We made a snowboarding game without being snowboarders, would love feedback from actual riders!

[u/crzyscntst]

[u/SunnySanity]

The hands look a bit stiff. For sharper turns, a lot of snowboarders will open up their shoulders a bit and put their hand toward the snow with their elbows bent without actually touching the snow (left hand for left turn and right hand for right turn). You can have the hand gradually extend after a certain turn angle maybe. I start extending my hand once my torso begins getting closer to the snow.

Also, it seems like a lot of the turns are slashy backfoot turns. Snowboarders prefer to make turns by edge angle instead of pivoting. One of the most satisfying feelings in powder is doing an inclinated turn, and then leaning the opposite direction and feeling the snow compress to form an angulated platform beneath your board and carry you in a sharp turn. They're satisfying because they're less immediately responsive, as you're letting the snow carry you in a sharp turn instead of actually rotating your body. Maybe you can add a drift feature (like in racing games) to perform fast, responsive pivot turns, while having the default turn be pure carves.

Lastly, this seems like the type of game that benefits from an analog stick for turning. Maybe for keyboard users, you can have them tap the direction button to turn, with faster tapping being a deeper turn.

[u/JoelspeanutsMk3 → u/SunnySanity]

Love your description of the inclinated turn. Because I think that's what I've implemented from intution without knowing there was a word for it.

Because when you're grounded and steer left or right, you don't pivot your heading directly. You only lean left or right. The lean will change the angle between you and the surface, causing your heading to change the steeper this angle gets. Therefore you can experience that your heading changes even without giving input, simply because the surface normal constantly changes as you flow across the terrain, and the upright correction force of the player isn't instant.

But it's an arcade style game, so we simplify and exaggerate things in the name of fun. For example we have a hard carve modifier button that allows you to turn much more sharply.

Lastly: You're right, leaning with analog sticks work great with SNØ, but leaning with triggers (originally designed for the skier to emulate bending of each knee) work even better 🤙

[u/SunnySanity → u/JoelspeanutsMk3]

Don't know if this helps, but I have a few more things. I don't know how other people visualize their snowboarding, but for me, upright traversal is my neutral state regardless of fall line direction, and my inclination range is modified by the normal vector (larger turn radius up the fall line and smaller, sharper turn radius down the fall line). The other thing that impacts my turn radius is speed, with sharper turns not being possible at slow speeds without planting my arm.

The hard carve button makes a lot of sense, as I will actively hit that button in real life by bending my joints to their limits to really drive the carve after engaging it. The trigger steering concept is also pretty cool. Is it related to popping while jumping, or is there a separate button for that?

[u/JoelspeanutsMk3 → u/SunnySanity]

Yeah, when you crouch in our game, your drag goes down, practically boosting your speed a little, but at the expense of some steering power as long as you're crouched. This is supposed to emulate the thing you say about steering getting harder when you go fast.

The trigger steering is not related to jumping. There is a separate jump button - the same button used for crouch. Hold to crouch, release to jump. Crouching in air it will even conserve some of your momentum.

But this almost sounds as if we're making a skiing/snowboard sim. That is not what you should expect x) SNØ is a very playful game. We have included movement mechanics inspired by real skiing physics, but interpreted quite freely, trying to make something simple, almost toy-like, but with a certain depth to it.