10 Rollerdrome Tips to Beat the House Players in Style

Making your way through Matterhorn’s brutal arenas isn’t for the faint of heart, but our Rollerdrome tips will have you rolling and gunning your way through the House Players in no time.

Roll7’s latest flow-state, retro-styled action shooter is one for the score and adrenaline fiends, a unique bloodsport blending explosive combat and trick-heavy roller skating seasoned with the challenge-hunting we know and love from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

Rollerdrome does a fine job of teaching you all the basics, from how to grab and grind to stringing combos together for mammoth point hauls. But it only does this up to a point, leaving many of the game’s more advanced mechanics for the player to discover organically through play.

If you’re looking to hit the ground rolling, climb up the leaderboards, or pull off that perfect single combo run, we’re here to help with 10 top Rollerdrome tips.

Complete the Campaign to Unlock All Weapons

Rollerdrome has an action-packed campaign chronicling your journey through the Rollerdrome Championship. One of the first things you should do before trying to tick off all challenges for each arena is to complete the campaign. Doing so unlocks all of Rollerdrome’s weapons. You can then jump back to early levels with them in your arsenal to make life much easier.

Nail Dodging

House Players pack a punch, so learn and master the Perfect Dodge as soon as possible. Not only does a Perfect Dodge avoid enemy damage, but it grants a small ammo top-up, useful if you’re not in a position to bust out a trick but need a few shots to finish off an enemy. A Perfect Dodge also sets you up for Super Reflex, one of Rollerdrome’s most potent mechanics. We cover that a little lower in our Rollerdrome tips.

Rollerdrome’s Perfect Dodge timing is relatively easy to pull off. Tap the dodge button as soon as an enemy’s attack marker turns white. The marker appears differently depending on the enemy. For Snipers and Polybeams, for example, it’s a long laser-pointer-like sight beam, while Riot Guards project a large semi-circle onto the floor directly in front of them when you get close.

Perfecting general dodging is helpful to avoid beams, mines, missiles, and getting out of sticky situations damage-free, too.

Use the Right Weapon for Each Enemy – Rollerdrome Tips

Rollerdrome has seven different House Player types, and some will only go down when using specific weapons. Using the right ones can make easy work of Rollerdrome’s enemies. Firing the Dual Pistols at a Mecha Brute wastes ammo as they won’t cause any damage, while using the Grenade Launcher to take out a Grunt is overkill.

Here’s a quick rundown of tips for what works best based on our time with Rollerdrome:

• Grunt – Dual Pistols
• Sniper – Dual Pistols
• Warhead – Shotgun
• Polybeam – Dual Pistols, Z-11
• Riot Guard – Grenade Launcher, Z-11
• Mecha Brute – Grenade Launcher
• Stomper – Z-11

However, Rollerdrome plays best when mixing and matching weapons to make the most of their strengths. Don’t hesitate to fire off a grenade to stun an enemy, then swap back to the Dual Pistols to finish them off.

Abuse Super Reflex

Trigger Reflex Time (Kara’s bullet-time – back left trigger) immediately after a Perfect Dodge to activate Super Reflex. In Super Reflex, Kara causes substantially more damage regardless of the equipped weapon.

Master Perfect Dodge, then use and abuse Super Reflex any opportunity you get. I can’t stress how versatile and lethal it can be. If there’s one of these Rollerdrome tips you take away from all this, let it be this one.

Super Reflex is powerful enough to obliterate a Mecha Brute Flamethrower turret with only the Dual Pistols, making it particularly useful in the latter stages of the campaign when you’re up against Rollerdrome’s toughest House Players.

If you want more control over when and where you use Super Reflex, fire off a grenade and dodge through the explosion.

Keep Your Ammo Topped Up – Rollerdrome Tips

Rollerdrome explains that ammo is awarded for tricks at the discretion of judges. In Rollerdrome, ammo is life, so keep your stock of bullets, slugs, and grenades topped up by pulling off trick chains consisting of wallrides, grabs, flips, and grinds where and when you can.

What the game doesn’t explain is that a Perfect Dodge also banks you a small amount of ammo, so don’t be afraid to skate towards mines and within striking distance of bat-swinging Grunts, then dodge at the last moment to snap up more precious ammo.

Watch the Par Time

Nothing quite saps the joy out of pulling off a glorious combo string than seeing your final score slashed because you went over the Par Time.

To avoid this and snap up a handy score bonus, check and memorize the Par Time at the start of an arena run. Keep an eye on the timer throughout. If you’re on to the challenges, there’s no shame in restarting the arena if you aren’t going to finish under the Par Time.

Keep Those Combos Going – Rollerdrome Tips

Easier said than done, but keeping those combos going – ideally long enough to finish the run in a single combo – nets you the highest points. Keep your combo meter topped up by damaging House Players, killing them outright in quick succession, and collecting the 5 Combo tokens scattered throughout each arena.

It’s worth keeping a few easily-killed Grunts alive for moments when your combo meter is about to peter out. The same goes for the explosive canisters peppered through most arenas. Save these to finish tougher House Player varieties when your combo looks a little low.

We’ve pieced together a dedicated guide to nailing those combo strings. Head there for more in-depth tricks and tips.

Check the Tricktionary and Perform a Variety of Tricks

Hit pause, then navigate to the Tricktionary to find a breakdown of every grab and grind along with the corresponding controls to pull them off. Learning and busting out these moves becomes vital when trying to achieve high scores and secure a place atop the leader boards.

The judges love variety, so you’ll want to pull off as many different grabs, flips, and grinds variations as possible to score those big points. Also, judges award fewer points and ammo if you repeat the same tricks.

Turn Enemy Projectiles and Mines Against Them – Rollerdrome Tips

Navigating through a flurry of mines, sniper shots, and homing missiles quickly gets hectic. But in the same way that they can spell on early elimination from the Rollerdrome tournament for you, they’ll also damage House Players. Use their projectiles and attacks against them to get the upper hand and not waste precious ammo.

Homing missiles track your movement, so slot in behind an enemy just before they hit the ground. Coax a Riot Guard into laying down mines around themselves or another enemy, then shoot them. Draw a Mecha Brute to another enemy, then swoop in front to trigger their Flamethrowers. And so on.

Use the Arena Layout to Your Advantage

Dodging gets you out of most sticky situations, but it’s worth learning the layout of each arena to use the space to your advantage. Ramps and islands protect you from enemy fire in a pinch, and knowing how to access hidden or elevated areas helps take out hard-to-reach enemies.

A great way to learn arena layouts is to complete challenges. They force you to optimize your time and lines while also giving you a stronger sense of how to make the most of the arena’s layout.

That’s a wrap for our 10 Rollerdrome tips. Roll7’s latest is very much a game about repetition and persistence, so get out there and fine-tune that muscle memory. You’ll be up there in the online leaderboards soon enough.