Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders is one of my favorite surprises of the year so far. The skiing game is part physics-driven scramble, part relaxing journey through nature, and all a very fun time. It’s been free with a paid Game Pass subscription on Xbox and PC, and just received a new set of slopes for players to master in its first free update.
The Baifushan Mountain update is inspired by Chinese mountainscapes and adds four trails with two slopes each, along with new challenges and multiplayer and leaderboard support. It looks like the perfect little bite-sized expansion for fans who already finished the base game when it launched back in January.
Snow Riders follows Megagon Industries’ 2019 release Lonely Mountains: Downhill which offers a similar premise, just with bikes and dirt instead of skis and snow. This time around, Snow Riders is essentially free for anyone on PC or Xbox with a paid Game Pass subscription. At over 900,000 players to date, it seems likely that’s how many of them found their way to the niche indie release.
To that end, the developers have also released a new supporter pack that fans can buy for $8 to support the game’s ongoing post-launch development or just say an extra “thank you.” It includes a bunch of cosmetics like a retro racing outfit, new backpack, goggles, and other dress-up goodies. If Snow Riders is anything like Downhill, there’ll be a lot of DLC updates coming.
The game remains an Xbox and PC exclusive for now buy seems likely to hit other platforms at some point in the future. In the meantime, PlayStation 5 and Switch players can always check out Downhill to pump themselves up for the spring and summer mountain biking seasons.
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