Extreme sports game Descenders Next has released into Early Access

Descenders Next is a fresh extreme sports game from RageSquid / No More Robots and it shadow-dropped on Steam in Early Access. They must be crazy, with little to no build up, the game just sneakily arrived along with an update to the original Descenders to add in a racing mode.

You have be pretty wildly confident in your game to just release it like this, especially after it was delayed previously. The publisher did send over a key, and it has been running beautifully on Desktop Linux with Proton 9.0-4. It's also rated Steam Deck Verified.

Check out the trailer below:

YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

The publisher noted that while it's starting off with snowboarding and mountainboarding their aim is for it to "become the only extreme sports game you'll ever need, slowly but surely adding more and more adrenaline-fueled activities over time". It's a pretty crazy goal to have but I appreciate it, we've needed something to come along to provide just good old-fashioned crazy sports like this that other bigger publishers rarely do.

Much like the original Descenders, it's going to change a lot during Early Access and so true thoughts on it will be reserved for the big 1.0 release which isn't for another two years or so. They told me it "already features as much content as the original Descenders", I can't say if that's true or not as I haven't yet had enough time with it - but there is quite a lot there already.

If you played the original Descenders, you'll know what to expect here. It feels very similar in the actual mechanics of the sports on the controls, which isn't surprising of course since this builds on top of what they created with the original. However, each sport that's included feels just about different enough to make it worth playing through each of them.

What they have here currently is a wonderful base package to build upon, one that's already a lot of fun. I really enjoy the way you progress through it! With you picking a sport and then you're given a overworld map with various nodes on it like some sort of roguelike, instead of just a basic level list. Gives a really different feeling.

You get to pick which way you go, with each node giving a different set of tricks you need to pull off in a new environment. There's no real strategy to what you're picking here, as you don't really know what you're going to get apart from the points on the level steepness, curves and stunts.

You have a limited "health" stat to get through a single run, with each time you bail reducing it by one but successfully pulling off the needed tricks in each node will help you increase it. A really interesting choice for how they keep it feeling different and fresh on each run. Plus there's also the big main areas you can just ride around to pull of some tricks to practice too.

The insane speed you can get on some of the courses really gets your heart pumping, as you attempt another death-defying trick and then face-plant the floor. I think the biggest problem is the speed right now, a lot of the time it feels just a bit too fast, it's as if you have a rocket strapped to you. I think if they reduced the feel of the speed a bit, to give just a little more reaction time or more control on your descent it would be more enjoyable.

So far, a great start with obvious rough edges and plenty of room to grow. A much needed injection into the extreme sports genre.