Rooftops & Alleys, a parkour game focused on freerunning through concrete jungles, has been another indie success this year. It has gathered a strong community around it and performed well commercially in its debut month.
- Solo developer Michel Losch told GameDiscoverCo that Rooftops & Alleys: The Parkour Game sold 70k units in the 30 days of its May 21 launch.
- The game currently has an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam, with 97% of the 2,453 user reviews being positive. It also peaked at 1,425 concurrent players at launch (via SteamDB).
- Losch created Rooftops & Alleys in around 12 months using Unreal Engine 5 and Nekki’s 3D animation tool Cascadeur. These tools helped him make a visually appealing game with cool animations without a large budget.
- One of the reasons behind the game’s success is its hook: Rooftop & Alleys makes parkour its core gameplay feature, while other modern titles like Ghostrunner use it only as one of mechanics. The dev wanted to focus entirely on freerunning and fun tricks, and players loved it.
- The game went viral on social media before its launch. Its reveal trailer reached 379k views on YouTube, and its official TikTok account generated around 1 million likes across all videos.
- “Just like mountain biking hit Descenders, games based on action sports are under-represented, compared to the amount of real-life ‘sport’ social media coverage,” GameDiscoverCo’s Simon Carless noted.
- Thanks to its subtitle and the general popularity of real-life parkour, Rooftop & Alleys also achieved strong organic SEO. It can be found on the first page of Google’s results for “parkour game.”
- Before making his own project, Losch worked as a 3D artist and graphic designer, also creating electronic music under the name Millbrook. However, the success of Rooftop & Alleys turned game development into his full-time job.