SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding News

This is an update that aims to fix SNØ's scoring system (read more about why the old system broke in our previous post), plus some fun new additions!

Here are the things that are new in SNØ 1.0.01.61

Additions:

• 👑 POTW Champion slot - New slot on Peak of the Week leaderboard featuring last week's winner
  

Changes:

• 🔗 Near Miss - Chain bonus for near miss scoring
  
• 🌳 Land On - Chain bonus for land on obstacle scoring
  
• 😶‍🌫️ Full Rotation - Full rotation score bonus now grow at a non-exponential rate
  
• 🐬 Rotation - Rotation scoring yield more points the more upside down you are
  
• ⏲️ Score counter linger time - Continuous score counters (near miss, rotation, big air, swooping, grinding and trick) linger slightly longer on screen before cashing in
  
• ⌛ Multiplier growth - Multiplier now takes slightly longer to build up over time, but...
  
• ⏩ Multiplier growth - ...you now get a multiplier build up bonus every time a new score counter appears on screen
  
• 🐇 Rabbit score multiplier - Bumped and extended rabbit bonus multiplier
  
• 🛠️ Various minor tweaks to some score and multiplier values
  

Fixes:

• 🛑 Grind scoring bug - Fixed bug causing grinding on objects with no friction (the ones intended for grinding) yielded no points.
  
• 🎮 Grind Steering bug - Fixed bug that made it impossible to change grind angle by gamepad trigger steering
  
• 📦 Instant collider activation - Attempt to fix the bug where players sometimes clip through entire obstacles
  

New achievements:

• 🎿 Reckless Riding II - Achievement awarded for chaining together 10 near misses
  
• 🌋 The floor is Magma - Achievement awarded for landing on 20 obstacles without touching snow
  
• 🔥 Apocalypse - Achievement awarded for landing on 50 obstacles without touching snow
  

Data management
The rebalance makes it harder to reach incredibly high scores. That's why this update also need to do something about the existing high scores. Therefore, as part of this update:

• ⚠️ The global leaderboards will reset
  

When booting the game for the first time after updating, the game will also

• 🏅 Clear your personal best score for mode Score Attack
  
• 🏅 Clear your personal best score for mode Infinite Run
  

Disclaimer:
We know our own game quite well, and we believe that the new scoring system will enable a wide range of viable scoring strategies. However we're a two man team - and we do our best - but we simply do not have the capacity to test every in and out of the scoring system on every available mountain, so we can never guarantee 100 % that our scoring system does not contain overpowered exploits.

The next week we'll be extra open for feedback regarding the new scoring system. If you discover what you believe to be a broken strategy or other things you want to give feedback on, we really appreciate it if you let us know in our Discord!

We hope you appreciate the changes, and we look forward to see you claim your spots on the leaderboard again! ⛷️🏔️🌟

Best
Alex & Christer
SG

One month!

☝️That's how long it took you to break SNØ's scoring system. For us it has been a real pleasure seeing our community discover the best scoring strategies (strategies we couldn't even imagine), and search for mountains providing the best scenarios for exploitation.

Two weeks ago (exactly one month after SNØ's release) Nevir posted this on our Discord:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The Godspin
We realized quite early after the release of SNØ that we would have to do a score balancing patch at some point. The "Godspin" (demonstrated in the video above) quickly proved itself to be a superior scoring strategy. It exploits the fact that full spin rewards grows exponentially, and for weeks we have seen Godspin dominate the leaderboard.

But we want SNØ to be fun for everyone, and allow for a wide range of playstyles and viable scoring strategies. So in service of the game - and everyone playing it - we have finally decided to go through with the rebalancing patch.

We have been reluctant to go through with it, both because we didn't want to spoil the fun for our top players, and because rebalancing comes with a couple of "kjipe"* consequences for everyone. The point is, we don't take this lightly, but with Nevir's score overflow run we feel there are no reasons left to not go through with it.

Consequences of rebalancing
To ensure everyone doesn't end up with unobtainable leaderboard scores and personal bests, the patch will include:

1. Wiping the global leaderboards
   
2. Clearing local high scores for Score Attack and Infinite Run (Longest Zen Distance will be kept).
   

Since the next update will reset all scores, we just wanted to give you a heads up. We hope you understand why we do what we do, and if you are a competitive player we also hope you are a bit excited for a fresh start.

More details about the specifics of the rebalancing patch will be posted in the patch notes as the update goes live. We're aiming for this weekend 🙏

Best
Alex
SG

*Kjipt = Norwegian word for sad, unfortunate, lame

About a week ago we dropped our new game mode Peak of the Week (POTW), and I felt like sharing with you how it works and why we added it.

What is it?
Peak of the week is a mode that presents everyone with the same challenge on a weekly basis. The challenge is generated from a seed that renews every week, and it consist of the following three, randomized elements: Mountain seed, game mode (Infinite Run or Score Attack) and rider. Every challenge also comes with its own new leaderboard!

🌄 The weekly challenge renews itself every Monday at 7.00 (UTC) 🌄

Why is it?
Honestly I picked up the idea from deep within our forums where SmogBruh suggested a daily seed and leaderboard. I immediately liked the idea and we soon got the same suggestion from other game developers in Trondheim. It just seemed like a good idea - and one that shouldn't be too hard to implement (big plus).

We had already felt how special some mountains could become if they only got a little bit of history. I mean, after visiting some of the top scoring mountains from the leaderboard, I could almost feel the presence of the riders who've been there before, although there is no actual trace of them. Sending everyone to the same (randomly selected) mountain should be able to evoke a similar feeling.

We also liked the idea of combining this with a leaderboard that resets regularly, as it would allow more players to experience the thrill of achieving a top score on a global leaderboard.

At the same time we were a bit skeptical to the whole thing. We didn't want to risk losing the simple, minimalist, no-nonsense core of SNØ. To put it bluntly: I despise modern retention mechanics, and "daily seed" felt like playing dangerously close to stuff like "daily rewards" and other dark design patterns, stuff that we have deliberately avoided through the development of SNØ - and our lifetime as game developers really.

So we decided to make the seed renew on a weekly basis instead of daily. We think it makes the mode feel less urgent, less "pushy" and honestly I think it makes it more meaningful, allowing mountain specific strategies and discussions to form in our community. There is also nothing special to gain from participating in POTW regularly, so there's is no need to worry if you "forget" to play. The only value you get from POTW is (hopefully) a feeling of being part of a shared experience, and maybe get pushed out of your comfort zone by having to adapt to a mountain that might not fit your favorite playstyle. Who knows, maybe you'll discover some new tricks or survival strategies on one of the weekly seeds?

Final thoughts
In the end I think we struck a good balance with a fun mode that mixes SNØs core features up in a new way to give an accessible, shared competetive experience, without demanding too much attention.

Also I'm very glad we didn't settle for the mode's working title: "Weekly Run". I always wanted to call it "Mountain of the week", but it was simply too long for our UI layouts (the most ruthless design constraint of them all). But then Christer suggested "Peak of the Week" instead, only a day before making the mode public - I mean, it was love at first sight, and just in time ❤️

Thank you for reading!

If you have feedback about Peak of the Week, don't hesitate to leave a comment right here or on our Discord

Hope you like it! 🏔️✨

Best
Alex
SG

PS: This week's challenge is Score Attack with the paraskier on mountain #867932563
(featured in the header image ☝️)

Here are the things that are new in SNØ 1.0.01.46

Additions:

• 🏔️✨ Peak of the Week - New mode presenting players with a weekly challenge consisting of a randomly picked mountain, mode and rider. Everyone gets the same challenge, and every week the leaderboard resets. Renews every Monday at 07.00 (UTC). More about this in its own post coming soon!
  
• 🎮 RT/LT Spin - New input option (for gamepads only) that overrides the classic "hold trick to change spin axis" behavior. Instead it maps the third spin axis to the triggers. This new spin method is enabled by default. The classic method can be enabled in the options menu.
  
• ☁️ Cross platform support for Steam Cloud. Save files should now sync between PC and Mac*

Changes:

• 🌱 Exposed seeds - Custom named mountains now also show their numerical seeds in the mountain generator list
  
• 👑 Zen PB - Your personal longest Zen ride is now shown in the main menu
  
• 🔮 New UI element for changing rider - Preparing for cool things to come
  
• 🔊 Labeled audio sliders
  

Fixes:

• 🐬 Flip bug - Doing flips while riding switch and holding trick will now boost your spin in the correct direction
  
• 📸 Attempt to fix a bug that caused game to crash on mac when taking a photo in photo mode. Not verified yet.
  
• ⛷️ High score rider data - fixed a bug where the wrong rider id was uploaded as part of the leaderboard meta data, causing a lot of leaderboard entries to have the monoskier stored as the record setting rider. Old leaderboard entries may still hold incorrect ids, but all future entries will be correct.
  
• 🎮⌨️ Optimized and more snappy detection of changed input
  
• 🅰️ Font size adjustments on the following UI elements: Challenger name, final score subtitle and "Stuck?" text
  
• 📖 Localization fixes and improvements - Improvement of Russian, and fixed a missing Turkish translation
  

*☁️ Steam Cloud Warning for Mac Users
Now that Steam Cloud supports cross platform saves, players who have been playing on both a PC and Mac should expect a message telling them their Steam Cloud is out of sync. Syncing it means choosing which one of your save files to keep, sacrificing the other in the process. I know a lot of people get attached to their skins, so if you don't want to lose them in the sync process, here's a couple of options:

• 🛌 Disable Steam Cloud for SNØ in the Steam game properties
  
• ⛷️ Make a note of all the skin seeds, and go claim them again! (Recommended option. This will unfortunately not work for your seasonal skins)
  
• 🧑‍🔬 Advanced option that will preserve even seasonal skins. Proceed with caution (I take no responsibility for any data loss caused by attempting this solution): Take a backup of the save file about to be sacrificed by the sync process (for good measure, I recommend you take a backup of your preferred save file as well). Download the SNØ Demo and disable Steam Cloud for it. Play the demo a couple of rounds, and the quit it. Now replace the SNØ Demo save file with backup you took of the save file about to be sacrificed. Now boot the full game. The full game should now have imported your old skins (thinking they are skins collected in the demo). Save file locations available in our FAQ. After completing this process, you can safely delete the Demo and its save file directories - The skins have been safely stored in your main save file.

I'm really sorry about this sync inconvenience. No matter how you choose to solve it (personally I recommend option 2) you don't have to worry about your global high scores. They are safe in the leaderboards!

EDIT: After hearing back from some mac users experiencing problems with Steam Cloud after enabling cross platform support, I have disabled it again. Major apologies to you if you experienced data loss. I will investigate what went wrong and make sure everything is set up correctly before a new attempt at enabling cross platform support.

Hope you like the changes. As always, if you encounter any more issues, please report them on our Discord or in the Steam forums!

Enjoy the first Peak of the Week(end)! See you on mountain #1670360843 🏔️✨

Best
Alex
SG

Noticed an issue with some skin patterns. Also it felt wrong to let seasonal skins block access to all the standard skins.

Here are the things that are new in SNØ 1.0.00.91

Changes

• 🐰🐰 Made it possible to collect standard skins during seasonal events. To get both, simply catch two rabbits on the same mountain
  

Fixes

• 🎨Adjusted some wrong offset and scale settings on some the TRD WSC 2025 skin patterns
  

Best
Alex
SG