The wait to obtain roller-skating glory is almost over. Ubisoft announced on Wednesday that Roller Champions will finally be rolling out on May 25.
Roller Champions is a free-to-play, team-based PvP game where players compete on one of two teams of three roller-skaters and vie to be the first to reach five points by throwing the ball into the hoop mounted vertically on the wall of the elliptical rink. The game combines roller derby and the Mesoamerican ball game known as ulama, minus the use of hips to hit the ball as seen in the DreamWorks movie The Road to El Dorado. Ubisoft released a new cinematic trailer, revealing the new release date, to demonstrate how the combination plays out.
Players need to skate around the arena while maintaining control of the ball and roll up the wall to score points. They can steal the ball from the opposing team by executing several perfectly timed tackling maneuvers and make a full lap around the arena to open the goal hoop. From there, they can either throw it in the hoop or jump through it with the ball in hand. The more laps around the skating rink/arena, the more points a team gets. And the more matches you win, the more arenas and stadiums you can compete in, rolling your way to the Elite Champions’ league.
Roller Champions was first announced at E3 2019, with the game initially scheduled to be released in 2020. However, it has been delayed several times due to a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and issues surrounding the game’s development. In March, Ubisoft explained in a statement that it delayed the game to late spring 2022 so that the development team can take “a bit more time to deliver the successful game you deserve. We believe it’s the right decision to properly honor your excitement (and our own!) for the game and the competitive scene you’ve started around our beta.”
Roller Champions will release on PS4, Xbox One, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S with backward compatibility, and on Windows PC via the Ubisoft Store with cross-play and cross-progression capabilities. Nintendo Switch, Amazon Luna, and Stadia versions of the game will be released at a later date.
