Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders Review (YinYin)
Exquisite, just like their first game. But with a lot of key differences that replace some features with brand new ones for a much more focused experience.
The new key highlights being a leveling system for unlocks,
a trick system,
online multiplayer
and many small improvements like personal ghost data.
Mechanically the skiing feels eerily familiar in its fidelity to the bikes of Lonely Mountains: Downhill, but at the same time vastly different and more complex. First of all there is no stamina to speed up. Instead you get to crouch down indefinitely to reach top speeds at the expense of turning capability. Turning in general is a much more nuanced mechanic that depends not just on the type of ski you are riding, but also how much you are leaning forward, how much you are braking, how fast you are and how deep the snow you are riding through is. This alone makes all skis both perfectly controllable, but also feel very different. And on top of that you can rotate around and go backwards at any time, do tricks during a jump, ride over water and influence your jump length by spreading your skis to glide further or tuck in to drop faster. And of course there are also icy surfaces.
You get to perform all of this in 4 different modes. Two single player offline, two multiplayer online.
Solo
The classic time trial challenges. There are 3 mountains, 4 trails per mountain and 2 slopes (black and blue) per trail - for a total of 24 slopes to ride. Each slope has 3 challenges. One for beating a target time, one for finishing with a maximum amount of crashes and one combining both. Clearing a challenge unlocks the next trail, clearing all 3 unlocks the black slope of this trail. That one has different obstacles, making you ride a more challenging path down the mountain.
With each cleared challenge you also gain experience to level up as well as currency to spend in the cosmetics shop (this is in game only). Levels from solo mode challenges go up to 25 and over that course unlock the online races, all 4 specialized skis, more grab tricks as well as more cosmetics to purchase.
Zen
A highly requested feature on the previous game and very welcome way to explore the mountains.
This mode allows you to place down and move your own checkpoint to explore the trail from. It sports clear weather and no obstacles, making both blue and black slopes of the trail accessible at the same time.
Multiplayer Racing
Here you can host, join or enter public racing lobbies with up to 8 players, currently including crossplay with Xbox.
In private lobbies the host can pick 4 trails to ride in a sequence and whether they will be the black or blue slope.
Public lobbies randomly pick 3 slopes to ride in a sequence.
At the end of each race, every player is awarded experience and currency based on placement as well as 6 badges that award the fastest player, the most crashes, the fewest crashes, the most tricks, the longest backwards riding and longest jump. Players that finished a race can either spectate the remaining racers or ride around a little unique hill area at the bottom of each trail.
Multiplayer Team
This one is collaborative! Similar to Zen mode, you get to ride on the whole trail - but you have a limited collective amount of checkpoints you can place down manually. In addition to that you have a shared score goal with 3 tiers. Riding backwards, over water, very fast and doing spins, flips and grabs increases your collective score. Doing so in close proximity to each other gives a bonus on top. Touching a checkpoint secures the accumulated score, crashing and respawning forfeits it. But players can rescue each other after a crash instead.
At the very end, everyone is rewarded based on the reached goal as well as 6 unique badges similar to the racing mode.
Unfortunately this mode is not timed and you can keep returning back to a previous checkpoint to secure your score. Repeating that makes reaching the highest goal somewhat trivial and does not allow for meaningfully comparing team performances.
Things form the previous game that did not make a return on release:free rides (time trial with no checkpoints)
night rides (free rides in the dark)
daily rides (this also did not exist on release of the previous game though)