TL;DR: Wishlist the SNØ Demo here
[Christer has heard your calls on social media, and he is telling me that people there DEMAND a demo for SNØ!
Well, DEMAND, and ye shall receive.
That's right, a demo for SNØ is right around the corner! Keep reading for some thoughts that went into the design of the demo, or skip 'til the end for some more info about how to get your hands on it.
Dear Dev Diary...
First of all, designing a demo is no trivial task. At least not for a game like SNØ. I suspect it might have been easier if we had a classic level based game. Then we could simply limit the amount of levels available, and there you go, game demonstrated!
SNØ is not a level based game. It is more like a collection of gameplay elements that together provide some pretty exciting moments. If we are not careful when choosing what parts of gameplay to limit or omit we might end up changing the feel of the entire game, and that would not be a very good demonstration now would it?
So, how to square this circle? We wanted to give people an opportunity to try our game before the full release, but making a demo of a game that relies on procedural generation is really tough.
We tried a couple of different designs. Among others: Limit the demo to quit after 10 minutes; limit the demo to one single mountain; limit the demo to 10 runs per day; and limit the playable area to a straight corridor (more like in a ski resort). After discussing and testing the variations of the demo on ourselves and on our neighbors at OLO (the co-working space we're at), we feel that we have struck a good balance.
Here are the core differences between the demo and the full game:
- Every run in the demo is limited in space and time (1000-ish meters of travel, then a few seconds grace period to wrap up your combo). You can play as many runs as you want tough.
- The demo includes only 3 biomes, as opposed to the full game which has 25+
- The mountain renews itself every time you retry. In the full game you can choose to stay on the mountain or even save it if you like it
- The first person view and night time (when you might see northern lights) is unavailable in the demo
With these tweaks we think the demo give you a good feel for what the final game will have to offer, even if the full game isn't done yet.
Thanks for reading!
👇The "more info" part 👇
The SNØ Demo store page just went live, so if you want to be among the first to hit the (semi) infinite slopes of SNØ, wishlist the demo now (yeah, I know, you can wishlist demos now, what has the world come to...), and you'll get notified as soon as it drops.
The demo build is still getting its final touches. Expect it to drop real soon!
Best
Alex
SG