“Parkour!”
While that bit on The Office might be the most mainstream parkour has ever been, its focus on continued mobility has been part of video games for years, but always as a method of mobility than the act of it itself. We’ve had platforming and wall-running, but Rooftops & Alleys is a game built around the act of parkour itself, and while it can feel aimless at times, there is, without a doubt, some promise to this premise.
Rooftops and Alleys: The Parkour Game, despite the ‘on the nose’ naming convention, despite there not really being too many alleys, brings parkour to the type of structure you’d find in a free skate mode in something like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, but with the ragdoll physics of something like Human Fall Flat or Gang Beasts. While perfecting your parkour skills will certainly have you seeing less of its ragdoll effects, you are bound to miss a jump here and there and see your parkour master fall to their doom and disrupt their combo and parkour rhythm.
As far as its presentation goes, Rooftops & Alleys is extremely basic. There are six locations that can be explored either on your own or with 3 additional friends with a few offering the ability to change the time of day. There’s no 2 minute timer or anything to restrict your play, but just simply your desire to explore the map, complete challenges, or goof off with your friends and allow the ragdoll physics to entertain the lot of you.
As you complete challenges, you’ll earn parts to dress or alter your parkour character. You'll choose from tops, head, headphones, pants, shoes, and your backpack. While humanoid, you are some sort of robot, so you’ll get clothes to address said fashion choices, but the head’s you gather reminds me of Chappie, the character from the film with the same name. There is a decent amount of outfits and items to collect, and you can alter their colors to give them a bit more variety and allow you to stand out from your friends.
The challenges are essentially all that the game offers. There is no story mode, NPCs to receive tasks from, or anything that would define ‘structure’. This is a game where you largely create the fun, given the few actual challenges that each map contains. These locations are fair small, with you parkouring around a shipping yard packed full of containers, a steel yard with incomplete construction, a construction yard itself, a sectioned off few blocks in Sunset Paradise, and two other maps in the school district and a indoor parkour location that offer a good amount of variety to keep each level from feeling the same. That said, Sunset Paradise has a lot of high walls, making it the least engaging of the six maps.
Challenges only really range toward a few activities. You have Time Trial and Trick Rush, which has the latter section off a part of the map to have you perform combo strings to put together to maintain a high score. Each challenge has you competing for bronze, silver, and gold, with feathers earned to then reward you with new cosmetics.
When you take the game online with friends, more challenges and competitive modes open up. You can compete for the highest score, take to capture the flag or tag for some additional fun. And with crossplay, it deepens the game when you can bring in a few friends and get more out of the various modes and parkour antics on display. Honestly, this game should only be played online as there is nothing here to really entertain a single player.
As your parkour artist, you can jump, hop, swing, and climb, while taking on longer jumps to pull off some insane leaps. You’ll mantle up basic walls, climb up vertical pipes to gain a bit of height, and much more. You can wall run and leap from wall to wall, and while the controls are fairly straight-forward, a few mechanics don’t feel explained well enough, or at all. While it took a while to grasp what each surface, jump, or hop wanted from me, it eventually became second nature. Still, you’ll largely figure it out and having a full crew online will see you trading secrets to pull off some wild movement.
While a bit more structure and more challenge-types in single player would have been ideal, it’s a solid foundation for what could be a potential series. It has that Tony Hawk Pro Skater appeal, but does lack the format and presentation to really stand out. The customization for your character is solid, and the locations you’ll visit have some great variety. Rooftops and Alleys: The Parkour Game had one mission to achieve, and while it may ragdoll from time to time, it nonetheless lands its initial leap, at least with friends.
Developer - MLMEDIA Publisher - MLMEDIA, Shine Group, Radical Theory. Released - June 17th, 2025. Available On - PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (E ) No Descriptors. Platform Reviewed - Steam. Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.