Have you ever played a game solo and had the impression that you’ve mastered it, only to jump online and discover how it’s really meant to be played? That was my experience with new parkour sim Rooftops & Alleys, believing I had a firm grasp on getting around with style, only to be made a figurative fool of when playing online. Nobody I’ve played with has been infallible to the occasional head slam or mistimed jump though. Indeed, and like the Tony Hawk’s games before it, this isn’t something you’ll master in an evening – and that’s despite the trailer making gracefully traversing urban environments look easy.
Two tutorials are on hand to introduce you to the world of parkour free running, lasting just a couple of minutes each. The controls are unintuitive at first, heavily reliant on using the trigger buttons to sprint, wall run and vault, but gradually become second nature, with the need to roll when landing tricks and the ability to apply force to jumps adding further nuance. Realism is the focus, meaning you can’t wall run indefinitely and momentum is needed before performing a flip or cartwheel. Every failure is accompanied by failing limbs, allowing for comparisons with ragdoll sandbox games.
There’s also a first-person view, and a few features to help get around such as the ability to turn into a pigeon – with each of the six maps having an avian chum to find – and being able to place respawn points. If you’re trying to reach a certain area, being able to instantly transport to a freshly placed beacon is a godsend.
Solo mode is curiously open-ended, with all six maps available from the outset, and no campaign or story mode to speak of. Each contains several time trial and trick attack score challenges to beat in return for new cosmetics, with the main menu featuring a breakdown of your total progress. Time trials are mostly quite tricky – you may be able to bag a bronze medal on your first try, whereas silver and gold medals require a few attempts. Score challenges are less exciting, as they take place in shrinking circles, meaning you’ll eventually be left with little room to leap, often forcing you to perform cartwheels to reach a target score. Aside from the aforementioned pigeons to find, and obviously a desire to explore maps fully for ideal trick locations, that’s about your lot for solo mode. More collectables and mission objective types would have been appreciated.
As hinted, Rooftops & Alleys comes alive when played online; and it’s this mode attention is drawn to, being the main selling point. You’re able to converse with others using emojis and pre-written text and either join or host games, before taking on multiplayer modes with three other players such as tag and capture the flag. Tag matches last ten minutes, and whoever was ‘it’ for the least amount of time is the winner. The adrenaline gauge comes into play heavily here, making it possible to catch up to anyone in your sights. Online mode’s social and competitive elements propels the experience to new heights, while also being surprisingly chill; largely thanks to the lo-fi beats and the game’s ‘dust yourself off and try again’ nature.
Also notable is how well designed the six maps are, with no two alike. There’s a colourful Mediterranean village with narrow alleys ripe for wall running, a construction site with a partly built tower to scale, a linear (narrow) cargo ship with hanging containers, a school with a variety of facilities and modern art structures to leap across, an indoor purpose-built parkour park, and an abandoned steel yard with beams to traverse. All of these can be played at different times of day, and there’s a photo mode if you fancy snapping some of the sights.
There’s a good use of colour throughout, such as the cargo ship being filled with different coloured containers, and a few alluring views when reaching the highest points of a map. The maps are also coated in unique graffiti, with a few examples raising a grin.
As a whole, the best way to describe Rooftops & Alleys is ‘focused’. It comes from a small team clearly passionate about making the best experience, resulting in something refined in the areas that matter the most, but a bit lacking when it comes to extras. It’s also a peculiarly quiet experience with nothing in the way of NPC chatter or atmospheric background noise, such as birdsong or traffic. Minor camera issues when navigating narrow areas aside, it manages to perfect the feel of free running, and chaining wall runs, tricks and vaults feels very satisfying – which was presumably the developer’s main goal when starting this project. It’s not an easy recommendation for solo gamers, but those looking for a new online hangout will find something of worth here.
ML Media/Shine Group’s Rooftops & Alleys: The Parkour Game is out now on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch and PC. Published by Radical Theory/Shine Group.