Slopecrashers was provided by Neonhive Games for review. Thank you!
There have been, and always will be, games that are synonymous with a particular genre. Competitive FPS? Call of Duty. Arcade Fighter? Street Fighter. Horrendously toxic MOBA? League of Legends. There have always been competitors to these genre staples, like Overwatch, Tekken, and DOTA2. Still, it's safe to say that Nintendo's Mario Kart has uncontestedly championed the Arcade/Party Racer genre. Naturally, you would go into any similar game with a comparative mindset. However, you may find yourself left wanting due to the experience not quite feeling as you're accustomed to.
Enter Slopecrashers, the first game from solo dev byteparrot. It's easy to compare it to similar titles, like Mario Kart. It's an injustice that I stubbornly carried out for the first hour or so. Still, numerous deserved losses on the normal difficulty rudely awakened me to my flawed approach, which, in the end, showed me the true strength of what was presented to me: freedom.
First and foremost, Slopecrashers is, at its core, an arcade snowboarding game that incorporates tricks, combat, and other means to get to the finish line. A purported "chaotic band of playable animals" fills out the roster you can select from, including Penguins, Capybaras, and Ferrets, each with specifically assigned stats relating to speed, stunt speed, acceleration, and handling. Snowboards, Skis, Gliders, and other equipment have similar ranked characteristics.
To state that racing is the biggest draw would be somewhat of an obvious point, but it is purely down to the joyous mechanics and utmost liberty that the stages provide that make it so enjoyable. The mistake I hinted at earlier in my treatment of Slopecrashers was that I strictly stuck to what I presumed were the boundaries of each track. However, there's a lot more free reign in your routes, meaning the usual shtick of a singular defined path with the odd shortcut isn't what we have our hands on here. Searching for alternate paths and combining tricks with gravity-assisted speed reveals the immense scope of each level, of which there are multiple unique tracks within each of the seven available "worlds" (deserts, mountaintops, beaches, etc). Every locale found within is a lively and joyous playground that begs to be diligently scoured, filled with surprise as you explore.
Performing tricks is crucial to achieving success in the standard repertoire of various modes: Campaign (a reasonably-sized standard assortment of multiple trials, with individual challenges that focus on racing, score-focused runs, time trials, and so forth), Grand Prix, Arcade, and Online matches. Each successful maneuver landed fills segments of a boost bar, which can temporarily increase speed. This boost inherently allows further areas to be reached, with the most difficult alternate routes requiring the most arduous speed-fueled acrobatics to reach. The various speed levels you can select before embarking on each mode additionally assist in reaching these other routes, with the increased speed in the latter difficulties sending you soaring higher and further to attain yet more potential and crucial advantages.
The combative items found in Slopecrashers are the usual genre staples: an item that targets the player in the first place, a protective shield, temporary assistance to movement, a spring to facilitate more airtime for tricks, and so forth. The guises the weapons fall under keep in line with the wackier image portrayed on the slopes. These include homing bees, fireworks, and snowmen. Despite the inclusion of the items, which not only feel at home here but, importantly, all feel familiar in their own right, they often also feel like an afterthought and not something that melds cohesively with the rest of the gameplay. It's not necessarily simple enough to say that they are "bad" per se, but they distract from how good the rest of the racing flows.
Slopecrashers is a perfect fit for the Steam Deck, with sessions just made for pick-up and play bursts when the feeling arises. With that said, concessions do have to be made for stability's sake, although the sacrifices are well worth it in the long run. Out the gate and using the "Auto" graphics preset (which later changes to Custom with View Distance, Anti Aliasing and the like at High), the game runs anywhere between 60 and 90 FPS. The drops aren't all that noticeable, to be perfectly honest. Still, the most considerable drawback of playing with the default settings is the abysmal 20W-22W drain on the battery, meaning that we'd only get a measly 2 hours of playtime before we'd find ourselves with a dead Steam Deck in our hands.
While changing the various graphics settings will reduce the many FPS fluctuations, the best and simplest change is to amend the frame limit within the Steam Deck to 45 FPS. This not only resolves the stability issues but, more importantly, lowers the wattage to between 9 and 11, allowing us just shy of 5 hours instead, a welcome increase indeed.
Few accessibility issues are found within Slopecrashers, at least at lunch, outside of difficulty-based changes. Easy Board Press, Grappling Guide, and Lazy Stunts are. Still, a few are found throughout, which manage to lower the bar for entry to new players and make it generally less taxing overall on the player - a must-have for those looking for a casual party game that is enjoyable for all. I would appreciate, however, some future additions to amend the vividity of some of the graphical elements, with the most egregious example being when using a shield on the mountain race track; the bright blue, hexagonally-webbed shield circling the player character against a white, snowy mountainside was too much for my graphically-robust eyes. Turning down just a few components would alleviate this and others completely.
The game also supports 16:10 resolutions and has both cloud saves and controller support.
Slopecrashers is a superb first showing for solo developer byteparrot, and one that deserves to find itself a place on a games night for parties, whether that be locally or online. Some elements, such as combat, feel less refined than the core racing, but that's not a negative on those elements as such, but more a badge of honour for the feel that the slopes afford. With few rewards outside characters, boards, and cosmetics, it's difficult to see whether this particular arcade racer will have the same longevity as many of its contemporaries.
In addition, it feels right at home on the Steam Deck. While it can hit 60 FPS and above, the battery drain is a bit too high, and setting it to 45 can alleviate a lot of this while still keeping it stable.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Slopecrashers is a superb first showing for solo developer byteparrot, and one that deserves to find itself a place on a games night for parties, whether that be locally or online
