Lonely Mountains: Downhill Switch

Copy/past of a comment I made in another post: Here is a switch review of lonely mountains downhill. Tl;dw: 9/10, a few frame drops/slowndown in handheld and docked - not too much to stop playing, 'the best driving game on switch'. Explore and race down the Lonely Mountains! Lonely Mountains: Downhill. Available now $19.99. A Nintendo Switch Online membership (sold separately) is required for Save Data Cloud backup.

• Lonely Mountains Downhill Switch Gameplay
• Lonely Mountains Downhill Review

Lonely Mountain: Downhill's first paid DLC expansion, Eldfjall, is coming to Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and PC, next Thursday, 22nd October; it'll be accompanied by a free new seasonal Daily Rides feature for all players, initially bringing spookily themed rewards for Halloween.

Starting with Eldfjall, it introduces a new island map featuring an additional four leaderboard-enabled trails of serene/infuriating downhill bikery, complete with their own challenges and resting spots. This time, however, the elements won't be quite so hospitable, with players needing to navigate through the likes of thunderstorms and an erupting volcano.

Developer Megagon Industries is also throwing in new unlockable outfits, helmets, and paint jobs, new unlockable backpacks, and the pro helmet for use with existing outfits. All that will cost $5.99 USD (around £4.60) when it launches on 22nd October.

Eldfjall will be accompanied by a free update for all players, adding a new Daily Rides feature. This brings new seasonally themed challenges, with a new random trail - featuring its own routes, obstacles, and shortcuts - being introduced each day.

Lonely Mountain: Downhill's inaugural season will celebrate Halloween, with daily scoring leaderboards and appropriately spooky rewards.

Lonely Mountain: Downhill's first paid DLC expansion, Eldfjall, is coming to Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and PC, next Thursday, 22nd October; it'll be accompanied by a free new seasonal Daily Rides feature for all players, initially bringing spookily themed rewards for Halloween.

Starting with Eldfjall, it introduces a new island map featuring an additional four leaderboard-enabled trails of serene/infuriating downhill bikery, complete with their own challenges and resting spots. This time, however, the elements won't be quite so hospitable, with players needing to navigate through the likes of thunderstorms and an erupting volcano.

Developer Megagon Industries is also throwing in new unlockable outfits, helmets, and paint jobs, new unlockable backpacks, and the pro helmet for use with existing outfits. All that will cost $5.99 USD (around £4.60) when it launches on 22nd October.

Eldfjall will be accompanied by a free update for all players, adding a new Daily Rides feature. This brings new seasonally themed challenges, with a new random trail - featuring its own routes, obstacles, and shortcuts - being introduced each day.

Lonely Mountain: Downhill's inaugural season will celebrate Halloween, with daily scoring leaderboards and appropriately spooky rewards.

I feel like cycling isn't a sport that translates to video games particularly well, generally speaking. I remember playing — and being bored to death by — a Tour de France game at some point in the last several years, and even the Wii Sports Resort version wasn't particularly interesting. I mean, I love cycling in real life to a moderately unhealthy degree (I'm one of those people who even bikes when it's thirty below), and even I'm fully capable of acknowledging that it's super repetitive by its very nature — it's not easy to make the act of pedaling very exciting.

So, from that perspective, Lonely Mountains: Downhill is kind of impressive, in that it's a game about cycling that's not terrible. It's got some flaws, which I'll get to shortly, but on the whole, I didn't hate it.

Lonely Mountains Downhill Switch Gameplay

This, I suspect, can be attributed to that fact that it's less about the act of cycling, and more about capturing the feeling of it. The game takes place across a series of mountain trails, and you just bike downhill. You bike through fields and forests, across rocks and over streams, and you hear the wind and insects and babbling brooks. At its best, it's a pretty relaxing game.

Unfortunately, the game isn't always at its best. Lonely Mountains: Downhill has got an absolutely brutal camera that doesn't always show you exactly where you're going — which is kind of a big deal, seeing as the game often leaves you with no margin for error. Not only do you face all the obvious dangers of biking down a steep mountain — that is, falling off the edge of a cliff and tumbling to your death — your bike is also prone to hitting tree roots and edges of rocks that stop you dead in your tracks. While my annual tire innertube budget would acknowledge there's some truth to that, it ultimately feels a little too unforgiving.

But, as I said, when Lonely Mountains: Downhill works, it works pretty well. It's far from perfect, but if you want a game that captures the zen of cycling, it mostly does a decent job of that.

Lonely Mountains Downhill Review

Thunderful Publishing provided us with a Lonely Mountains: Downhill Switch code for review purposes.