Earlier this month Private Division and Roll7 released Finding the Flowzone, the second and latest DLC expansion for OlliOlli World. This wonderful expansion takes players to the Flowzone layer, a world in the clouds filled with new characters, challenges and a new way to ride the wind while searching for the hidden city of Radlantis.
Similar to the VOID Riders expansion, you’ll unlock this DLC by playing a new level in an existing area – in this case, Sunshine Valley. There you sync up with your regular team and a skate master who teach you how to skate through wind zones to catch more air. As Gnarly Mike says: “You just get into the wind zone and it will push you in the direction it’s blowing.”
But riding in these wind zones is much more than getting an extra speed boost (and you do get a boost); you can also skate against wind currents that blow against you, that turn you to skate in the opposite direction, or even push you off course. It’s a new gameplay mechanic in this DLC, similar to the pull beams in VOID Riders, but I honestly might even like the wind zones better. In addition to the significant speed boost and change of direction in the air, the developers were able to find extremely inventive ways to implement the wind zones, creating a completely new riding experience for OlliOlli World: Finding the Flowzone.
After completing the introductory level, you’ll meet a new team, the Radmospheric Explorers, which consists of the pirate Scavenger, the astro-cartographer Licht and the weather expert Professor Planks. This bickering trio team up to search for Radlantis, the lost city of Godz, and stop B.B. Hopper, a business toad, from exploiting the city. But they’re missing one important team member – a windmill like you! The only hitch? Radlantis isn’t in Radland; it’s hidden in The Flowzone Layer, a continent of clouds filled with all sorts of rad skateboarding challenges (as well as missing map parts for Radlantis).
Within the Flowzone Layer, there are four separate areas – feathered, heap, halo and layer, each containing three levels. And within these levels there are three map pieces that you must collect in order to progress through the Flowzone layer. There are 36 map pieces to find in total, but you don’t need to collect them all to find Radlantis. This is good news for players like me because the new courses will give you a chance to test all your skating skills. For the record, I was only able to collect 32/36 pieces before writing this review and I tried really hard to collect them all.
It looks like the developers knew that this DLC would be more challenging for some players, so they added “Skate at your own risk!” warning labels at the beginning of key levels to detail what skills you need to know to successfully skate the Gnarly and Burly routes to collect all the map pieces – and yes, the Burly routes are much more intense than the Gnarly routes.