Lonely Mountains: Downhill

This is one of the games that has been distracting me from Tears of the Kingdom lately, where I want to talk a little bit about it, with some connections to Zelda in mind. It's currently on sale on both Steam and the Nintendo eShop, where I can only recommend to try the demo to see if this might be something for you.

Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a simple game, all about driving down a mountain on a bike. It's played from a top-down perspective with a fixed camera and looks very pretty, despite or maybe because of its simplistic polygon visuals.

What makes this so good is its controls and physics. You pedal, steer, break, and sprint. That's it, that's the four actions that you can do in the game. But it all just feels so responsive that the biking in itself is a lot of fun. The best thing I can compare this to is the Master Cycle Zero from Breath of the Wild. If you enjoy driving it around Hyrule, then chances are that you'll like this game.

Here it's all about learning the different trails to score good times, where there are insane possibilities for shortcuts everywhere. So, this is mainly for the crowd who likes doing time trials, but there are also challenges about avoiding crashes. The tracks normally have a number of checkpoints and when you crash it will set you back to the last one without delay, so you can retry instantly. But you can also just explore freely, where a lot of effort went into creating the environments and you may find some hidden secrets.

There are four different mountains, which have four different trails each, but there is free DLC that adds a fifth, more difficult trail to each mountain. In addition, there is a fifth mountain with four trails available as paid DLC. So, all in all, that's 24 different courses, though there are some overlaps between the trails of the same mountain. You can also unlock night versions of all the trails and other changes, so there's plenty to do.

It's highly recommended to play with a controller and the screen-based steering, where you will go in the direction of your analog stick. The alternative are left / right controls, similar to the classic Micro Machines games, and I personally find those very confusing.

One thing to emphasize about this game is its atmosphere. There is no music, it's all just pure ambient sounds, but it really takes you to these places and absolutely makes you feel like you're biking in the middle of nature. This is something that I always loved about the old Nintendo 64 Zelda games, where you may even hear some familiar bird sounds, and Lonely Mountains: Downhill really perfected this craft.

My only major complaint is that the camera sometimes is a little restrictive, so that you don't really see where you're going and have to learn the courses at first to be able to drive them without accidents. This can lead to some frustrations and I really would enjoy the game more if I could just zoom out a bit.

Also, I feel like the physics can be a bit too punishing, where I sometimes feel like I should make a jump, but then just crash anyway. But I haven't unlocked all the different bikes yet, which can give you better stats, and it may just be a skill issue. (Update: other bikes do indeed help, where each one has individual strengths and drawbacks, which includes the stability.)

Another thing to keep in mind that this game has a "daily ride", where participating in them let's you score different cosmetics during a season. For the dailies everyone will play the same trail with the same setup and under special conditions, so that there's a new experience each day. The better you score compared to other players on a leaderboard, the more points you will earn to unlock the different items, like helmets, backpacks, paint jobs, and stuff.

The seasons are completely free, so you don't have to pay extra here for some "Rider Pass" or whatever. But of course this is yet another game on the market that wants your attention on a daily basis, where there are way too many. They are also keeping it quite tight, where a season may last only one month, but it takes (at least) 15 days to unlock everything. So, if you're conscious about this type of consumer trap, then be aware about this.

Cosmetics from previous seasons are also completely unobtainable right now, which means that a new player you will have missed a ton of "content". At least the game doesn't rub it in your face, so there's no list of "here are all the nice items that you could have had if you had been playing the game from day 1 and it's really your own fault that you didn't". It only shows you the things you have. And since the game's graphics are very simplistic, it may not even matter that much... (Update: certain seasons are also reruns from previous ones, so you have a chance of getting older items again.)

That being said, it's the perfect game to be played in-between. You can play this in very short sessions – spend around five to ten minutes to drive down a mountain, feel good about it, and then move on. And the daily rides are a good incentive to do just that.