"While we were here, it was proper grimy, the office was super grimy, and there wasn't anywhere to go for a coffee or a drink. "It's quite amazing being back here in 2019," says Simon Bennett, one of roll7's founders who in the intervening years had moved to Cornwall before south London pulled him back in again. Which is what brings me back on a cold February afternoon to a Deptford that's almost unrecognisable, all craft beer shops and pop-up galleries, to meet in the obnoxiously named Coffee Stories. And now, alongside its sequel, it's making a belated outing on Nintendo's Switch. OlliOlli remains one of the very best, though, going on to bag a BAFTA and no small amount of success. There's a spark there that's been evident in every roll7 game since, leading me to seek out their games in much the same way I used to seek out every Treasure release through the 90s. I was dazzled by OlliOlli, the stylish, wonderfully playable 2D skating game, back then, and I'm still bowled over by it now. With a background in music and community projects, chance had led them to embark on their very first console game.Īnd what a game it was. Working amongst the clutter was the small team known as roll7 who, I'm sure they won't mind me saying, didn't seem entirely sure of what they were doing. It was everything you'd hope a Deptford game developer would be a stone's throw from Christopher Marlowe's gravestone and some of the dirtier banks of the Thames, the office was up a chilly, yellowing staircase, through a dark hallway and into a top floor that was positively filthy. Isn't it just terrifying how much can change in just over five years? Back in the summer of 2013, I made the short trip on the DLR from Lewisham to Deptford to follow up on an email that had been blindly submitted to Eurogamer's generic inbox: a Vita game being made in the very heart of south east London? This I had to see.
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