OlliOlli World devs share their perfect skate park recipe

digitaltrends.com:

OlliOlli World delights as a side-scrolling skateboarding game where players travel through the land of Radlandia in order to become a skate wizard and enter the mystical land of Gnarvana. It puts players into a flow state where they tune out of everything else and focus solely on its mesmerizing gameplay. As the game pulls this off so well, it’s not surprising that developers got caught up in that feeling when designing OlliOlli World‘s masterful levels.

“When you’re designing a level, you’re entering a flow state as you build this thing,” Senior Designer Sam Robinson told Digital Trends in an interview prior to OlliOlli World‘s launch. “So then the next thing you decide to implement is what you feel is right. It’s almost like you stop making conscious decisions. You may put a slope in, so then you put a ramp, and then that takes you to an unexpectedly high place, so now you’ll put something up there.”

He added: “It’s almost like the game is telling you how it wants to be laid out as you’re making it.”

OlliOlli World is one of the first critically acclaimed indie games of 2022, with fantastic levels matching the quality of games like Celeste or Sonic Mania. I wanted to learn just what makes the game tick, and Sam Robinson revealed how the structure of OlliOlli World’s levels ensures players will never want to put the game down.

Robinson told Digital Trends that he knows exactly what makes an excellent OlliOlli World level: Its identity. “Identity makes the level feel like a character in the world,” he said. “Even before it has been altered and is still in its gray box state. You can look at it and go, ‘I know what that level is.'”

“When you’re designing a level, you’re entering a flow state as you build this thing …”

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