Snow
Scheduled Backend Maintenance
This means that the game will not work for this while.
You can follow along here: http://status.snowthegame.com/incidents/bbxv9fx3xrp0
The maintenance is now complete, and we are back online.
0.10.0 PREVIEW
Here's what else you can expect...
Leveling & Swag Bags
We have redesigned the leveling system to make sure that both new and experienced players always have something to work towards. Initial leveling is now from 0-20. Once you hit Level 20 you are considered a Pro and begin earning Pro Levels which will take longer to complete, but will also contain more valuable rewards. Pro Levels continue until Level 100, but will be increased once the first handful of players reach the milestone.
Many of you did not like the previous reward system where you received small packs of Credits each level, so we redesigned our rewards. You will now receive a Swag Bag every time you level up. Swag Bags contain a randomly selected item and come in different rarities - so the more rare the package you receive, the more awesome the reward might be. That being said, all Swag Bag rewards are rare as they are items that cannot be purchased through the store, including snowmobile skins, drones, session markers, and rare props - not to mention lots of Credits. Now that we're able to reward you with random items we don't have to limit leveling and can be more generous with rewards (and reward you in more areas of the game experience).
Stopping, Walking, and Riding Ski Lifts
That's right, in the next update you will finally be able to come to a complete stop, walk around, and take ski lifts back up the mountain! While riding the ski lift you can look around and enjoy the scenery, skip to the end of the trip, or even jump off mid-ride.
Sightseeing and Drop Point Unlocking
We've added a new activity to each mountain called Sightseeing. Sightseeing points are scattered across the mountain and encourage you to explore the mountain further. Find one of these locations, hold down the on-screen input, and be treated to a nice cinematic showing off the area and some secrets you might have missed.
Drop Point unlocking has also been changed in 0.10.0. Back Country Drop Points must now be unlocked by riding to the actual Drop Point and holding down the corresponding on-screen input. In addition to that, all Heli Drop Points are now locked until you reach level 20. We want Heli Drop points to be a more meaningful reward, and also encourage players to make more use of the Heli Pads around the mountain.
Ski Passes
One of the biggest changes in this update is our move towards a Ski Pass system. I'll explain how it works and then talk about why we've made this change.
Aside from Tyro Valley, which will always be free to ride, access to each SNOW mountain will now require a Ski Pass. Ski Passes give you access to the mountain, all its contents (events and rewards) and activities (challenges, sightseeing, and more in the future), for either 1 Day, 7 Days, or 28 Days, depending on the Pass you get. Ski Passes can be earned through leveling rewards or bought for a very low price. No more spending to unlock individual events or premium mountains. Don’t worry, if you have already purchased a mountain, you will still own it and not need a Ski Pass to access it.
No matter what, every week a different mountain will be free to access, although you will need a Ski Pass if you want access to the mountain's content and activities. This way, you can explore all of the mountains and enjoy the game for free, but need to do a bit more for access to all SNOW has to offer. We hope that this makes SNOW feel more rewarding, more engaging, and, ultimately, makes it a better game for everyone.
Why Ski Passes?
Our goal with SNOW has always been to build a game that is accessible AND sustainable. That means that we earn enough to continue supporting and updating the game with great new features, but aren't charging so much that gameplay suffers or users fragment. We thought the best way to do this was to create a free-to-play game, and earn money for support by only charging players for cosmetics, events, and branded content (like X Games Aspen). That way, the core experience would be free, and fans could pay to support the game.
While we think free-to-play is still the way to go, just charging for cosmetics, events, and branded content led SNOW to make some events and levels too expensive and to create a wide and confusing catalogue of purchasable items. And we still weren't earning enough to sustain development. So, we went back to the drawing board to create a simple system where nothing is too expensive. Ski Passes are what we came up with.
With Ski Passes, the core SNOW experience is still free (in Tyro Valley) and you can sample a free mountain each week. If you want to expand your SNOW experience, you pay a little bit to have access to a mountain (including all its activities and content) for 1, 7, or 28 days. This seems like a simple, clear way to let everyone experience the full breadth of what SNOW has to offer, while also supporting the game's development.
We know that 0.10.0 is going to be a big change for many of you, but please bare with us. We know already that this release won't have all the answers, and that we will need to make further tweaks to all systems. We look forward to doing this with your feedback once you've had a chance to play 0.10.0. If you have questions about 0.10.0, Ski Passes, or anything else mentioned in this blog post, please join our Discord channel. We hang out there during the day and often in the evening and would be more than happy to hear your thoughts and ideas.
Game Update 0.9.2
With the goal of releasing an update every 6-8 weeks, I'm happy to share that the latest game update, 0.9.2 is now live on PC!
There are three big-ticket features included with the 0.9.2 game update: a new tutorial, new music, and a messages menu. We've also fixed a bunch of bugs, made improvements to animations, and added some new stuff to explore on Sialia. A full list of changes can be found in the full Release Notes.
New Tutorial
Welcome to Tyro Valley, the home of SNOW's new tutorial! The new tutorial brings a much needed improvement to SNOW's new user experience. When you boot the game for the first time you will automatically be loaded into Tyro Valley, a brand new mountain that contains the tutorial. Players are now required to complete the tutorial and as a reward unlock the rest of the mountain's drop points. But don't worry, the tutorial is quick and painless - it teaches you the basics of riding and performing tricks, and is much easier to complete than our previous tutorial. We've given you a lot more time to get used to the controls and more flexibility to decide if you want to move onto each next lesson.
Tyro Valley will have more content added to it in the future as it becomes and more 'entry level' mountain for new players. For now though you can ride the various tutorial piste courses and explore the forests around the valley.
New Music
We have added over 50 new tracks from 6 different artists to SNOW. Each album can be previewed and selected to be included in the in-game soundtrack that plays while riding. If you don't like an album, you can also disable it to exclude it from the in-game soundtrack through the Music Menu found in the Me Menu. We have also improved the 'Now Playing' notification to show you the artist and an image of the album the song is from. We hope you like the new music and variety of genres we've selected and look forward to expanding the music library in the future. Here's a list of all in-game music in now feature in SNOW:
- SNOW - Official Soundtrack
- Surfalot - Fire EP
- Kasket Club - Kasket Club
- Kasket Club - Dress Up As Animals
- Kasket Club - The King of Cool and the Acrobat
- Pasha - Bodega
- Lovespeake - DNA
- Dun Robin - Quick & The Dead
- Dun Robin - Dun Robin EP
- DEADCOLD - Ghost in the Snow
Messages
To stay better connected with our users we have added a way to message players in the game. We can now post messages as pop-ups in the Main Menu, or add longer messages to the Messages Menu located in the Me Menu. Next time you start the game you should see a message pop up in the Main Menu alerting you about this new update. You'll also be able to view the full release notes for the update in the Messages Menu.
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We hope you enjoy this update. We are already working on the next update, which will be much more substantial and include even more great features and content. Stay tuned for more information coming soon.
See you on the mountain!
SNOW is currently undergoing maintenance
This is being done in preparation of a game update to come soon.
The maintenance is now complete :)
Welcome to Whiteridge!
As the title says, welcome to Whiteridge! We've been working on Whiteridge in different states for several years now, and are excited to finally release it to the public.
https://youtu.be/Xq4HXOUFgZA
Whiteridge is the first urban-focused mountain in SNOW, or as far as we know, any skiing/snowboarding game ever made. While it's not as large as Sialia, it is extremely dense and features a dozen of different urban areas across the face, including a piste and terrain park. The level costs 699 Credits, but for the next week it will be on discount for 499 Credits. Included in the level are seven Events and three Challenges. Each Event includes a Gold Medal reward that together, forms the Whiteridge Urban Set - an exclusive bundle of dirty clothing and scratched-up equipment from many seasons of riding the streets of Whiteridge.
Whiteridge features over a dozen unique areas, each with a different look and play style. In addition to winding tiers of streets with parked cars, alleyways, fences, and stairs to trick off, you can also find larger structures like a school yard and skate park, or a few construction sites primed for jumping and grinding across. Skilled riders will enjoy Whiteridge's Old Town as the tightly packed buildings and ability to ride on roofs offer completely new challenges. In the hills above and to the side of Whiteridge, keen explorers will be thrilled to find landmarks and other hidden structures. Competitive players will be sure to complete all seven Events spread across Whiteridge, to help learn more about each area of the town.
We hope you enjoy all the new content and look forward to hearing your feedback! We will continue expanding Whiteridge in future updates and fixing any areas that need improving, so please share your feedback on our official Discord (discord.gg/SNOWthegame) server.
See you on the mountain!
Windows 7 Fix
discord.gg/SNOWthegame
Game Update 0.9.1 Hotfix
Here's what we fixed:
- Fixed "Press any key..." popping up at random occasions
- Fixed inability to change time of day (both in-game and replay)
- Fixed inability to change camera FOV
- Fixed Custom Camera settings
- Various stability improvements
We are still aware of an issue with booting the game if you are running Windows 7, but believe this issue is fixed if you update to the latest version of W7.
Game Update 0.9.1 Out Now
Good news - after much delay, the 0.9.1 Game Update is now live!
We've been spending a lot of time upgrading SNOW to the latest version of CRYENGINE, but it's finally complete. Although time consuming, this upgrade was necessary to ensure we could support the latest SDK from Sony and keep our engine current for future feature development. Additionally, we have achieved better multiplayer stability and have made grinding a whole lot more fun with much improved mechanics.
Full release notes can be found here.
As you can see, there is more to the update than some new engine tech. The game should look better and feel smoother online and in single player mode, and new grinding mechanics makes hitting rails across Sialia, X Games, Nine Knights, and B&E even better. We've had some users test out the new mechanics in our preview build and they loved the improvements! Here's an edit that Citizn put together showing off what we've been working on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7ShKSaY_c0
The next update, 0.9.2 is already underway and will include Whiteridge, a new urban level we've been teasing on Instagram for the past few weeks. Stay tuned for more information on that update coming soon.
Until then, see you on the mountain!
My Line 3 Video Contest Winners
So without further ado, here are our winners...
3rd Place - SBsamsam
https://youtu.be/dZ1It6e1z4c
2nd Place - Alex Darimont
https://youtu.be/amPUbCxx300
1st Place - Hair
https://youtu.be/1PSx_kSkGRk
Congratulations to Hair who proves that his style and grace on the mountain are unmatched on skis and snowboard by laying down two solid, and creative lines. Hair walks away with 5,000 in-game Credits, a SNOW t-shirt and sticker pack, and his name in the Hall of Fame on Sialia!
For everyone else who participated in the contest, you will receive this exclusive Gold Balloon Session Marker! Now you can mark your favorite locations on the mountain in style! This exclusive Session Marker will be added to your profile shortly.
Stay tuned for more information about the next video contest coming soon!
My Line 2 Video Contest Winners
This month we asked the community to submit their best lines through Northpaw Glacier, a huge mountain area full of ice, caves and massive gaps. With nearly two dozen submissions, the judges had their hand's full rating each entry. For My Line 2 the judges were not simply the developers behind SNOW. This time around we invited previous video competition winners to have a chance to rate and vote on each submission. We rated each video on three different criteria:
Riding Style - We want riders to use a variety of tricks, spins, and grabs throughout their line. We want to see them tweaking grabs, holding grabs through the entire rotation, and selecting grabs that fit the type of trick they're attempting.
Line Creativity - Northpaw Glacier has many routes and areas to explore - does the rider take advantage of them? Does the rider look at the terrain in new and interesting ways?
Flow - This is where Riding Style and Line Creativity meet. Can the rider pull off the tricks in the line they have picked and keep their speed? Do they string tricks together smoothly, and land every jump perfectly?
And the winners are...
3rd Place - Buler
https://youtu.be/TP2l-vb21iQ
2nd Place - A-Dog
https://youtu.be/TXtLyLiFwYo
1st Place - CitizN
https://youtu.be/5eCPrr72zGQ
CitizN who continues to dominate whatever challenge we throw at him in the video contests, scored a total of 180 out of a possible 195 points, and wins 5,000 in-game Credits, and a SNOW t-shirt and sticker pack, and his name in the Hall of Fame on Sialia!
Thank you again to everyone for participating in My Line 2. Everyone that participated in the event and included their PSN/Steam ID will be granted this limited edition Oil Matey trucker cap!
We will be launching the next video contest soon, so stay tuned for more information about it!