Must know
What is it? A narrative and sports management game
Developer: Open Lab Games
Publisher: Open Lab Games
Date of publication: January 26, 2023
Judged by: 64-bit Windows 10, Nvidia GeForce GTX-970, Intel i7-4790K, 16 GB RAM
multiplayer? no
Link: Official site (opens in new tab)
Anyone who knows me would be surprised to discover that I’ve never actually played roller derby. Violence on wheels? Seems like my thing. Fortunately, Roller Drama has come to offer me not only a tantalizing taste of the sport itself, but the drama and camaraderie that surrounds it. When it’s not being addressed by its own UI flaws or inscrutable puzzles, Roller Drama skates on its charming characters, art style, and the almost excruciating responsibility of being a team coach.
You take on the role of Joan ‘Jeanne D’Arc’ Galliano, a coach of a women’s roller derby team who have moved into the same house together. The game is split between the hijinks to keep your team, plus their personal lives, in order and win matches. It’s part management game, part visual novel; although one that appears to have no branching paths. The linearity isn’t an issue, but it means the writing and small dialogue choices should do most of the work in convincing you that your particular style of coaching is working. It doesn’t always work out. However, if that’s the case, you’re drawn to the role of Joan, feel responsible for the women in your care, and worry about how to talk to them.
Relationships in games are usually defined by simply wanting characters to like you, but in Roller Drama, as a coach, you also worry about being respected and trusted. This role gives the story an interesting angle that made me think about choices beyond trying to get on everyone’s good side. Sometimes I was too strict and lost a player’s trust or spent too much time flattering him without winning his respect.
Jamming
In matches, you can bow your head to strategy. From above, watch the game play out in real time, giving direct input to your jammer (the player running the track and scoring) while giving instructions to the rest of your team who must balance to break through the enemy defenses, protect their jammer and slow down the opponent’s jammer. On the surface it seems simple, but timing and tactics are really hard to get right – and you’ll need to manage your team’s energy levels so they don’t get depleted before the match is over. There’s a separate practice mode, but throughout the story you’ll learn to get to grips with your team and slowly find your synergy so you can win big in the Grand Final.
That wouldn’t work at all if your team wasn’t compelling, but luckily they’re a colorful, diverse bunch. All terribly flawed. To accommodate them, you have to work around their problems very carefully, as direct confrontation is rarely the solution to problems here. Upsetting someone too much means they leave the team, and that’s game over. However, rather than a subtle reflection on the team’s idiosyncrasies, Roller Drama is an absurdist, almost sitcom-esque series of comedies where you resolve conflict in genuinely odd ways. Like having a player, Anne, hand over a pair of skates she stole from a teammate, Portia, by making her hold a magical disco ball that gives her euphoria. Classic conflict resolution coach. The game is never short of imaginative in coming up with these unlikely scenarios.
Unfortunately, this does have a downside: the game’s puzzles are sometimes inscrutable. With such outlandish solutions, the logic can be hard to fathom, even when the game practically spells it out with the helpful advice of Joan’s supernatural therapist, a Shakespearean ghost who hangs around to provide feedback on your performance. Like I said, the game is strange. Almost every time I was given a new problem to solve, I was immediately lost and didn’t understand the specific sequence of actions to take to solve things. The aforementioned disco ball could be the solution to that puzzle, but getting to that point can be a bit of a slog with lots of steps and opportunities to fail, sending you back to the beginning of the section if you make a mistake. That means a lot of repeated conversations and trial and error.
While the rewards are entertaining, getting there can be a chore.
Given how arbitrary some of the solutions are, it feels like a more forgiving fail state should have been implemented, rather than a punitive reboot of the entire job. Where success results in these strange, humorous scenes, failure gives you nothing but another chance to make the right choices. The rigidity of the game undermines the role of a coach, as there is very little you can deviate from the game’s intended path. While the rewards are entertaining, getting there can be a chore.
In any case, Roller Drama is always fun to watch, even when you’re having a hard time. The character designs are fun, but it’s the large cross-section of their house that I especially love, like when I see all the characters competing to use the elevator. However, despite the charming visuals, the user interface is often unreadable, if not downright broken. Too often I thought I was selecting one option in a menu and then choosing one above or below it. This wasn’t groundbreaking, until a bug forced me to restart a chapter and instead of selecting my current chapter, I ended up selecting the very first chapter, erasing all my progress. As you might imagine, I was not happy..
Problems like this are a shame because when Roller Drama went its own way, I got really invested in taking care of my little team of misfits. Like her, Roller Drama has many shortcomings, but the heart and raw enthusiasm comes through.