Since the production of the first two chapters of OlliOlli, the Roll7 team has shown a marked propensity for the realization of projects – with digital skateboarding – with a high level of challenge. An element in clear contrast with a colourful and at times picturesque graphic rendering, in a pad-in-hand experience capable of taking the unconscious by surprise and unleashing an incredible sense of satisfaction for the more daring.
The latest work of the British software house OlliOlli World has managed to expand the brand’s ambitions and, as highlighted in our review, has proved to be one of the most welcome surprises of 2022 for the indie landscape and beyond.
Precisely for this reason, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on its latest DLC called Finding the Flowzone, aware of having a new opportunity to go back to living a colourful adventure and test ourselves with its crazy tracks to climb the various rankings.
Let’s see how it went.
Looking for Radlantis
The narrative of Finding the Flowzone totally reflects the peculiar style used in the base game, between light and carefree tones capable of making the player’s mind travel from one track to another.
There is no shortage of notions and information that can be captured from the dialogues before starting to whiz around the track, but they succeed far from the obvious task of not boring the player, letting themselves be read with pleasure.
After having managed to ascend to Gnirvana and gain the respect of the skate deities known on OlliOlli World, we can get to know a new extravagant triptych of characters called the Radmospheric Three, about to sail into the clouds with their flying vessel in search of the mysterious Radlantis. A city considered a cult for fans of the board on wheels for its incredibly demanding challenges, as well as its daily events ready to enliven the hearts of the most competitive players.
To reach Radlantis it is necessary to find the fragments of the map scattered throughout the Flowzone by a mysterious rival, retracing various circuits made in the skies of those same picturesque biomes faced in the base game. An interesting idea that allows you to discover small and interesting gems of the various regions that make up the kingdom of Radlandia and that underline the team’s ability to create tracks that are as fascinating as they are challenging.
On balance, it took us a handful of hours to complete the levels available for Finding the Flowzone, but if you think that this means exhausting the experience offered for the OlliOlli World DLC in question, you could be making a huge mistake.
Finding all 36 fragments of the map will take many more hours, forcing the player to discover various secondary paths and experiment with tricks capable of skyrocketing the points multiplier. Too bad that the team has not decided for this DLC to return to focus on the structure of the secondary missions that we had so much appreciated in the original title, and despite the presence of a large number of optional challenges, this implementation would have been just the icing on the cake.
From the point of view of mere gameplay, Finding the Flowzone not only takes up the same style that is extremely familiar to players who have stripped OlliOlli World, but embellishes it through the introduction of Windzones. These are gusts of wind – scattered among the various tracks – which, as the player passes, slow them down and abruptly change their direction both vertically and horizontally.
We were afraid it was a modification capable of altering the formula of the base game that we had appreciated without reservations, but after numerous prolonged sessions, we reassure how well they were balanced between the various ramifications present in the circuits. All this makes some sections of the various courses even more frenetic and demanding than they were in the past, forcing the player to make a greater mnemonic effort to learn the various peculiarities of each path encountered.
Obviously Finding the Flowzone is content that – right from the first races – forces the player to take advantage of tricks and skills learned with difficulty in the various areas of Radlandia, presenting itself as punitive content against all those players who decide to proceed carelessly.
