SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding News

Fixes

• 🏂 Snowboard achievements - Fixed issues with both snowboard achievements. They are confirmed to work now
  
• ☃️ Post death lag - Fixed issue where snow particles could sometimes cause severe performance drop
  

The snowboarder is finally ready 🏂 - our most requested feature in SNØ by far! It took a lot of work to get right, but I think we got there in the end! Also...

✨ SNØ is on SALE! ✨

SNØ is part of Sport-acular Festival and discounted by 30 % until Wed, Apr 16, 10 AM PDT (7 PM GMT+2)


About the new snowboarder
The snowboarder plays very similar to the skiers - same stats, same scoring logic, mostly same everything. But due to the nature of a snowboarder, it does come with a couple of unique quirks that sets them apart from the skiers:

1. 🧭 No "backwards" - Instead of riding switch like a skier, a snowboarder will just turn their head and keep on riding facing forwards. We had to rewrite our procedural posing components to account for this new, bidirectional behavior.
   
2. 🤠 Helmet - We quickly noticed that a snowboarder carries around significantly less gear than a skier. To compensate we decided to give the snowboarder a helmet! Not only does it balance the color composition, it can also fly off during a crash! (No, it will not save you 🤕)
   
3. 🔦 Bidirectional headlight - The snowboarder will always face in the direction of travel, and therefore their headlight will too during pitch black nights.
   
4. 🦘 Bidirectional unstuck jump direction - When riding at very slow velocities the jump is angled slightly forwards to help you gain some speed. The skiers have a defined forward facing direction, while the snowboarder's forward is defined by the current travel direction.
   
5. ↔️ Goofy/Regular - Someone made us aware that stance could be a sensitive topic! But we had to choose one, and we chose goofy (right foot in front), simply because it looks best in the main menu. But we acknowledge both riding stances, and so we threw in an extra achievement in honor of all you regulars out there 🤙
   

Here are some other things that are new in SNØ 1.0.01.83

Additions:

• 🏂 Snowboarder - New playable character!
  
• 🌨️ New weather type - Some mountains now feature heavy snowfall, without going full snowstorm
  
• 🎿 Leaderboard rider icon - The leaderboard now indicate the rider used to achieve a score
  

Changes:

• ✒️ Calligraphic snow deformation - Skis/boards now deform snow like flat tipped pens
  
• 💥 Improved grind effect - Grind sparks light up the environment
  

Fixes:

• 📸 Photo mode bug - Game should no longer crash on some Mac devices when taking a photo
  

If you have any feedback on the new snowboarder, suggestions or other thoughts, please let us know in our Discord! 😄

See you in the mountains! ⛷️❤️🏂

Best
Alex
SG

Small update addressing an issue with this week's Peak Of The Week challenge. Two extra mini fixes hitched a ride.

Fixes:

• 🏔️ Fixed issue with Peak of the Week mode
  
• 🏅 Reset Peak of the Week leaderboard full of 0 scores
  
• 👐 Fixed bug that made it possible to unlock "Look Ma', No Hands" achievement despite leaning with help from gamepad triggers
  
• ☃️ More responsive detection of death by falling below snow
  

An update addressing collider issues, the final small score balancing tweaks (hopefully) and a slight performance upgrade. Plus some other stuff.

Here are all the things that are new in SNØ 1.0.01.67

Additions:

• 🏆 Two new achievements - specific for the soon to be released snowboarder
  
• ⚡ Improved performance - PC and Steamdeck only. SNØ now runs at a stable 60 fps on Steamdeck at Very High quality setting
  

Changes:

• 🐬 Rotation scoring yield more points
  
• 🔄️ Full rotation scoring yield less points
  
• ☁️ Big air scoring yield slightly more points
  
• 🦘 Land on obstacle scoring yield slightly more points
  
• 🌟 Other minor score adjustments
  
• 🎮 Made steering while grinding more powerful
  
• ☃️ Better whiteout detection - Whiteout now requires that both feet AND torso is below snow
  
• ⛑️ Forgiving torso collision detection* - Torso collider will not trigger death if it hits an obstacle that is the same as the one you are currently grounded on.
  
• 📸 Steam screenshot "location" now mentions the current mountain seed
  
• 🤐 Improved model and walk cYcle on [REDACTED] on mountain #[REDACTED].
  

Fixes:

• 🌳 Obstacle collider optimization - Double checked all obstacle colliders and made sure they fit their visual model. Oak tree colliders in particular were significantly improved
  
• 👻 Phase through obstacles bug - FIXED!
  
• 👕 Seasonal trigger bug - Fixed a bug that caused seasonal skins to be unlocked outside of season
  

*⛑️ Forgiving torso collision detection:
This is a response to the Phase through obstacle bugfix. The bug was caused by a line of code designed to make landing on obstacles at very steep angles more forgiving. When landing at such steep angles, the torso tends to touch the obstacle, triggering the kill. Removing this line of code made the game feel too unforgiving. My solution was to simply whitelist the collider you are currently grounded on so that it will not trigger death if the torso hits it. However: Obstacles can consist of many colliders, and touching any of the ones you're not currently riding on will still trigger death. Also, the head collider will always trigger death, no matter what.

Hope you like the changes! As always, if you have feedback on anything, please let us know in our Discord! 😄

Have a terrific weekend ☕✨

Best
Alex
SG

A LOT of you have been requesting a snowboarder for SNØ!

So we made one! 🏂

It was TRICKY but it was worth it! We studied footage of snowboarders, poses and at one point I found myself balancing on a plank in the office to try and get a feel for the posing (spoiler alert: We're not snowboarders). We also did a fair amount of tweaking of our original movement and posing logic, and tested on people we know who actually snowboard 🤙

We think we got it now, and we gotta say: Snowboarding is really fun 🤩

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The snowboarder will be made available as a playable character in the full version of SNØ on April 9th!

Best
Alex
SG