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Canadian studio Snowman has unveiled its gorgeous endless snowboarding game for iOS called Alto’s Adventure with a teaser trailer and a bunch of striking screenshots.
Yes, it’s a side-scrolling 2D game, but Alto’s Adventure’s angular art style boasts lightning forking through purple night skies, rainy hilltop retreats, and beautiful snowy scenes that you might mistake for thatgamecompany’s PS3 game Journey.
Be it no surprise, then, that Snowman was influenced by Journey, as well as other mobile games including Windosill, Badland, and Tiny Wings. Not only that, but Snowman took inspiration from the Xbox game Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding and their “own experiences snowboarding in the Canadian Rockies out in Alberta and BC.”
Snowman seems keen to maintain some mystery around Alto’s Adventure and hasn’t released many details about how the game will play yet (who or what is Alto?). We know it’s an endless snowboarding game and one of the released images suggests that there will be six playable characters, including an alpaca-type animal and what might be a tribesperson.
Cult of Mac was also able to extract a little bit of information out of Snowman back in May: “We wanted to create something that was fluid, natural, and just felt good to ride. We wanted to get away from the arcade-y tone most games have, and do something more minimal and unique feeling. We’ve built a ton of unique terrain (based on our own experience as snowboarders), so that each run is both challenging and fresh.”
What we can do for now, though, is to gawp at the teaser and the screenshots and imagine what it will be like to snowboard across these terrains. Let your imagination go wild. The screenshot on the game’s website will help with that, too.
