One More Go

The radio is playing, not that you’re paying it any attention. The players brief is over and you’re ready to start your maiden season in the league. You’re the last to run, so you wait in the locker room to be called, the sound of the crowd bleeding through the walls and into your bones. This is a chance to make a name for yourself, clear some debt, or at least let the insurers clear your family’s debt if…

It’s time, you skate through the changing room door and into the arena. The crowd erupts into violent applause, cheering for the blood about to be spilled.

Dressed up like a sports game, Rollerdrome is a deadly ballet, albeit on roller skates. Players search for the perfect performance, stringing together sequences of tricks, kills, and perfect evades to keep the scoreboard building. Players must battle through waves of house players, roadbumps to our protagonist Kara Hassan, completing stage specific challenges in order to unlock the next round of the competition. Rounds are punctuated by interstitial narrative sections, first person spaces where kara can discover the motivations of her fellow competitors and the sport’s governing body. They do a good job of adding colour and character to an otherwise clinical world, but what I admire most is how these sections transition straight into the next stage of the league, with Kara skating down a tunnel or a long ramp before leaping into the fray, guns drawn.

Rollerdrome is just as much about avoiding gunfire as it is distributing it, it doesn’t take long before players are overwhelmed by the volume of threats on screen. Kara bounces between ramps and grind rails, rolling and weaving, dodging at the last second to trigger a burst of slow motion and a supercharged volley of fire. Pulling the triggers until the final bullets are expelled with a clear ring to alert players that their attack is now toothless. Guns are reloaded by performing grabs, grinds, and spins; and serve to keep players rolling around the arena, switching between attack and defence. When at its best Rollerdrome looks like a routine, with Kara soaring through the air above enemies, avoiding their attack, countering with a deadly return, and all the while twirling elegantly, stocking up for the next engagement. Players’ scores are multiplied by successive kills, but will reset after a pause in action, so players are encouraged to chart a course through the arena, picking their targets and then dancing beyond them, juggling the ingame tricktionary and weapon selection to maximise both their damage output and their overall score.

Each stage takes place in a bespoke arena, something akin to the early levels of the Tony Hawk’s series with unique ramps, tokens, and challenges to hit. Levels are made progressively more difficult by the introduction of varied enemy types, each with their own attack patterns and weaknesses, but it’s the sheer volume of enemies thrown at you that ramp up the challenge in later levels. It strays too far into the chaotic, with later stages becoming an exercise in how quickly you can react, rather than how expertly can you impose yourself in each scenario. There’s no time left to consider what comes next, just hit dodge when you can, swirl the camera looking for targets, and hope you can make it to the end of the stage. It’s a shame, because in the opening stages I was all in on Rollerdrome‘s promise, its stylized graphical presentation, an incredible soundtrack, and its punctuating sound design all build towards something that looks and feels super slick, but ultimately, it’s let down by its chaotic and at times messy progression. The game is built on excellent foundations, it plays well and is a joy to control, so I would love to see what Roll7 could do with a sequel.