Back in the early PlayStation days Coolboarders and SSX were staples of a lot of gamers on the platform. They were known for easy pick up and play controls with fun arcade gameplay. Enter Shredders, an indie title that aims to strike a perfect balance (pun most definitely intended) between arcade play and realism.
Shredders… Drop In!
Created by FoamPunch, a joint venture between game dev studios I-Illusions and Let It Roll (The Snowboard Game 2018), the game is available on PS5, Steam and Xbox Gamepass. Played here on PS5 (version released Dec 6th 2022) it has been continually updated and refined since its launch on PC back in March 2022.
Gameplay
When you and your pal Scotty are kicking around on the slopes making snowboarding videos for your fledgling YouTube channel, you meet Lisa, a brand ambassador that likes what you’re doing. She offers you a chance to do some sponsored clips and you grab the opportunity with both hands.
As you progress, showing off your skills, Lisa introduces you to real life Snowboarding pros who will offer you challenges. Complete these and you bag rewards like real gear each pro wears in real life.
Challenges come with a main objective and secondary objectives. The main objectives will advance the story, while secondary ones will bag you some extra swag to customise your character. These additional objectives usually entail performing specific tricks or beating the scores of pros on different jumps.
When you fail tricks or challenges… which you will, it’s great that resetting at the start of a jump or restarting the challenge from scratch is really quick so there’s no time lost waiting on reloading.
Controls
Giving players agency over the full body movement makes for a really intuitive control scheme. Upper body on the right thumbstick and lower body on left. Because the physics of it makes sense to your brain there’s no button combos to learn. It’s just do the motion with your boarders body using the sticks and voila – you’re hitting sick tricks with relative ease.
And herein lies one of my only gripes with the game. As a player with no interest or knowledge of snowboarding (or skateboarding) outside of having fun in games, I can’t relate the trick names to the movements needed to pull them off. Sure I know 180, 360, backflip etc but Japan? Not a clue.
To alleviate this issue it would be nice to have a compendium of tricks added showing the elements/motions to achieve it. That way players with limited knowledge of the sport can learn what the tricks are and continue the fun.
Graphics & Audio
The quality of the visuals is really good. Snow is powdery and realistic, deforming as you shred through it. The trails left behind from previous attempts at tricks are left intact when you reset a mission. The licensed gear is detailed and the environments have some stunning views. Where this game really excels is with its animations. They are top notch and credit has to the team for the work they put in here.
A clever design choice is removing the character faces in the game by covering them with masks to keep warm. So many times in sports/racing games we get those uncanny valley people and it’s distracting. Here this is not the case and focus is never drawn from what matters most – having fun shredding pow. The team even pop fun at this in the campaign, a nice touch to show they care and have a sense of humour.
The team have also nailed the sense of speed as you hurtle down some treacherous terrain. I would like to see them experiment with having the sfx of the board on the snow and the wind come from the speaker in the DualSense, I really think this would enhance the gameplay.
There’s some minor performance issues like texture pop-in and some frame rate stutters but nothing too egregious. There’s also some changes needed on the UI front as the white text on the snowy white backdrop of the map just doesn’t make for great reading.
Longevity
It took just a handful of hours to complete half of the campaign missions. This included multiple tries in some cases to bag the mission objective. With secondary objectives needed to achieve 3 star rating in some missions there’s reason to replay here as you continue to master the skills.
There’s also the replay mode, akin to a photo mode in other games but for creating videos of your escapades on the slopes. I found it a bit fiddly to get to grips with but it does seem like you could capture some really cool pieces with dramatic camera angles once you spend time with it and experiment. The devs have an extensive editor tutorial on their YouTube channel that I’ll have to check out.
There are 75 missions to complete, 26 Gaps to jump, 54 collectables to grab, 347 stars to earn and 136 items to unlock. Multiplayer also opens up the possibility of having some fun in the snowy playgrounds with friends online, with cross platform play supported. At £24.99/€29.99 it offers good value.
For trophy hunters there are 22 bronze, 9 silver, 4 gold and a platinum. Nothing seems too taxing with the only grind being the “Discount Please!” trophy. This requires you to unlock all the gear in the game.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to forget that this game was made by a small indie team. FoamPunch ain’t lying when they say “No snowboarding game has ever had this level of control”.
This passion project of theirs delivers the benchmark for how a snowboarding title should feel in the hands of the player. Their love for this sport shines through in what they have achieved here and I really look forward to what the team have up their sleeve for the future.
Excellent controls and animations with a fun campaign that celebrates the sport and craft of snowboarding means Shredders lands the Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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