SNOW

 I had high hopes for this game when I bought the Founder's pack a long time ago, when there was only one mountain. The game was free to play back then, and the Founder's pack was $50. I felt like chipping in for something I thought had a lot of potential. And potential it did have—exploring the wide open mountain was neat, the physics worked, people who bought the Founder's pack had special gear, and snowmobiles were supposedly in the works.

 Over time, though, I saw the game start to degrade. The physics got worse and worse, controls became increasingly stubborn, and when online rolled out it was a buggy, laggy mess. Soon after, microtransactions started and the mountain I enjoyed exploring got locked under a paywall. I didn't have access to it even though I bought the damn Founder's pack! That's when I gave up on the game entirely, uninstalling it without looking back.

 Apparently, the game never recovered. Multiplayer servers were removed. Support for VR mode, which was by all accounts pretty solid, was also removed. The game is $15 now and worse than it was when it was free. Poppermost built a really great foundation for what could have been the next best winter sports game, but unable to live up to their promises, ultimately destroyed it.

This game is so weird. Started out as an open world skiing game that was fairly easy to jump into and great with friends. I played with a buddy for a month or two years back and it's the only time we've been able to get into anything like this, if only because giant ski jumps and tricks are so inherently fun. The open resort world of Sialia is so fun to explore and trek in, and it felt like that openness and interconnected environment was the real unique pull that separated this title from, say, SSX.

But every time I've tried to come back since over the years, it seems like they've entirely flipped the fundamental structure of how you play the game. They locked that big open environment that's the main sell of the game behind a paywall, and there's always some new account creation thing that I have to do over and over, despite the fact that the game is quite literally directly linked to my Steam account.

Each time I've tried to go back, I've gotten too frustrated to commit to the busywork, let alone coerce a friend into doing the same, and once I build up the mental fortitude, it feels like a whole different process the next time I try. This game feels like some kind of marketing experiment in different monetization formats, and how a fanbase reacts to repeated bureaucratic stressors that, from other's perspective at least, seem to constantly make the game worse.

Somebody else should take the concept and run with it. They could make a killing with less confusion and barriers to entry.