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Preview: SNOW (Steam, Early Access)

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Welcome to the mountain everyone. SNOW is one of those games that instantly caught my eye when I saw it on the Steam store. Poppermost Productions drops on top of the world in this new early access Steam title.

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 SNOW put players in the shoes, or rather the skis, of a downhill skier and lets you choose your path down a treacherous mountainside. Seeing as how SNOW is still in a very early build, it’s full of issues, but Poppermost is on top of it and they have big plans to bring to this cold, white world. At this time you can basically choose from a variety of drop points on the mountain and literally ski down in any direction you want. Obviously there are boundaries, or areas that you simply can’t reach, but for the most part it’s very open.

 The team behind the game is planning to add snowboarding gameplay, DLC, and multiplayer, but I imagine it’s still a ways off based on what the game clearly needs in the meantime. At this point in development, the game doesn’t even offer stable gameplay, but it’s playable to some extent. As you can see in the video below, there’s still quite a bit of pop-in graphics, flickering video, and rather glitchy encounters with obstacles in the game world. A personal suggestion regarding the lack of sound right now…. You should seriously play the SSX Tricky soundtrack in the background and run the game on top of that – it’s great.

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 Currently SNOW can be purchased in one of three tiers beginning with the Starter Pack, followed by the Tester Pack, and finally the Founder Pack. Here’s a quick breakdown of each from the Steam store page.

 $14.99 – SNOW Starter Pack
Includes an Alpha Access Pass, 3 items from the “Founder’s Set” and the Exclusive Bronze Helmet and Skies

$29.99 – SNOW Tester Pack

Includes an Alpha Access Pass, a Tester Access Pass, 7 items from the “Founder’s Set” and the Exclusive Bronze and Silver Helmets and Skis

 $59.99 – SNOW Founder’s Pack

Includes an Alpha Access Pass, a Tester Access Pass, a free Tester Access Pass (for a friend), 10 items from the “Founder’s Set”, the Exclusive Bronze, Silver, and Gold Helmets and Skis, and the Exclusive Mountain Event

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 Sixty bucks might seem like a lot to drop this early on, but if all their plans work out and the game is updated to the quality you’d expect, it should become a welcome addition to your Steam library.

 What I’d like to see in a final release would be three mountains to choose from with a variety of runs on each (three to five would be acceptable), snowboarding & skiing, an improved trick system, and proper beginning and ending points to the runs. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this title and we’ll provide updates as the game progresses, so stay tuned to keep up-to-date on the progress of SNOW.

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