In 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. (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. They had about 10 people working with them back then; now they’re directors of a studio of 80.
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. 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.
