Artwork from the snowboarding video game Steep.
© Ubisoft
Games

Hit the virtual slopes with the best snowboarding games you need to play

Carve powder all year round from the comfort of your couch with these, the best snowboarding games you can try your hand at anywhere, anytime.
Written by Adam Cook
5 min readPublished on
Staring into the fresh powder as you take to your board, pushing off into a steep piste with ramps, rails and gates strewn across your path and mastering every twist and turn: there's no feeling quite like it. Experiencing the crunch as you dig into each turn, or even just that anticipation as your prepare for an aerial is pure bliss and if you know your Switch-Trick from your Fakie, you'll understand that rendering snowboarding in gaming form is as much an art form as the sport itself.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to get on a board digitally and there's some absolutely superb games available to help with the urge when there's just no easy way to do it for real. These are the best snowboarding games you need to play right now.

Steep

A screenshot from the video game Steep.

Get up close and personal with Steep

© Ubisoft

Released back in 2016, Ubisoft's Steep has received incredible support from the developer, making it not just one of the best snowboarding games, but one of the best winter sport games ever made.
Should you fancy it, you can just board around on the crisp white snow, taking in the surroundings and collecting items as you go – changing your look to feel as fresh as the powder you're riding on. But then there's the races, which progress from simple to terrifying near vertical couloirs. When you hit a jump in Steep you need to be sure you're going to land it and you need to be aware of all manner of log cabins and sheer drops at every corner. A blast, and absolutely essential for any snowboarding fan.

Snowboarding The Fourth Phase

A screenshot from Snowboarding The Fourth Phase.

Use your personal drone to take great shots

© Session Games

If you prefer your snowboarding on the go, Snowboarding The Fourth Phase has you covered and it's completely free to boot. With a massive career mode that even incorporates the beauty of the sport via a photo mode thanks to your own personal drone, this is a deep game that offers so much to players.
Featuring legendary snowboarder Travis Rice, you're his protégé of sorts, as he discovers you and sets you on the path to becoming one of the world's best. If you don't fancy getting deep into a story, an arcade mode provides simple challenges that are fun, but tricky.
With stunning painterly visuals, Snowboarding The Fourth Phase offers a timing-based gameplay mechanic, asking you to swipe right or left to change direction, or tap to jump: these are controls anyone in the family can get involved in, making it a wonderfully accessible game to get to grips with.

SSX

A screenshot from the 2012 video game SSX.

Sometimes the classics are the best

© EA Sports

Do you remember EA Sports BIG? It was a celebration of the likes of street football, extreme sports and, of course, the poster child for the genre: snowboarding. The movement saw SSX make a comeback, with a rebooted game in the classic franchise 2012.
Now available via backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X, S and Xbox One, SSX is an arcade snowboarding game that pits you against the terrain and asks you perform outlandish tricks that defy gravity. The courses are huge and the racing is fast, but it's all about the tricks in SSX. The 2012 edition of the game even featured NASA satellite mapped real world environments and if you fancied it, you could even upload your own music for custom playlists.
SSX as a series is beloved for a reason and the 2012 reboot is exciting and fun even today. Don't skip this one just because it's 'old' – that would be a massive mistake.

Alto's Adventure

A screenshot from Alto's Adventure.

Maybe the best looking Snowboarding game ever?

© Snowman

The runner genre has been around for a long time now, but Alto's Adventure did the unthinkable and married gorgeous visuals with snowboarding to create something truly special that transcends both medium and genre.
A must-play almost regardless of the snowboarding, Alto’s Adventure only requires a tap of the screen to jump or perform tricks to reach goals and achieve high scores and upgrades. Tap to jump; hold to do a trick, it's that easy. Three goals are provided to complete and there are even a few surprises late into the game that push things beyond even snowboarding.
On iOS devices this is a low priced game, but on Android it's actually free-to-play and a collection of all the Alto games is available on Nintendo Switch, too.

Snow

A screenshot from the video game Snow.

Support may have waned, but Snow is still amazing

© Poppermost Productions

Snow has been around for a while now, hitting beta in late 2016. Touted as offering a massive open world, you can customise your character and explore the hand-crafted mountain and take part in a plethora of events. Snow even offers a drone and snowmobile, as well as snowboarding and skiing, while throwing realistic audio and visuals at the player.
You can play online or offline, with time-trial options, freestyle and, of course, free-roaming across the mountain. Initially constantly updated, the game finally hit version 1.0 and came out properly in February 2019 and although the developer has been quiet for a while, there's a bustling community surrounding Snow and it's still an absolute must play for any snowboarding fan.