Mountains and gravity aren’t a great combination under normal circumstances, as anyone who’s fallen off a cliff or seen a landslide can attest, but people will play with absolutely anything given half a chance. Find the right slope, terraform as necessary, and suddenly guaranteed doom is an exciting ride and the chance of death or maiming drops to a manageable but nowhere-close-to-zero percentage. The first Descenders was a mountain biking sports arcade game where the object was to ride on the far edge of control, zipping down the trail past trees and rocks at a breakneck pace while sticking to the path only when it was convenient. Speed and tricks built up rep, earning new bikes and other gear, and while it’s a great way to tear up a mountain there are more ways to get to the base than on two wheels.
Everywhere’s a Playground If You’re Brave Enough
Descenders Next has been announced today and its goal is to cover all the rest of the mountain-based sports the first game couldn’t get to. This is, very obviously, a tall order and not something that can be done all at once, so Descenders Next is opening with two board sports- snowbarding and mountainboarding. Snowboarding is a standard gaming sport- snow, mountain, board, done. There’s a million ways to mix it up, as anyone who’s played SSX Tricky and 1080 Snowboarding knows, but mountainboarding hasn’t had much time in the gaming sun. Mountainboarding is basically offroad skateboarding, where the board’s got wheels big enough to deal with rougher terrain and, like snowboarding, you go from summit to base as quickly and stylishly as possible. There are a lot of similarities on a surface level between the two sports, but the overall feel of control and handling is what’s going to set one apart from the other.
Flying Down the Mountain on Two Wheels and a Prayer in Descenders
While these are the only two sports revealed so far, the long-term goal of Descenders Next is to keep adding new ones to the mix over time. Maybe biking will reappear, probably skiing, maybe Hawaiian he’e holua, maybe developer Rage Squid will create something brand-new like stunt zip-lining. All of the sports, both revealed and to come, will have the full multiplayer experience, courses focused on speed or tricks, various game modes including scavenger hunts that encourage players to explore the mountains from top to bottom, and unique handling specific to the activity.
Today’s Descenders Next reveal trailer comes with a wide release window of 2025, launching on both Steam and Game Pass. There’s a lot more information to be revealed (how much new-sports DLC is planned to be free vs paid is a good place to start) but the initial release is aiming to be as feature- and content-packed as the first Descenders. That’s a lot of content seeing as the original game had two years in Early Access plus a good amount of post-launch courses added, but with two separate sports to begin with and more on the way Descenders Next is promising to keep players busy on the mountains for as long as they want to speed down them.
