OlliOlli World Preview: Grind for Fun

Written by Chad

June 18, 2021

Private Division and Roll7 gave us a sneak peek at their upcoming skateboarding game OlliOlli World, and here are our impressions of the game.

Skateboarding games are one of those fun games that require skills and quick reaction to score big points, quite a handful of these games exist throughout the years as previous variants favored being realistic instead of engaging gameplay. Roll7 created the OlliOlli series that simplified its visuals and focused more on exciting gameplay, now they are releasing their latest installment called OlliOlli World which will be available later this Fall, publisher Private Division gave us an opportunity to have a sneak peek of their gameplay and these are our initial impressions of the game.

Take note that the demo of OlliOlli World provided by Private Division is still in its Pre-Alpha phase, so there will be some possible changes in the game on its final version.

The first thing you’ll notice if you’ve played the previous OlliOlli games is the visuals, Roll7 went on with cel-shaded visuals from the 2D pixel art aesthetics from the first two games and I think it was the best decision, as the new aesthetics help make the characters pop out and the locations more recognizable.

Its biggest highlight of course is the gameplay, OlliOlli World focuses on simplistic controls in executing tricks, you build up your speed by pressing the A button, you hold your left analog stick in any direction then let go of it in any direction to execute a trick move, flicking your left analog stick in different ways will let you perform different tricks. As you stroll through any stage, you can grind on rails or even do wallrides by holding your left analog stick in any direction as you jump through grindable objects and certain walls. The best way to get a high score in each level is to chain your tricks with grinds or wallrides and continue mixing them up in succession, the more you chain, the higher your score multiplier will become.

The execution of tricks was a lot easier as compared with its predecessors where you need to press the A button at the right time when landing on the ground to avoid falling which will have an impact on your score. This allows players to focus on chaining more tricks without the worry of having to do perfect landings all the time. There are other tricks that weren’t introduced yet in the in-game tutorials but can be executed in the demo if you’re already familiar with skateboarding, such example was doing manuals that can help build up higher score multipliers, though it’s possible that this will be introduced in later parts of the game in the full version.

The demo has two large areas where each has its own set of stage levels to complete, clearing a stage requires reaching the goal and there are side objectives such as beating the scores of local heroes on the stage, and Mike’s Challenges where you accomplish other requirements such as landing consecutive combos, finishing the stage without performing an ollie or obtaining a certain amount of items. The new change for OlliOlli World is the ability to switch lanes in some stages, you can switch to a different lane by pressing the Y button when you reach a fork lane. Though there is no penalty when you opt not to switch to a different lane, it opens new areas that provide a spot for you to rack up more points and a good way to experiment in your playthrough. Each stage now has checkpoints that make your session less stressful whenever you fall from a pitfall or fall off from a flight of stairs, in the previous games it can get annoying when you have to start from the beginning of the stage when you screwed up your trick and tumble just as you’re about to reach the finish line. You can also opt to restart from the beginning by holding the X button, though I hope there was a confirmation screen to pop out when you accidentally press the X button as it can be very frustrating if you managed to have a high score and then suddenly going back to the checkpoint and losing your points.

So far there are still a lot of features that aren’t available on the demo, such as customizing your character and other stages, and we can’t wait to see the final version of the game and we’ll probably do a review for that very soon. OlliOlli World becomes available on Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch this Fall.

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