Highlights
- Rolling Hills is an upcoming casual life simulator inspired by cozy games like Lemon Cake and Animal Crossing.
- Developers Taylor and Tillman focused on character control and colorful art to create an accessible, chill experience.
- Contrasting with stressful games like Overcooked, Rolling Hills encourages upgrades to make gameplay easier and more relaxing.
Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends is an upcoming indie life simulator where you play as a “state-of-the-art Sushi Bot,” developed by Catch & Release and published by Humble Games.
Rolling Hills was developed by two brothers, Matthew Taylor and James Tillman. The pair are big fans of games that blend restaurant management with life-sim elements. In a recent interview with Game Rant, Taylor spoke about some games that inspired Rolling Hills.
Sushi Excellence
One of these games is Lemon Cake, a delightful indie game where the player takes over an abandoned bakery and turns it into a booming business. “Lemon Cake helped demonstrate how to make a fun, more cosy restaurant sim that focused on controlling a character,” Taylor explains. “We felt this was important in making the game more accessible, as opposed to a full-scale sim game where you control everything from a godlike perspective.”
You may see an obvious aesthetic inspiration from screenshots of Rolling Hills. This was intentional, as Taylor and Tillman strove to achieve the same cute and colourful art style seen in titles like Animal Crossing. “We’ve seen a few games attempt ‘indie Animal Crossing’ over the years,” Taylor says. “Although our game has very little in common with Animal Crossing’s gameplay, it was no doubt a big inspiration for our art style.”
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Taylor mentioned accessibility – Rolling Hills is placing itself on the more casual, carefree side of the management simulator spectrum. This contrasts with Overcooked, a game everyone knows can be stressful and frenetic.
“I imagine a lot of folks who see Rolling Hills will be reminded of Overcooked,” Taylor remarks. “But we definitely tried to make a chiller game. A big component of that is taking inspiration from RPGs, rather than purely action-based games. For instance, if you’re overwhelmed by the number of customers, you can invest in better recipes or furniture, both of which will make the game easier.”
Rolling Hills is planned to release on June 4.
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