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Summary

Rollerdrome is a 3rd person action shooter game that combines Tony Hawk's Pro Skater-esque movement, levels and challenges with a score grading system typical to some spectacle fighters.

In detail

The game takes places in a retro future, where a violent roller derby has become a popular spectator sport ala The Running Man. There is an attempt at keeping some narrative going around that theme, but in its core the main campaign consists of a total of 11 arena fights with a couple of them having a boss fight in a secondary arena.
There is a brief tutorial sequence to get to know the controls at start, but rather quickly you're thrown into the first batch of four levels. Basic game loop is to not only shoot the enemies that spawn at each arena, but also perform tricks or dodges as those give you ammo to do so. Rinse and repeat until all spawned enemies have been killed, while hopefully managing to do it fast enough to keep a combo going.
Completing levels sometimes opens up new weapons and the game introduces some of the movement mechanics and harder enemies gradually at later stages to avoid overwhelming the player. Each arena is placed full of ramps, rails and other obstacles that support the momentum forward as best as possible and there is a decent, synthwave type soundtrack that overall fits the theme nicely.
However, like in Tony Hawk, completing a level does not necessarily mean you get progress to the next level batch if you have not completed enough challenges on the previous batch. Luckily the challenges are rather straightforward to complete and doing all of them in the first set allows you to mostly skip them in the later stages. Still, the challenges are where my main issue with the game is: Completing them does not feel rewarding.
Moment-to-moment gameplay feels mostly fluid and executing perfect dodges and aiming shots in slow motion can be a lot of fun at times, but there is constantly the feeling that you're not doing the correct things or using the right weapons, which most likely leads to you not getting any of the challenges done, your combo ending and a bad score and grade at the end.
Once all 4 stages of the championship containing the 11 levels are unlocked and done, a new game plus -mode opens where you can play through the same levels again, but with more and tougher enemies and some new score and time challenges. I already gave up on completing the regular challenges during the main campaign once the required amount to proceed was done and I think I might've had enough of the game altogether at this point.

Recommendation

I first saw Rollerdrome as an early concept work years ago in a tweet that showcased a roller skating figure doing a grab trick from a ramp, jumping and shooting someone with a shotgun in a slow-mo sequence. That short 10 second animation looked cool and promising and I still feel like there is a good game somewhere in that concept, which unfortunately was not discovered during the development, at least not fully. While the game generally feels fun to play, with the main focus being the challenges and rather small arena combat and the expected longevity being grind for high scores, I feel there is not enough here for a somewhat casual gamer to enjoy. I would still be interested in a sequel though.