Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders review

pcgamer.com:

What is it? Reflex-oriented downhill skiing that nevertheless manages to feel chill.
Expect to pay $22.49 | £18.89 | AU$36.50
Developer Megagon Industries
Publisher Megagon Industries
Reviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? Yes
Steam Deck Status is officially «unknown». It has a Steam Deck setting, though it doesn't run at consistent frame rates
Link Steam

The creators of my favourite extreme downhill biking game, Descenders, went on to make an extreme snowboarding game, and now the creators of my second favourite extreme downhill biking game, Lonely Mountain: Downhill, have made an extreme skiing game. I'm not going to pretend to be surprised by this: all of these sports are good because they're fast and dangerous, especially at sharp gradients.

The problem, as I see it, is that bikes are better than the other two, and there are far too few mountain biking games. I love bikes. I love the quiet zip of their cogs and wheels. I love the distinct subtleties of the momentum born of pedalling. For the first couple of hours spent playing Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, I really wished I was playing Lonely Mountains: Downhill instead. Skis are clumsier than bikes. They don't get fast quite as quickly as a bike. But I gradually learned the orthodoxies of going fast down technical hills on skis, and once I figured out how to go faster quicker, Snow Riders started to click gloriously into place, to the extent that now I think I love skis more than bikes.

First I learned that to gain speed quickly, I need to go downhill first without crouching, and then tuck in tight to become a human bullet. My next lesson was one the loading screens constantly reminded me about, but I was slow to learn: braking is important. On a bike, brakes slow the bike down, and at super high speeds this is more likely to lead to imprecision if not death. It’s kinda the same on skis, but with the right know-how applied, and with fast reflexes, I can usually maintain my speed