When Canadian developer Snowman released their endless snowboarder game Alto’s Adventure for iOS in February, it was very well-received, holding a whopping 92 per cent average score on Metacritic to date.
But what makes Alto’s Adventure so special? Snowman founder Ryan Cash says that the team wanted to capture the rhythm and flow of snowboarding in a game created for mobile devices first, something they felt that other titles in the genre hadn’t done yet.
“I think a lot of games focus too much on the kind of things you’d see in a console game,” Cash said in an interview with Polygon. “And that often means (complicated) controls on-screen, which never sat quite right with me on mobile.”
Alto’s Adventure centers around an easy-to-learn, yet difficult-to-master one button trick system that allows players to chain together increasingly more elaborate trick combos to maximise their speed and compete for high scores and distances, as they rescue runaway llamas, grind along village rooftops, leap over terrifying chasms and outwit the game’s mountain elders.
The studio also worked hard to tweak the endless runner format. “A lot of runners have uninteresting and repetitive goals that you have to beat, and a lot of the time they’re negative,” Cash explains. “We tried to make our goals really fun; so that if you’re stuck on a goal, at least it’s one that’s fun.”
Check out the iOS release trailer:
Ready to learn more? Now you can meet Ryan Cash at NG15 and join his talk “How to Properly Launch an Indie Game”. Another great reason to join us for Nordic Game 2015, 20-22 May in Malmö, Sweden. Register today!
About Snowman
Snowman is a small Canadian software studio based in Toronto, Canada, focused on building apps that enhance people’s lives through productivity and entertainment.
Read more about Alto’s Adventure and Snowman at builtbysnowman.com.
