For Slopecrashers lead Johannes Lugstein, one isn’t necessarily the loneliest number. The Linz, Austria-based developer has been working on his upcoming arcade snowboarding game all by himself for several years. What started as a side project for Lugstein has now taken center-stage — he’s in the process of quitting his day job to devote the bulk of his time to Slopecrashers.
Lugstein’s learned a lot about what he’s capable of during his time as a solo developer, and he’s learned why many studios aren’t one-man armies. Game ZXC sat down with the Byteparrot lead to talk about his experience building Slopecrashers, and where his project fits into the broader extreme sports genre. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Tell me a little bit about Slopecrashers.
A: Slopecrashers is an arcade snowboard combat-racing game. It’s very arcade-ish in nature. I tried to create a fun experience — of course, simulations can also be fun, but for my game I wanted crazy, over-the-top action, with added combat elements.
The game is based around this band of animals that are trying to become extreme snowboarders. That's the idea of the game. They compete in many different disciplines: normal races, battle races, stunt shows, slalom events, and lots more. There are eight different playable characters, all very unique. There are lemurs and parrots, and there’s also a playable character that’s just two ferrets on one board.
It's not just snow slopes. There are also deserts, anywhere that goes downhill. I also built Slopecrashers with split-screen multiplayer in mind from the start. I’m already working on a Switch version, for example, where you can play with four people through the campaign.
I did not make it easy for myself making this game. In retrospect, when I started I was like, ‘yes, add all the animals, what could go wrong?’ It’s definitely been a bit of work overhead, but that’s coming down.
Q: You mentioned a campaign. Does Slopecrashers have a proper narrative or is it more of a grand prix-style format?
A: There is a structured campaign. Initially, I didn't want to do that, because hey, it’s an arcade game, just choose what you want to do. There were just too many different disciplines, so I chose to build a structure around it. I wouldn’t want someone to just play all of the races, then all of the stunt shows, and then all of the slalom events, because I think that could get boring. They can do that if they want, but I also wanted to guide the players through the game a little bit.
I didn’t create any cutscenes or anything. I initially imagined that there would be, but at some point as you get closer to release you have to cut down on features. There are a lot of different tours that you progress through, which all have their own little spin. Compare it to Driveclub, for example, or Onrush — there’s a campaign where players progress through events.
Q: Slopecrashers seems like it takes a lot of notes from other arcade racers and extreme sports titles. What sort of influences does the game have?
A: There are lots of influences in there. I think they are all kind of visible when you follow the game a little. Probably the biggest influence, one of the reasons the game actually exists, is Snowboard Kids on the N64. When I was a kid, I had three games on N64: Mario 64, Mario Kart, and Snowboard Kids. For some reason, that was the game my sister and I played all the time. There was a sequel, but it never released around here in Europe, unfortunately. They tried it again on the DS, but that didn't really work out, and then the franchise was kind of done afterwards. So, Snowboard Kids is the reason the game exists.
I also love SSX, but I kind of started on the wrong end of SSX games. I never had a Playstation as a kid, so I started with the Wii version. There are lots of other games that influenced me. Of course, there’s a little bit of Mario Kart in there with items, although the items in Slopecrashers are more inspired by Snowboard Kids. I like how Mario Kart is accessible for everyone. I’ve played every Mario Kart for hundreds of hours, but you can still have friends who have never touched that game that are still beating the crap out of you. I really like that, and I really want my game to be like that also — to have a very low skill floor, but a really high skill ceiling.
I also really like the freedom in SSX, or in Steep, for example. You don't have to follow one path with a fence on your left and right. You can jump over the fence and go off track. That's really what I like about those games and that's also what influences me quite a bit.
Q: I want to unpack that point you made about accessibility. What have you done to make Slopecrashers more accessible to less-experienced players?
A: First of all, when I started playtesting the game, I made some observations. You quite quickly find out who is an experienced player of video games in general, and who has never really touched a game. Very often I got feedback that the game is either too slow or too fast.
So, the first things I integrated were speed classes, where you can say, ‘I want to play the whole game slow, I just want to make this a chill experience,’ or you can play the game on the fastest speed, which is called “too fast.” This isn’t something really new, Mario Kart does something similar.
There are a lot of other things, too. I put many moves in the game as part of the tricks system, but it's very forgiving. Like, when you make a jump after a ramp has already ended, it still counts, or if you make the jump a little bit too soon, and you would have hit your head on the end of the ramp, it’s also okay. I'm also integrating some helper features that you can enable — stunt safety is the biggest system. Basically, it does a calculation before every stunt, and it won’t let you do the stunt if you’re going to crash face-down into the snow. That’s enabled by default, and you would have to opt out as an experienced player. Those are some of the biggest accessibility features for casual players.
Q: It sounds to me like you pretty much designed Slopecrashers by yourself. Is it just you on the dev team?
A: It's just me. I mean, I did outsource the music. I tried to do the music myself, but I realized pretty quickly that's not my skill. The music is done by Benedict Nichols. He’s scored a few games already like The Falconeer and Omno and a bunch more. So, he's doing the music, but everything else is done by me.
Q: What’s it been like for you as a solo developer?
A: That's a big question. The idea for Slopecrashers has been around since 2015. When I started, I was still learning game development, and I started this project more as a hobby, part-time. I was at university back then, and I was just doing this in my spare time. I only recently moved to full-time, just this year.
It’s been a lot of fun, especially when you start showing off the project on social media and stuff, and people get excited about it. That’s really cool to see. But, at some point, it became a little bit too big of a project to make in my spare time. It's been hard not to have the progress that people want to see and that you yourself want to see on the project. I had to cut down on features quite a bit, but I will try to put them in the game afterwards. I don't want to just leave anything in the cutting room.
It has also been stressful. As an indie game developer, you have to constantly show off the project, everywhere, all the time. Otherwise, how would people notice that it exists? Of course, I started out to make a game for myself, because I miss the Snowboard Kids franchise and the genre in general, but it has just always been a balance. I am trying to make progress on the game, and I'm trying to show it off more, because in the middle of the project, I actually stopped showing it off online. It just takes a lot of time, recording videos about the game and posting on different social media and interacting with people. When you don't have that much time to begin with, because you have full-time studies or a full-time job like I had, you don’t have much time to make progress on the game. So I had to decide that I would focus on the game and not do social media for a while.
Recently, I’ve said, ‘okay, if I want to do this, then I really have to do this.’ That's why I’ve basically quit my full-time job now, and saved up a little, so I can work on this and finish it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s actually been much better. There's still a lot of stuff to do and not enough time in the week, but I know that it's getting there.
I'm also not coming from an art background. I come from a programming background, so for the longest time my game didn't look any good. Only now that I'm actually happy with the gameplay I can invest time into doing the art. That's the completely wrong way to market a game. Because You should make a five-second clip, the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, post that, and then people get on board. It doesn't matter what's underneath it.
Basically, I went the wrong way around, and made the whole gameplay structure first, and now I'm finally doing the art. I can't recommend that.
Q: So Slopecrashers is entirely self-funded? You wouldn’t do a Kickstarter or anything like that?
A: I initially thought about that. But, that would have only worked if I hadn’t stopped my whole social media campaign. To do a Kickstarter, you have to do loads of social media, and because I didn't do that, I didn’t have that following. Maybe I could do it now, but I don't really need that at the moment. I think I'm very close to the finish line of the project. In retrospect, I probably should have done a Kickstarter. In the next project I might consider that.
Q: Do you think there’s a future for you in game development after Slopecrashers? If so, would you consider expanding your studio to bring on a few more devs or other staff?
Oh, yeah, definitely. That's something that I learned throughout this whole solo dev experience. At the beginning, you're like, ‘yeah, I can do everything, no problem. Why would I even need someone else?’ But slowly, you realize you need a lot of time for something that other people with experience would have done very quickly. For example, I'm reworking my characters for a third time now, because I don't like the look anymore. That could have been done better. If there’s interest in or budget for adding more stuff into the game or even a sequel, I would definitely consider getting a team to do that. Actually, I’m considering getting more people on board now to really polish the game.
It’s not like I want to do games alone forever. That's not it. I like it, and it's not a problem for me, but it would definitely be nice to have someone else on the team to help shape something together. In the end, I just want to make games, and I don't want to take four or even five years to make every game. It would be nice to be quicker.
Q: What sort of feedback have you gotten so far?
A: Overall, the feedback has been very positive. It's actually been crazy, people really do see the game’s influences. Some people have said, ‘oh my God, this is like Snowboard Kids.’ That's been really great, because those are the games that influenced me to make this game, but I never thought that would actually come through to the people that also enjoyed those games.
But yeah, it has been quite good. That's why I'm also really positive about a release date towards the end of the year. That's not an optimistic release date. It's more like a realistic release date.
Q: Based on that reaction, do you feel like Slopecrashers is doing some work to fill a gap in the genre left by Snowboard Kids?
A: At least in the snowboarding genre, yes. There are a lot of extreme sports games coming out, especially in the biking genre — Rider’s Republic and Lonely Mountains Downhill. Those games are aiming for the more realistic side of things. Even new snowboarding games like Shredders look like they are more on the realistic side of things, like the freedom of snowboarding and doing tricks on a slope, which is very cool. But, it's not the over-the-top crazy wackiness of an SSX. So yeah, I think Slopecrashers is kind of in a niche right now.
[END]
Slopecrashers is coming soon for PC and Switch.
