Lonely Mountains: Downhill is absolutely brilliant. At first glance this may look like an overly simplistic Indie title but the moment you delve a little deeper you will uncover a world of fun and spine-tingling excitement. This title was crowd funded on kickstarter, smashing it’s initial €35,000 goal by ten grand from a total of 1,621 backers.
The first thing that really drew me to the game was the art style. The simple, low-poly look is stunning and reminded me of titles like Firewatch and Virginia. I was then struck by the lack of a soundtrack. It is rare these days for a game to forgo backing music but in this instance it was definitely the right call. Birds chirping and soft sounds of nature fill the background as your bike soars down the various mountains. The ambient noise makes your time with the game feel relaxing despite the chaotic nature of the gameplay.
Speaking of gameplay, while the look and sound of the game really hits the mark, it is when you begin hurtling down the mountains at breakneck speed that you realise just what a treat you have in store. Controls are simple, with R2 to pedal, L2 to brake and X for an extra burst of speed. You have two options when it comes to steering; I went with the default ‘screen based’ control where your rider will go in whatever direction you point the left stick. However if for any reason you find that awkward you can change the left sticks function to turn left or right regardless of orientation.
The game ships with four different mountains for you to tackle. Each mountain has numerous different trails of varying difficulty so there is plenty of content here to keep you busy. As is usually the case with games like this, the first trail or two won’t cause you too much hassle, but soon it ramps up, culminating at a difficulty level that will have you throwing your controller across the room.
Comparisons have been made to the Trials series and while I can definitely see the similarities with the amount of crashes you rack up and the ability to instantly restart checkpoints you do have more control over your bike in Lonely Mountains. The camera often changes perspective and you are moving in a 3D space rather than a 2D plane.
A really nice touch is that if you set yourself a challenge of beating a course in under a certain time, you can tackle it in bite sized pieces. When you crash the game restarts you back at the last checkpoint, but it also resets your time to what it was when you initially reached said milestone. So if say between checkpoint 3 and 4 you don’t feel you have done well, you can crash and re-try that section to get a better result.
Completing challenges earns you new bike parts which you can piece together to unlock the five other bikes in the game. Each of the six bikes has different strengths and weaknesses in all the usual areas like speed, agility, grip and more. It is a good system that is constantly dangling a carrot, urging you to complete the next task.
Trophies are varied and task you with completing all challenges as well as unlocking all bikes, finding all resting places and even crashing in creative ways. It is a good solid list and only a very small amount of people are going to have the skill level required to platinum this title, making it one well worth adding to your list.
Overall I loved Lonely Mountains: Downhill. This is a game that I lack the required skill in to truly see everything the game has to offer, but that didn’t take away any of the enjoyment I had trying. You crash… a lot, but I never found it frustrating and I was always happy to get back on the saddle and go again. Skidding around a tight bend at dangerous speed is some of the best gameplay fun I have had on the PlayStation 4 in a while and I highly recommend this to anyone. To sweeten the deal even further the game is available on Game Pass for Xbox and PC at no extra cost.
A review code was provided by the publisher. Reviewed on PS4 Pro.
