Rollerdrome

I was the Lead Game Designer on Rollerdrome, a fast-paced skater-shooter that combines the flowy skating movement of THPS with the push-forward combat-chess of DOOM Eternal.

MY ROLE

Embedded Hype-man – Continually propelled enthusiasm and energy of the team in daily stand-ups and weekly team playthroughs.

Game Design – Working in lock-step with the Creative Director, I was responsible for driving all aspects of the game design including combat design, weapons, enemy behaviour, 3Cs, game-feel, level design, progression systems and balancing.

Enemy Design – Shaped the behaviours for all 7 in-game enemies, aiming for Orthogonal Unit Differentiation, meaning every enemy units presence on the battlefield will influence player behaviour in different ways; how they through the arena to avoid hazards, which enemies to prioritise, which weapons to use, etc

Weapon Design – Honed 4 distinct weapons, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, making each one the the perfect tool to use in a variety different combat situations, for instance: Pistols are useless against armoured enemies but perfect against evasive enemies, as well as for taking out rockets and mines!

Super Reflex – Introduced the concept of Perfect Dodge + Super Reflex, the one-two punch of game mechanics that defines the moment-to-moment gameplay and empowers players to turn defence into offence!

3Cs – Everything from the 6-million dollar man hit-stop when you do a Perfect Dodge, the the beefy shift in gunshot SFX/VFX when you engage Super Reflex, the grace-time after your auto-lock disengages (but it still keeps working) and the curve on the Slugshot indicator; that’s all me baby! 😎

Combo System – Design for our combo system which is centred around eliminating enemies as a primary goal to emphasise the games combat-first philosophy.

Reloading – Fundamental re-work of the reload mechanic, to create “inhale and exhale” rhythm to the combat.

Playtesting & Balancing – Meticulous refinement of mechanics and difficulty through extensive observed playtesting.

Management – Managed three designers: two level designers, one game designer.

REVIEWS

The game reviewed favourably and holds an 81% score on Metacritic and an 80% score on Opencritic.

“One of the best to ever do it. Rollerdrome is an action showstopper. 94/100”

– Sam Greer, PC Gamer, Aug 2023

VIDEO ESSAYS

We had some fantastic write ups from some of our favourite youtubers including Skill Up, Jake Baldino and GMTK but the icing on the was this video from Raycevick. It does a phenomenal job of validating every decision we made along the way.

Special shout-out to To Games It May Concern for this extremely thoughtful piece. You make us sound like geniuses, but we’re really not. We just did what felt right at the time.

AWARDS

We won a few awards, including the BAFTA for Best British Game in 2023 and I was over-the-moon to be asked to make the acceptance speech on behalf of the team.

WRAP IT UP

Working on Rollerdrome was hands-down the highlight of my career so far.

I’m incredibly grateful to have been part of such a wonderful team making an incredible game. We proved you can ship a great game, on-time, on-budget, with no crunch and have fun doing it.

I hope we get to do it again some day.