Rooftops & Alleys

Rooftops & Alleys was provided by MLMEDIA for review. Thank you!

This was reviewed on the 1.0 version of the game.

I feel like the Parkour game genre has been a bit of a missed opportunity for a while now. Sure, we had the likes of Mirror's Edge, but we haven't had much in the way of a game that focuses on quick and smooth movement, combined with tricks in a free-roaming environment. Rooftops & Alleys aims to fix that, and the best comparison I can make is that this is essentially Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but with parkour.

Rooftops & Alleys' concept is a solid one, and it plays pretty well! The controls may take some getting used to, but once you are, the game isn't too complicated to control. There are a few button combos to remember to pull off moves like quickly vaulting over objects, climbing up ledges quickly, and especially performing mid-air tricks, but the game strikes a balance between having enough depth that it takes skill to perfect and not being overly complicated, making it frustrating to learn. Still, once it sticks, it feels very satisfying.

The game takes place across a series of 6 maps, all free-roam environments which you can explore and find challenges within. The maps are fairly small, and each has 8 challenges. These challenges are either time trials, where you have to navigate the course using your parkour skills quickly, or trick rushes, where you have a certain amount of time to pull off some cool parkour tricks like flips and rolls, in an ever-decreasing arena.

There are 30 time trials and 18 trick rushes. On the surface, it doesn't sound like a lot, but they are tough, and you will need to have a pretty good mastery over the controls to get gold on each challenge. There aren't any leaderboards. Once you've beaten the gold medal time, there's not too much point in playing the challenge again, which is a real shame and a huge missed opportunity for a game reliant on scores and times.

The game supports multiplayer for up to 4 players, adding a degree of replayability through game modes such as TAG and CTF. You can also do a freeplay session online, where you can mess around and have some fun.

The movement itself does feel pretty fluid and smooth. Managing to string together moves is satisfying and allows you to maintain your speed. However, you get annoyed with yourself when you mistime or forget a button combination, causing you to slow down at a certain point. There's also ragdoll physics in the game for when you make a mistake.

The game can also be played in first-person, but even though I'm someone who generally doesn't suffer from motion sickness, not even in VR, I almost instantly felt nauseous when attempting to play the game in this mode. The FoV is set extremely high (I would guess around 130-140), which creates a weird effect on the camera lens, which I wasn't able to deal with. The FoV is also not adjustable.

Enjoyment of Rooftops & Alleys is probably going to come from mastering the controls and figuring out how to go fast. Once you've done that, there are a few challenges to beat, and you're done. A skilled player could complete every piece of content in the game in under 2 hours. There's a multiplayer mode, but it's a bit sparse in terms of players, with a maximum of 10 players online when I was playing. Hopefully, that picks up, but you may struggle to find others to play with once you're done with the minimal solo content.

Rooftops & Alleys - Steam Deck Performance

Rooftops & Alleys works pretty well on the Steam Deck. The controls are great on a controller or gamepad, and the game fills the Steam Deck's display without black borders.

I recommend running the game at "Medium" settings, with a 60 FPS limit enabled using the in-game limiter. I wouldn't play this game at a frame rate below 60 FPS due to its precise nature, as it kind of ruins the flow.

Some maps can play on High, but if you do want every map to play at a locked 60, then Medium is the way to go.

As for power draw, the game tends to use around 15W-17W, giving us about 3-3.5 hours of battery life on a Steam Deck OLED, and around 2-2.5 hours on an LCD model. Temperatures were around 60C.

Accessibility:

Rooftops & Alleys offers limited accessibility options, primarily focused on alleviating motion sickness while playing in first-person mode.

Conclusion:

Rooftops & Alleys might best be enjoyed online, provided you can find other players. There is some solo content, but once you have a grasp of the controls, it's just a few short (1 Minute or so) challenges for you to complete. There are no leaderboards and no "career" mode of any sort for progression, which is a bit of a shame.

As for how Rooftops & Alleys runs on Steam Deck, it runs pretty well, with the game holding 60 FPS in all scenarios at Medium settings, and the controls are also ideally suited for controllers.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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