Games

The snow games you need to play this season

Tis the season, so it’s time to turn the heating up high and sit back with some great Wintery games.

Written by Adam Cook

5 min readPublished on 23.12.2016 · 15:10 UTC

Looking over a mountain range in Steep — Steep
© Ubisoft

It’s surprising how many games utilise seasonal weather, but as the nights draw in, and the weather means we’re wearing our hats, scarves, and fingerless gloves (we need to type, but we’re trying to save on the heating bill), we still want to sit at our TVs, playing the best games.

One thing that snow and cold weather allows for in a game, is some serious snowboarding and skiing. Extreme sports have always been well portrayed in our favourite entertainment media, so sit back with some mulled wine (or a drink that’s actually nice, if you prefer) and let the glorious visuals and lighting effects on those snow tipped peaks dazzle you in these recent games you really ought to check out.

SNOW

Poppermost Productions’ early access game SNOW has a major positive that elevates it above some of the competition: it’s free to play. You’ll need a gaming PC or a PS4 to play it, but if you have one of those, you might have even be able to check in on using virtual reality, as it supports Oculus Rift. Now while you may not think that launching off a virtual snowy peak on your skis or snowboard as you stare down below into a vast chasm is the best use of your time when you could be doing it for real, take it from us that it’s pretty cool, actually. SNOW aims for a realistic experience, making use of a physics engine that tries to make you feel like you’re actually there.

Steep

Ubisoft’s Steep is a vast open world (well, open mountain range) game that allows for exploration of a huge alpine resort. Unlike SNOW, however, Steep isn’t in early access, so it looks exceptional, and also includes not only snowboarding and skiing, but also wingsuiting and paragliding, with yet more disciples on the way in DLC, meaning that even if you’ve had your fill of skiing elsewhere, there’s still plenty to do. We can highly recommend the wingsuiting: getting low to the ground to score more points is exhilarating, and a bit scary, but hugely fulfilling. And definitely not as scary as trying it IRL.

Alto’s Adventure

This is one of those great games that just stands out whenever you look at it. A gorgeous art style is always welcome, but this endless runner style game just oozes style with the beautiful, soothing music, giving you little goals as you level up and hurtle down the mountain with grace. It may be simple at heart, but it’s just a lovely game, and is cheap enough to buy from the App Store on a whim.

Snowboarding: The Fourth Phase

This mobile title is available on both Apple and Android devices, which is great because sometimes you just need to play a quick game while on the toilet. The trouble is, this addictive game might cause you to get pins and needles because it’s both fun and good looking. The Fourth Phase avoids the trappings of most mobile games by not adding an on screen joystick, and allows you to control via swiping around the screen to move, while tapping it causes you to jump, then hitting a part of the screen will start a grab, so you’ll be scoring big with Melon Grabs and Nose Grabs before you know it. The cel-shaded visuals make this one stand out, and it’s free to download as well.

No Man’s Sky

OK, OK, we know, No Man’s Sky has left a lot of people angry. But given that it’s recently received an enormous patch that adds the foundations of base building, it seems like a fine time to give the game another chance, and perhaps find a snowy planet to build a home on. The update also brings the basics of farming, but exploring the snow topped mountains still makes us feel a little tingle of childlike joy, and we upgraded our jetpack so we can get to the top of the highest mountains and then pretend we’re skiing down them again.

Forza Horizon 3

One of the very best racing games of 2016, Forza Horizon 3’s Blizzard Mountain DLC offers eight new cars to play around in, and adds alpine mountains for the game for the first time. New challenges, a “King of the Mountain” campaign, bonus boards to smash through, and the potential to see what the development team can do with the visuals for a snowy setting are surely enough to get back into Forza Horizon 3 if you’ve stopped playing, but it’s also the best time to play it you haven’t yet. But seriously, why haven’t you played it yet? It’s amazing.

Infinite Air

Given that the Canadian born pro-snowboarder Mark McMorris lends his name to the game, this is unsurprisingly a snowboarding focussed title. HB Games’ winter wonderland also includes other terrific boarders in the form of Silje Norendal and Danny Davis, and offers up huge jumps, an open world, and some epic grinds. There are authentic events, as well as procedurally generated mountains, so you don’t see the same things twice, but it also allows for the opportunity to create your own courses and share them online.

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