Lately, we’ve been seeing a notable uptick in media set in Toronto, from Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie to video games like Scott Pilgrim EX and Retroronto. For a city that seldom gets to play itself, that trend has certainly been exciting for Canadians.
RollerGirl, an upcoming indie roller skating adventure game from Toronto-based Pushing Vertices, looks to do something similar for an even more under-represented setting: small-town Ontario. As studio founder and creative director Indigo Doyle explains, RollerGirl is inspired by her formative years of skating around Belleville in the mid-2000s. While it’s set in an unnamed rural place in Ontario, she’s very open about how much it owes to her hometown.
“It goes back to ‘write what you know.’ I was just sort of like, ‘Hey, I want to come up with this town, and let’s make it personal, since the whole story is personal,’” she says. “It’s really exciting to watch people play as me and skate by my house. It’s kind of surreal. It’s like you’re watching yourself in a different setting. It’s crazy. So the importance is definitely to just have it feel like it works with the story, and it feels, to me, like a nostalgic time and place.”
The game follows Naomi, a 16-year-old girl based on Doyle herself. It’s a decision she made to directly pull from feelings of isolation in a small town, especially as a Black person in a predominantly white neighbourhood.
“The small-town experience, I really wanted to have people experience because it lends to the whole narrative of the game of feeling slightly trapped in a small town when you’re 16,” she says. “Being like, ‘Oh, I really want to explore past this and see what the world has to offer,’ but then not having a means to do so, and so the small-town experience is kind of quintessential to the entire story and the entire setting.”
While Doyle says she doesn’t want to get too “hyper specific” in terms of adding elements of Belleville to keep RollerGirl more relatable, she notes that the layout of the game’s world is based on a real map she found in Picton, which enhances the “homey and small town” feel. On top of that, there are some landmarks that are featured in the game, and they’ve even resonated with some players so far.
“For very specific landmarks, at least, the Belleville water tower is a big landmark in the game, and that was really fun to put that in there. I think it’s a pretty typical design, at least for an Ontario town,” she says. “So I find a lot of people, when they’re playing the game, if they’re from pretty much anywhere in Canada, they’ll be like, ‘Oh my god, the water tower and the waterfront trail!’ They point out these areas that feel familiar to them, which is really cool to see that sort of shared experience.”
Image credit: Pushing Vertices
Of course, there’s also a narrative to the game, and it directly pulls from Doyle’s teenage experience of doing odd jobs around the neighbourhood to earn money to fix her car. From there, Doyle says she worked with narrative designer Jill Murray (The Big Con, Shadow of the Tomb Raider) to further flesh out the story.
“I always say to people, ‘It’s based on my life, but my life is not that interesting,’” she says with a laugh. “So we’ve got to add a touch of interesting there. And not to spoil anything, but we do have a few more elements of a town mystery and a teen romance as well, which I won’t say much about yet, but I’m really excited to inject those into the world as well.”
But above all else, she wants the game to capture the cozy, liberating feeling of skating around, which she notes is another benefit of going with the small-town setting.
“Rollerblading around slightly empty roads that are just very smooth and kind of winding is just the best experience to me,” she says. “When I’m rollerblading now in bigger cities, it’s not the same because it’s not as quiet, it’s not as expansive, there’s not as much space. And so I think having that as the setting makes a lot of sense.”
Image credit: Pushing Vertices
One of the other interesting things about RollerGirl is that Doyle has spent the past few years demoing the game at local events like the Toronto Game Expo and international conferences like GDC in San Francisco. Because of that, you can see how the game has evolved, especially in the three years following our first chat with Doyle. “In pretty much every way, it’s grown and levelled up since last time,” she says, noting overhauls to narrative, environment art and movement.
But naturally, she notes that a “large focus” of development has been on the actual skating mechanics, fine-tuning them to feel intricate yet relaxing.
“We’ve spent time sort of rebuilding the systems, making sure that you can feel like, ‘Oh, I can go and sprint down the street and have a great time, but I can also explore smaller spaces and take my time there.’ Recently, we’ve been working a lot on having the extra speed when you crouch going down a hill. Which sounds really simple, but it’s actually quite complex to get that feeling perfectly and having it make sense with the rest of the world,” she says.
In many cases, she’ll even record a video of herself doing particular movements so the animators can directly pull that into the game. “And so you spend a lot of time just working on those little details and also working on making sure you can string together what I like to call ‘satisfying movements,’” she explains. “So instead of going in, hardcore grinding on this wall — it’s less Tony Hawk, more relaxing in that flow state of, ‘Oh, I’m gonna curve around this corner and maybe weave through these cones and maybe flip around backwards’ and stuff like that. And so chaining together those movements really adds to the nice, relaxing feeling of the skating.”
We’re so excited to be partnering with local indie bands like NERiMA and King Fabbs!✨
We need even more music. Drop the name of your favourite pop/pop-punk indie band below and help us build our soundtrack!😎
— RollerGirl WISHLIST ON STEAM (@rollergirlgame.bsky.social) December 16, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Taking that feeling even further is a dynamic music system that connects Naomi’s MP3 player to visual effects and the day and night cycle. When we last spoke with Doyle, the game was using royalty-free tracks as placeholders, but since then, Pushing Vertices has partnered with Canadian pop-punk artists Nerima, a band from Durham Region, and King Phabbs, a solo performer from Calgary.
“While we’re showing the game at different showcases, people are really loving the music,” she says. “They’re like, ‘This is giving that high school energy, this is the perfect vibe.’ So I’m really happy with that. And going forward, we do plan to keep licensing from other bands as well.”
Connecting Toronto game devs with local events
While RollerGirl looks back to Doyle’s childhood in small-town Ontario, some of her other work in recent years has been very focused on the province’s bustling capital city where she’s now based.
In particular, she and fellow Toronto developer Unai Cabezon of 13AM Games (Dawn of the Monsters, Missile Command Delta) have been running a popular social event for local game makers called Bonus Stage. It’s one of the longest-running gaming events in the city, and it provides an opportunity for people to network and even hear micro talks from both up-and-coming artists and prominent developers like Abhi Swaminathan (creative director of Venba), Osama Dorias (creative director on Poly Fighter) and Xalavier Nelson Jr. (creative director and writer at Strange Scaffold on many projects, including I Am Your Beast and El Paso Elsewhere).
🌟Thank you to everyone for coming out to Bonus Stage this month!🌟
A huge thanks to our amazing speakers:
Dante @mhdante.com
Jayden @jaydenpb.net
Daulton @daultonscott.comSee you next time on March 17th!😎
— Bonus Stage Toronto (@bonusstageto.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 12:22 PM
Cabezon and other 13AM Games developers started Bonus Stage in 2016, with Doyle getting involved a few years later. Now, the event is held monthly, and she says she loves organizing it each and every time. “It’s just been something I enjoy doing — creating a space and showing up and helping people create community, connect, make connections with people, and find different jobs and stuff like that,” she says.
She admits that there are some challenges. For one, they don’t have a budget for the events, so they had to find a venue — most recently, Taco Taco — that will regularly host them for free. On top of that, she notes that while there’s often interest in people signing up to host the microtalks, there can sometimes be dry spells, leading her to exhaust her list of connections to try to fill some spots. But on the whole, she says it’s been “pretty smooth” over the past decade — a testament to how commitment and passion can help even the humblest of grassroots efforts to endure.
She adds that speaking to people from outside of Canada has really made her appreciate just how special our local gaming scene really is.
“I’ll describe events like Bonus Stage or TO Jam, and they’re always surprised, because I guess their meetups are a lot less frequent. And I think we take it for granted as well. Because I just felt like that was the norm, like everyone has these events that happen, so we’re definitely very lucky to have that,” she says. “I think we also have just a large concentration of indie here as well, so there’s always that connection to be made. I definitely didn’t realize how many people were here as well. I still get surprised.”
Image credit: Bonus Stage Toronto
Doyle is also aware of how daunting it can be to make it out to an event, and that’s where the welcoming and inclusive environment of Bonus Stage and its community comes in.
“I think it’s really important to keep that space for people because a lot of devs will just stay in our apartments and not leave the house, especially in winter. When it’s cold, you’re like, ‘Do I want to go outside?’ And especially post-COVID as well. But I do find that when people do come out, they really enjoy having that space, and they’re really thankful that someone is doing it. Because even though you [might] think, ‘Oh, I could do it,’ at the end of the day, it is a lot of work,” she says.
“It is really rewarding as well. I think a couple of months ago, we had a speaker who was just very grateful to have the space, and they actually made a lot of friends there, and that’s their new space that they work within now. So that’s really exciting to see that the fruits of the labour are out there and paying off.”
RollerGirl doesn’t yet have a release date, but you can wishlist the game on Steam. More information on Bonus Stage Toronto can be found on the event’s website.
Header image credit: Pushing Vertices/Bonus Stage Toronto
