Descenders Next

[h3]I really wanted to love this game.[/h3] [hr][/hr] As the original Descenders is one of my favorite bike/BMX games ever made. It had a unique identity, [b]addictive roguelike progression[/b], satisfying risk-vs-reward gameplay, and that magical [i]"one more run"[/i] feeling that kept me coming back for hundreds of hours. [h1][b]Descenders Next feels like it looked at everything that made the first game special and decided to replace it.[/b][/h1] Most of the roguelike elements that gave the original its replayability and sense of progression have either been stripped back or removed entirely. Instead, we're left with systems that feel shallow, uninspired, and honestly pretty boring. The new additions sound interesting on paper, but in practice they're incredibly lackluster and fail to capture the excitement of the original. Rather than evolving what worked, the developers changed almost everything. The result is a game that feels disconnected from its predecessor and lacks the addictive gameplay loop that made Descenders so special in the first place. I kept waiting for it to click. I kept telling myself maybe I just needed more time. It never happened. The controls, progression, and overall gameplay loop feel like a downgrade. The game somehow manages to have more features while being less fun. That's an impressive achievement, just not the kind you want. If you're looking for a worthy successor to Descenders, this isn't it. It feels like the developers misunderstood what players loved about the original and delivered something far more generic in its place. I'm genuinely disappointed. Not because the game is different, but because it's different in ways that make it significantly worse. The first Descenders made me lose track of time. Descenders Next made me want my time back.

The original is better.

Devs fixed a game breaking bug within an hour, good stuff, solid game :>

Overall I've had a pretty good time with this. You'll enjoy the new board sports more if you learn to carve instead of relying on the brake button. It sounds minor but this is key to how you really experience the "realistic" qualities they've captured so well here in the feel, especially snowboarding. Unless there are major changes as it moves through early access, I probably won't put as much time in as I did the first game. I have a bike bias (and there are very few bicycle games as good as the original) and board sports are a pretty well trod path in games, but DN succeeds in transposing its particular survival risk/reward style in this new direction. It feels a bit more like an expansion than a sequel to the original Descenders. So far, the only big differences besides the switch to boards are a new and confusingly similar career mode to the original roguelike-style survival mode where you explore the same biome for longer with checkpoints. I find the new mode gets tiring quickly because the lack of variety in biomes (especially with snowboarding) starts to lay bare the fact that the procedural generation isn't noticeably improved from the first game. It's still totally serviceable, just kinda boring. There really aren't any new mechanics to be found outside of this mode either, it's all very copy/pasted from the first game. Another big downside to board sports vs bikes is that you can't really do slower skill/balance content like some of the obstacle courses and parks in the first game, which were an awesome contrast to the high speed stuff. Despite those gripes I'm happy to support the devs with this and hope they find new interesting ways to mutate the gameplay from the original into something more distinct. The concept in general is still brilliant and has tons of room to grow.

This is one of the jankiest feeling games that I have ever played. The animations are not much better than what you'd find in the original Cool Boarders on the PSX in 1996. Just really terrible stuff. Instant refund. This one needs a metric ton of work.

After the career mode update, it feels right.

BAD

snowboarding is fun but game is not ready yet, multiplayer keeps disconnecting and game crashes frequently. impossible to finish a run this way.

This game was very fun to play, the physics are nice, the feel of speeding down was nice, and it run smooth like butter.

Not as expansive as the original Descenders, but it's still in early access development. Core gameplay is quite fun. Randomly generated maps mixed in with parks. The main gameplay loop is the roguelike element of going through all the stages with increasingly harder stages. Only downside to this nature is that each run can take awhile (is saving a run partway through a thing?). The series as a whole has a sensitivity to the controls that competitors (like Ubisoft's STEEP and Rider's Republic) lack. Performance on my Steamdeck is just ok whereas I turn down some graphics settings and lock the game to 40fps. Thankfully, multiplayer stutters are basically nonexistent compared to the original descenders.