Lore and legends behind The Lost City of Radlantis and Gail Force

Hi everyone – I’m Jemima, I’m a writer here at Roll7 and I’ve been asked to share some details about the process of creating our latest OlliOlli world Expansion – Find the flow zone. So here’s a quick rundown of how we developed the setting and characters – and how the city of Radlantis has evolved from an underwater metropolis to a skateboarding paradise in the skies!

Let’s start at the beginning; when we started working on the second OlliOlli world Expansion was the first thing we knew it would play underwater. You might find – based on the dominance of clouds on the logo and the flying ship on the cover – that in the end that didn’t happen! But when we started, we worked on the concept of an underwater adventure.

The idea of ​​a deep-sea skater’s paradise immediately made us think of Atlantis, the mythical city that is said to have disappeared beneath the waves in ancient times. In between we explored currents, tides and various sea creatures (we developed a particular fondness for slugsalso known as sea ​​snails) we delved deep into the lore of Atlantis. I ended up reading a lot of Plato as he was the first to write about the myth of Atlantis – I have to say when I started writing for an all ages skating game I didn’t expect that this would be necessary to study ancient Greek philosophy! I’m not complaining because it was pretty interesting stuff (and possibly the first time my history degree has really come in handy in my daily life). Anyway, the ancient Greek influence is part of what led us to the idea of ​​an ice skating competition – the idea being that this adventure would end with some kind of ice skating olympiads held deep under the water by the people of Radlantis.

With this in mind, we created the Radlantis Three – the skate crew that joins the player in search of Radlantis. Lizz (lead narrative designer, writer, probably the coolest person ever) worked on Squid and Christopher Licht, and I worked on creating Professor Planks. We liked the idea of ​​a diverse team that doesn’t always understand each other, but is united by a common goal. They’re all explorers in a way, but they bring different things with them – Squid is a seasoned sea captain, Licht is an astrologer and mystic, and Planks does research for her university… or maybe just avoiding her students! We wanted this new trio to have a different feel to the companions you have in the base game so they have a little more cantankerous energy. It’s still very light-hearted and fun, but it’s a slight change of pace from the original crew’s “old friends” dynamic.

So there we were, happily researching and planning to create an underwater cityscape filled with happy sea creatures and cool new skateboarding buddies – and then everything changed…

In the middle of development we decided we needed to change direction and move the setting to a city in the clouds. Why? Well, it turns out that from a gameplay perspective, skating underwater just isn’t as fun as skating through the sky, powered by the powerful wind zones for bigger air, cooler tricks, and higher scores. Also, getting things into the atmosphere worked a lot better from the art style and perspective of the map room. So a change of direction was in order – but all was not lost! We loved the idea of ​​a flying ship – the characters we workshopped seemed even cooler above the clouds. Placing Radlantis over Radlandia instead of under the sea worked, and we were also able to keep the skate competition angle.

What we really needed was a new skate god to meet at the end of the expansion – someone who reflected the new sky-based setting. And so Lizz created Gail Force – a deity who controls the wind and sky over Radlandia. Gail Force is super funny, very lively and she definitely lives up to her name! She is a force of nature. We also decided to include BB Hopper and some Skate Godz from the main game in the expansion – with so many fun new characters to meet, it was important to include some familiar faces as well. True, this is a separate story from the main plot of OlliOlli worldit’s nice for players to still feel like they’re exploring a cohesive environment that’s connected to the world.

With all the world building and character creation out of the way, it was just a matter of writing suitably silly dialogue and getting it into the game. That really took ages! We worked very hard on it, but it was mostly about staring at blank pages and swearing at the sky, so it’s not very interesting to read about. We also did a lot of work with the graphics team to bring the environments, characters and animations to life and when everything was ready we sent it off for translation so fans all over the world can enjoy the game. And now – many, many months later – you all have a chance to explore the Flowzone, find Radlantis, and maybe even win a trophy in a competition hosted by the Skate Godz themselves…

We hope you enjoy playing this expansion as much as we enjoyed writing it. Bon voyage, good luck and happy skating!