SNOW hits Steam early access

Poppermost Productions CryENGINE-powered, powder-heavy, skiing/snowboarding title hits Steam in Beta form. Is it pretty? Oh yes.

The mountain you see in the trailer is called Sialia. It’s 8km2 of “open-world, mountain terrain that has been entirely hand-crafted by the studio”. Poppermost by the way, is basically just three guys, which is pretty darned impressive no matter how you look at it. And what’s more is that the team didn’t just shlock together something that looks pretty but plays loose or arcady – SNOW is meant to be a realistic simulation.

“With SNOW we wanted to provide players and winter sports enthusiasts with an authentic experience. Skiing is all about freedom, creativity and exploration, and SNOW delivers exactly that! We’ve removed all of the restrictions and clutter that we traditionally see in action sports games and with SNOW; allow players to approach the game the way they want”, said Alexander Bergendahl, CEO and Game Director at Poppermost Productions.

Obviously, there are a bunch of pro sponsors in the game, but Poppermost worked closely with actual winter sports athletes like Tanner Hall, Tom Wallisch, and Russ Henshaw to ensure that SNOW is as authentic to the actual sport as it can be.

“I am really excited to be part of building the first realistic ski game. From what I have seen already it’s the only game built by skiers for skiers!” said Russ Henshaw, Gold Medalist at the 2012 Winter Dew Tour Slopestyle Competition.

In addition to the actual recreation of hitting the slopes, SNOW also features a pretty nice character customization feature set where you can modify your rider with over 140 different products from real life brands. Even cooler, the team at Poppermost will be updating the ‘catalog’ as the game moves forward to keep the most up to date selection available to players.

SNOW is available right now on Steam Early Access for the PC. There’s no release date as of yet for the final version.