Slopecrashers is a game that immediately stood out to me as a fan of arcadey extreme sports games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and more notably here, the SSX games. The trailer showcases various animals performing over-the-top snowboarding tricks while picking up Mario Kart-esque power-ups. On the surface, it sounds like a recipe for a good time.
We recently had the opportunity to play a bit of Slopecrashers, and it very much feels like a marriage of SSX and Mario Kart. The game has a couple of different modes that you may expect to find in a game of this type, racing and trick-based modes being the most prevalent. There’s nothing too crazy as far as game modes go, but Slope Crashers has the essentials on offer.
Control and game feel are important in any extreme sports game, and while Slopecrashers feels a bit stiff in some areas, it by and large feels the part. Snowboarding games in general have to strike a very fine line by feeling weighty enough to sell the idea of carving through heavy snow, but also limber enough to give the player the ability to perform dazzling tricks. Turning specifically in Slope Crashers feels a bit on the stiff side but to contrast that, once you are in the air you will be performing flips and spins that rival the likes of Shaun White himself. For the scale of game developer Byteparrot is making, the game generally feels fun to play.
The other half of the gameplay coin is the power-ups you collect during a race. These add a fun layer of chaos to the high-speed snowboarding and tricking. The power-ups themselves are a bit basic, consisting of things like speed boosters or projectile attacks, things to stop the player in front of you, etc. The power-ups and their functions are a bit difficult to understand at a glance from the little icon they have in the corner of the screen, but you start to learn fairly quickly what each one does and how best to use it. While they aren’t the most innovative power-ups in the world, their inclusion in a game like this does add to the fun and decision-making you participate in during each race.
There’s a fairly lengthy single-player campaign that has you competing in a number of races and events on a number of different “slopes”. Many of the game’s environments have unique settings like the traditional snowy mountain, a desert, or even snowboarding through a blanketed city. The levels are dotted with rails to grind, jumps to launch off of, and long straightaways and twisty turns. While individual levels don’t really stand out much, the environments themselves are the real highlight and due to the cartoonish art direction, they could really place a mountain in any environment and it wouldn’t feel out of place.
There are a number of different customization options you can unlock to accessorize your slope crasher from snowboards to gliders to things like scarves and color swaps. While some of the items feel a bit generic, what’s there does allow you to get creative with the options and make the little snowboarding creatures feel personal to you. And there’s quite a bit to unlock, for the first hour or two we were unlocking multiple items after nearly every race.
While you could play the game solo and have a fun time, the real fun feels like it lies in playing with friends. Just like Mario Kart, having someone race alongside you via couch co-op or facing off alongside strangers online feels like how the game was intended to be enjoyed. Slopecrashers feels like a good pick-up-and-play game and is very casual and friendly in that way. Hitting the slopes with friends for an hour or two for some arcade fun. The developers aren’t working with the biggest budget in the world, but if you go into it knowing that, there is definitely some fun to be had. Slopecrashers is available now on PC via Steam. A review code was provided by the publisher.
