I’ve been thinking a lot about how to define Roll7 because actually, it’s quite hard to do. You could call it the OlliOlli studio but would that really be correct, because what about Rollerdrome? What about Laser League? What about Not a Hero? You’d miss half of what the studio has done.
Maybe it’s that Roll7 is an inventor; I like that. Because think about it: who knew 2D skateboarding could be a thing before OlliOlli came along? Hold the down button and release it to perform an ollie – it’s the foundation of the game. Then gradually layer on other moves and you have an experience that feels more like playing with a tiny finger skateboard than a video game.
And who could have predicted Laser League? It had nothing at all to do with OlliOlli, so where did it come from? It was a multiplayer game where two teams of three fought in small arenas, to activate spinning lasers that would fry the other team. It was unusual. But play it and any trepidation about the idea vanished. Laser League was immediate fun. It’s just a shame it doesn’t seem to be playable anywhere any more.
Then there’s Rollerdrome – and I don’t think I’ve ever played a game like Rollerdrome. A game that marries roller skating and shooting. A game where you skate around arenas, slow-mo annihilating enemies while launching yourself into the air to perform tricks to reload your guns. The concept is so wild it almost makes you laugh. Yet, again, the moment you have it in your hands it makes sense, almost as if there was never any doubt it would work.
Roll7 is an inventor, then, but there’s something else linking the games too. It’s an attitude and an approach, an apparent desire to bring ideas to the fore only if they’re fun first, then everything else second. Maybe that’s why the games can seem so disparate yet, when they’re in your hand, feel so similar. You know a Roll7 game by the feel of it. And it’s this knack of being able to introduce completely new ideas to us, and then utterly convince them of us, that so excites me, because the next Roll7 game could be anything but I already know I’ll want it.