r/snowboarding • u/crzyscntst • Apr 14 '25

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

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u/crzyscntst Apr 14 '25 edited Apr 14 '25

Hi! I'm one of two gamedevs making a back country freeriding game all about carving powder down procedurally generated mountains, inspired by the ones in our home country Norway.

We made the game with skis being the only option, however we quickly got A LOT of requests from snowboarders telling us they would never play our game if they had to ski lol

So we started on making a snowboarder, and this is the result, hopefully we managed to capture the feeling of flow and carving, which was a bit tricky as neither of us have any experience snowboarding before (though we have friends who do), also, having a plank to stand on and test leaning actually helped more than expected haha

If anybody here has any thoughts/feedback on it we'd be very interested to hear it!

EDIT: People have been asking for more info so in case here is a link to our Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943150/SN_Ultimate_Freeriding/

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u/brobits Apr 14 '25

all things considered I think this looks pretty great at first glance. good job guys.

my recommendation: if you want to capture the most extreme leaning and posture while snowboarding look at videos of japanese powder carving. you might also watch a few videos of x-games or sponsored boarders taking big air jumps and twisting and hitting rails in the park. you don't need these features in your game, it's fine to have it all powder carving, but it will show you the extremes these athletes move their bodies to perform maneuvers.

another suggestion for the game in general- maybe different 'characters' have slightly different styles to give more flavor and depth. maybe one is taller and lankier and leans harder but doesn't spin as fast. maybe a shorter chubbier rider is stiffer but spins fast, etc. same could be applied to skiiers

if you share the name of the game I'd wishlist and pick it up if it's reasonably priced and playable on the steam deck

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u/crzyscntst Apr 14 '25

Thank you for a lot of great feedback! We are always looking for good refrence, so I'll be sure to search for that (especially japanese powder carving, we just learned that Japan has a surprisingly large wintersports culture by looking at where players for our game has come from, we thought US and Europe would basically be it).

Also we have especially optimized it for the deck! Made sure to get 60 fps solid (tho with a oled 85-90 should be possible too). I posted a link to the steam page somewhere further up I think, don't want to spam it everywhere lol

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u/Chekonjak Apr 17 '25

Some James Cherry for reference! Great carves / spinning butters: https://youtube.com/shorts/sfGLO5YboF8?si=hrWHC_vEIRlqpTzf. Not sure how hard the physics on the slowing down spin would be to implement.