For the first couple of hours spent playing Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, I really wished I was playing its bike-centric predecessor, Lonely Mountains: Downhill, instead. Skis are clumsier than bikes and they don’t get fast quite as quickly. But I gradually learned the orthodoxies of going fast down technical hills on skis, and once I figured out how to go faster quicker, Snow Riders started to click gloriously into place, to the extent that now I think I love skis more than bikes.
First I learned that to gain speed quickly, I need to go downhill first without crouching, and then tuck in tight to become a human bullet. My next lesson was one the loading screens constantly reminded me about, but I was slow to learn: braking is important. On a bike, brakes slow the bike down, and at super high speeds this is more likely to lead to imprecision if not death. It’s kinda the same on skis, but with the right know-how applied, and with fast reflexes, I can usually maintain my speed while taking some of the trickier pins and bends. There are a lot more subtleties to learn, such as the benefits of skiing backwards, and the finer details of the trick system, but my point is that eventually I came to love skiing.
Areflexoriented cosy game with bucket loads of failure