on the ultra addictive flow state loop from OlliOlli 1 and 2 with a more accessible, and welcoming tone,” said Creative Director John Ribbins. “Retaining our focus on deep and challenging gameplay, while at the same time making it fun, instead of punitive to learn.”

From my time with the demo, it seems like they were largely successful. While I cannot tell you the number of times I absolutely ate shit while attempting a jump, grind, or wall ride combo, I kept coming back over and over because playing it was that much fun and I felt driven to learn how to nail the obstacles I was missing. This is made easier by Chiffon, who as the Skate Wizard is able to resurrect you should you wreck yourself. As you progress through a course, Chiffon will create checkpoints for you to return to should the worst happen, so you don’t have to start from the top of the course if you make a mistake.

Having this kind of safety net makes it so players like me–who are maybe not the fastest or most skilled when it comes to the game’s quick flick controls–are still able to make it through a course relatively unperturbed. But those who are looking for the deeper, more challenging parts of OlliOlli World’s predecessors shouldn’t be missing anything either. Every course is scored, and has a challenge to complete it perfectly without having to use one of Chiffon’s checkpoints. On top of that, Gnarly Mike’s list of additional challenges can provide more difficulty for anyone looking to take on more advanced moves. Once you learn how to switch paths, even more options open up as alternate routes have other little surprises and challenges hidden along them. 

From what I can tell, OlliOlli World has something for everyone who’s interested in skateboarding games, or even just more chill experiences in general. While trying to land a particularly nasty part of a course can leave you on the edge of your seat, it’s never really a high-stakes or stressful experience. You may be on your way towards becoming the next Skate Wizard, but no one expects perfection. I was already excited for this game, but the demo has left me hungry for my next trip to Radlandia, when the full map is at my disposal.